Creatures of the Night..or Features, as the Case May Be

FORTY-EIGHT of these in about two miles of road. Driving was
not boring

Not a Youth by any Means

Turns out that goose number Y5Y1 was middle aged for his species, Canada Goose, and hatched in Varennes, Quebec, which is near Montreal. 

He was banded in 2007 on July 6th while still too young to fly, and was discovered at that time to be male. The ubiquitous high-flying honkers average 10-24 years in the wild.

No Cigar
I tried many times to get a photo of geese against the moon
This is as good as it got, even though there were thousands passing through

I love finding neck banded birds and discovering their history from subsequent band reports. Most of the ones we have found so far were banded near Cobleskill, or near Lykers, where we bird extensively, but this guy is a bit more well traveled. 

Can't wait to read the report on the other banded goose we found the same day. We often find two banded birds together.....

Timberdoodle

Sharp-shinned Hawk

I guess I'm kind of a competitive birder. It's fun to treasure hunt. Birds are treasures that are right there for anyone who is interested in seeing...and counting.... them.

Back when we had cows the heifer pasture was home to American Woodcocks. The grass was kept short by grazing and the little pond where the horses were pastured was just what the doctor ordered for timberdoodles..... a bucolic nickname for the American Woodcock, fat little shorebirds that love earthworms. They are famous for their spectacular mating displays. I had never heard of them until I read A Sand County Almanac in college, nor seen one until years later. It sure was fun to have them on the farm.

Nowadays the horses no long use that pasture and only the two old cows, Bama and Moon, graze the heifer pasture. The grass has become too long for tiny woodcock legs so we haven't heard their buzzy peenting or their magical sky dance in years. Hadn't counted one for eBird either, but I sure wanted to.

A little under a week ago someone reported one in a spot where we bird all the time, so last night right after supper and just about nightfall we drove there and parked the car.

And listened.

And listened. Not a peep. Not a twitter. Darn it. The boss moved the car several times hoping to hear the bird.

Then to my utter amazement one flew right past where we were parked, fluttering by about a foot from the windshield. Even at night I got a great look.

Awesome. County bird number 77 for the year.

This morning #78 (see above) landed on the ground by the feeder and let me take several photos before he flew off.

I'd been noticing that no birds were coming in....guess now we know the rest of the story.

Redheads

The Leader of the Band

Obviously orange, right?

Over the past few years we have been fortunate enough to find several Canada Geese wearing neck bands. The bands are used to keep track of the birds' travels and it is a lot of fun to report them to the government and find out where they were banded.

Usually the birds were find are banded locally and wear yellow and black bands.

However, yesterday the birds were really on the move. I'll bet we saw 5000 geese. We found that mass of them in yesterday's post hunkered down in a swamp right down the road from us, hiding out from the nasty wind. By mid-afternoon there were at least 1500 and probably many more...you can't see much of the swamp from the road.

Among them were two banded geese. I got photos. One band was orange but I am not sure what color to call the other.

However, as seems to be the case very often the government band reporting site wasn't working. Guess I'll try again tomorrow. Meanwhile, one band is clearly orange and white, but what would you call the other? Thanks

Really, red, or punky pink?

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