The Things you See

The Cinnamon Toast Bird

Carolina Wren AKA Cinnamon Toast Bird

The wind blew from the south the past couple of days, and oh, the birds it blew in. Migration has been a solid two to three weeks late, but the birds are making up for lost time. Although the Cinnamon Toast Bird....so named by me because of its warm just-right-toast and cinnamon colors....is a year round resident...the travelers are coming by.

The Red-winged Blackbirds are back in good sized flocks, Common Grackles just that...common...Killdeer seen at the boat launch and heard here at the farm.

A Barred Owl that my dad carved.
Mom dug for days to find the photo

Plus Wood Ducks, first Great Blue Heron of the year and Song Sparrows at the feeders, although we have seen a couple while out on the road.

Northern Shrike

Today the wind is strong from the east with rain coming in. 

I dunno if you saw that Facebook video of the result of the horrendous storm that hit the Plains, but it is staggering. Unimaginable. And any other adjectives you might come up with in your nightmares.

Haven't seen many news stories about it. Guess the media is too busy being shocked by something that surprised no one to notice a disaster in the part of the country they love to ignore. Without Facebook would we even know that it happened?

Killdeer

Plague It

Our path to recovery from flu has been a lot like these buggy tracks. Slow, and winding. Tortuous even.

Some day I will not need a steady diet of cough drops to get through the day and heavy drugs serious cold medicines to get through the night.

Some day.

But that day is not now. The nights are worse. Someone, usually more than one someone, has been sick each and every day since the last week in January. Most of those days one of the someones has been me. Flu shots, schmoo shots. Some people who had them didn't get it and some did. Ditto those who didn't....get shots that is. There have been days when I felt that maybe I should be shot...

Peggy's Pre-school Petri Dish provides us with new viruses as required. I still haven't missed a single day of listing birds but it's been close and getting closer.

I am ready for spring, but it seems as if spring is not ready for me. Take care....

The Things you See

This lovely, early....

January day.....

We've been through more firewood this winter than EVER before.  Just ordered another load yesterday and will be glad to have it.

It is minus one degree right now and the ice is hard as iron. Just for reference the average March temperature in the area from 1981 to 2010 was 41 degrees

Across the valley chimneys steam and smoke and the sky is showing that cold, all the way around the horizon, pink that early winter brings.

Red-winged Blackbirds and their ilk are now sixteen days late here at the farm. Smart birds. What would they eat with everything locked down under ice and snow?

A couple of strays have been picked up in the county by other birders, but here at Northview Farm it is still all winter sparrows and Chickadees.

As far as I'm concerned the far far North can take back its weather and its kee kee birds any day now and send us normal early spring....you know, sunny and muddy one day, snow storm the next.

We're getting tired of shivering.

Happy Birthday

An Unusual Opportunity

The Farm Side is usually behind the paper's pay wall, so if you want to read it you have to.....well.....pay....

Last week it was shared on Facebook for free, so I guess it will be okay if I share a link so you who do not get the Recorder can read it as well.

So, without further ado, here it is: Watch out for Rabies

Well butter my taters. between the time I wrote this and like ten minutes later, the pay wall was back. OK, let's try it this way. (Not that the paper isn't worth paying for or anything.)

Beware

Two Upstate NY pet dogs recently came into contact with rabid animals.
One encountered a diseased raccoon in the Herkimer area and the other a skunk
in Vernon.

I haven’t heard what happened with the former dog,
but the second one is looking at six months of quarantine
because his rabies vaccination was out of date.

Pretty much any dog that tangles with a skunk comes out on the losing end,
but this poor guy got it even worse than most.

The very same day a strong odor of skunk wafted over from the cow barn
when I was out with Finnbar, our latest Border Collie.
Fortunately he was on a leash and is up to date on his shots.

Skunks are going to be much in evidence for the next little while.
Tis the season of love for the stripey little stinkers
and they like fragrant perfume as much as the next romeo.

Rabies seems to rear its ugly head around here every year or so,
with wild animals acting as a reservoir for the disease and spreading it to pets
and livestock. It is not unusual to hear of cases in feral barn cats and even rabbits
and woodchucks have tested positive.

However, in 2017, the most recent year I could find reported, according to
New York Upstate.com, Montgomery County was fortunate
to have no diagnosed cases, although 13 animals were tested.

Oddly enough, perhaps because there are so many potential animal/human encounters
there, Westchester County had the largest number of problems with 414 animals
tested and 18 positives.

However, endemic rabies is not the only potential source for this almost-always
deadly scourge. Rabies is much more prevalent in many other countries
than it is here and the disease is sometimes inadvertently imported as well.
In fact tragically, a US soldier who was bitten by a feral dog in Afghanistan
in 2011 died of rabies upon his return home.

He had come in contact with many other people before the disease was diagnosed,
with at least 22 of them needing preventative treatment.

Thus it was with interest that I read of 200 dogs being rescued
to the US from dog meat farms in Seoul, S. Korea, by way of Toronto, Canada.
Although the practice of eating dogs is on the decline in Asia,
there are still some practitioners of this ugsome habit there.
However, it is said that even the South Korean President Moon Jae-in
adopted a shelter dog in ‘17.

The International Humane Society has claimed to be offering the former dog farmer
a computer science course that will enable him to seek alternative employment.

Don’t you wonder though, what vaccinations the imported dogs received
and what precautions were taken to protect the kind people who foster them
and the animals they encounter?

According to US Customs and Border Protection, “The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) requires that pet dogs be vaccinated against rabies
and be healthy upon arrival.  Dogs that have never been vaccinated against rabies
must be vaccinated at least 30 days before entering the United States.

Puppies must not be vaccinated against rabies before 3 months of age,
so the youngest that a puppy can be imported into the United States is
4 months of age.”

You might assume that all the dogs brought here for rescue complied
with these regulations.

However, that is not always the case. The CDC reports that the US has eliminated
canine variant rabies, which is a pretty big deal.
It means that even though dogs may transmit rabies to people,
probably due to the way we live in close proximity to them,
a dog will not get rabies from another dog.

Instead wild animals, such as the skunk and raccoon mentioned above,
transmit the disease to unvaccinated dogs.

Which brings us to some other overseas rescue dogs brought here over the past
few years.
In one case a Chihuahua rescued from the streets of Egypt probably had
falsified rabies vaccination papers and tested positive for rabies virus.

Before this happened the dog, known to the CDC as “dog A” bit several people
and then died.
It exhibited classic symptoms of the disease, irritability, aggressiveness, confusion,
and aversion to water.

Thus began an extensive investigation into how the dog got here and with
whom it had come in contact.
Turns out quite a few people were involved before it reached its final destination in
Connecticut.

From Egypt to JFK Airport to states all over the Eastern Seaboard,
people and animals were potentially exposed to this nearly always deadly disease.

The Egyptian dog was neither the only, nor even the first dog to be imported
with the disease. Infected dogs from India and Iraq were also brought here,
bringing the total number of rabid dogs imported into the US in the past 15 years to 6.
Each such importation brings with it the potential to reestablish canine
variant rabies in our own dog population, as well as to actually kill people and animals.

The CDC said, “Elimination of the canine rabies virus variant from the United States
required approximately 5 decades and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Imported cases present an ongoing opportunity for reestablishment of the variant
and require lengthy and costly investigations to prevent additional cases in
both humans and animals.”

Seems we should be cautious with animals that come here from other countries,
making sure that not only is their paperwork in order,
but that they are carefully observed before going into people’s homes,
and tracked afterward.

That being said, I have owned dogs with imported parents.
Those original two Border Collies, Mike and Gael, were the first generation of pups
born in the US from parents imported from Scotland, with ancestors in
England and Wales as well. I swear, even though he was whelped in Altamont,
Mike barked with a Scottish burr sometimes.

Anyhow, whether you are adopting, buying, or just enjoying your family pet,
rabies is something to be watch out for.

Writing the column is how I spend several mornings each week, as I have for 21 years now. I just sent this week's missive a few minutes ago.

Here are some links to this week's research.

EPA new WOTUS regs

How to report slaves in Washington State

More on that

Human rights for a lake

Lawsuit on the latter

I usually use many more stories than these but they are frequently repetitive so....

Nine

Rough-legged Hawks in one day's birding, all in our home county.

Forty White-tailed Deer nibbling corn in an Amish field

Four young girls walking in the road (with escort).

One pretty little Red-tailed Hawk, not a great photo, but a cute bird

Two different Barred Owls, two different nights. 

And other signs of the season that just won't quit

The Golden Hour

We didn't see any owls but....

Importing Rabies

This week's Farm Side, which will run tomorrow in the Recorder, was written about a recent spate of rabies cases in nearby counties, and about the risks associated with importing dogs from not so very developed countries with less stringent rabies rules than ours.

Since I sent the column on Tuesday yet another rabies case has cropped up just west of here, bringing the total in the past two weeks to four and ANOTHER (!!!!!) dog imported from Egypt has rabies.

 I think we need a better screening process if we are going to fill our shelters with dogs from overseas.

Here are some links on the topic.

CDC on the first rabid dog from Egypt and several others

The new case of a rabid dog from Egypt

200 dogs imported from S. Korea

Rumble

Feel a low growl through the leash, too soft to hear. 

Rumble, rumble, grumble, mumble.

There's something out there. Something that causes the Border Collie concern. If you're a dog you worry about stuff.....however.....

There are fresh, new, tracks where a deer rummaged around under the bird feeders....I left an apple and some spent lettuce out there for the bunnies, but I guess there are opportunists everywhere. Then it strolled right up on the back step, and although only the crescent moon and its favorite planet are lighting the sky so far, I suspect it is out there yet.

Of more concern is whatever left the strange turtle sort of track parallel to the deer path. Possum? Skunk? Tis the season of love for the latter, which used to be a weasel, but now has its own family.

There have been several cases of rabies in nearby counties in the past week. Two raccoons, a fox, and a skunk so far. Must remember to look before I allow the leap off the porch and into the stack of new fallen snow out there.

And in other news, Meatland burned last night. We just started shopping there a few weeks ago...it is kind of out of the way for us, but we were sick of what passes for beef in the grocery stores....the service was wonderful and the pork and beef could pass for homegrown, which is the gold standard for us.

And now it is gone. So sad.

Different Morphs for Different...er....the same...Birds

This is a dark morph Rough-legged Hawk, the darkest I have ever encountered

And this is a light morph. We see a lot of these

Bad Photos, Good Birds

We found this guy first. Not the FOY, but I never tire of seeing them

So...for the past two years we have wasted invested hundreds of hours looking for a Greater White-fronted Goose or a Short-eared Owl. We have driven to the far side of Fort Plain and ventured out into the wilds and sat for hours on a roadside looking for the latter.

I have taken and carefully pored over thousands upon thousands photos of Canada Geese, searching, ever searching for that elusive GWFG. (Or a Cackling Goose, but that is another story.)

To no avail.

Greater White-fronted Goose

Then on Saturday some really nice folks whom I had never met, but who were pursuing  county birds the boss and I had found and posted on eBird, called me up and left a message that they had found the goose down in town.

I returned the call and had an absolutely delightful chat with one of the bird folks....I don't get to talk to other enthusiastic birders pretty much ever. Really fun.

And then we went chasing the goose.

No go. No geese at all. Same deal yesterday morning.

However, yesterday afternoon there were a few geese at the spot where our target was seen. I climbed out and began the tedious process of photographing every single one, just in case. But I already knew that I wasn't seeing it. While I was doing so I heard an odd call right below the high riverbank upon which I was standing. Couldn't see any birds because of a huge snowbank so I dismissed it.

Until I got back in the car and Becky said, "Did you hear that? That was something different. I'm going to play that goose call on my phone." And so she did.

And that was it. Out of the car, up on the snowbank, and there it was...about fifty feet from the car.

Who could ask for more?

Whoooo Me.....? Short-eared Owl

However, there WAS more ..... The boss suggested taking a little ride late in the afternoon. I think he gets restless and wants to get out of the house but it is just too icy to do much outdoors. So we did.

Northern Shrike in the near darkness

Just a handful of miles from home I spotted a little bird in a tree across a field. I still get cold chills thinking about seeing my first ever Short-eared Owl. And because I was taking lots of photos of it I discovered that there was a Northern Shrike sitting about two feet underneath it in the very same tree. I needed one for my county list and there it was.

Terrible shot showing shrike and owl

We went on to find three more owls a couple of miles away, swooping around a big hay field like giant feathery moths.

It was probably one of the best day's birding I have ever had. I am still kinda stunned by it all.

Like giant moths or really big bats

Sugaring

Sapcicle

Alan and Amber are tapping some trees this year. He sent me this video of the clean, clear sap dripping into the bucket.