Swallows!

This stump full of swallows greeted us when we arrived at the boat launch this morning. I have never seen anything like it. Mostly Tree Swallows, but a bunch of Cliff Swallows, at least one Bank Swallow, and the usual complement of Northern Rough-winged Swallows that nest in the old Aqueduct.

Been Neglecting

Pine Siskins with American Goldfinch

Hooded Merganser

Northern Rough-winged Swallow

Yellow-rumped Warbler

European Starling

Black-capped Chickadee

Killdeer

The birds we've been seeing....

Greater Yellowlegs

Blue-winged Teal

3 Species of Swallows in one shot

Ghosts

Of the Outer Banks

Missing

and presumed...sick.....really, really sick. 

When you live with a preschooler they bring stuff home....all kinds of cute crafts, skinned knees and elbows, an amazing store of exciting new knowledge...and bugs....

They bring home lots and lots of contagious bugs, and generous young folks that they are, they share.

We have perhaps the most wonderful preschooler in the world here at our place.

Thus we also get bugs....

Everyone in the family fell like dominoes to a stomach virus of horrific proportions over the past few days. Only one convenience in the house so....it was great fun.

Everyone is either well, or at least on the mend now, but that was ugly.

Hope no one else catches it. 

Logging a Long Time Ago

The other day I chanced to overhear a conversation from the living room. The boss was regaling Jade with tales his mother told him of the logging camps up around Boonville when she was a young lady.

She cooked in a diner/restaurant that we think was named the Brown Derby.

The loggers would come out of the woods periodically and always stopped in for some of the wonderful meals served there.

Peg was the chief pie maker and I can personally attest to her incredible powers with crust and filling. Her pies were much in demand for church bake sales in later days.

I couldn't help but feel privileged to have such a close connection with a time so long ago and so different from today, and to have heard first-hand so many great stories....because although I don't know as many of them as the boss does, I did hear a number of them.

The memories begged to be put in the Farm Side, so that is what I am doing this week.

Meanwhile, here are some of the research links I am using.

Fascinating stuff...do read if you have the time.

Life in a log camp

Food in a log camp

Supper at a modern camp...on the Golden Road!

The Blacksmith Shop

Some pictures

Some really big loads of logs

The Golden Road

Happy Easter

Low Life Still Life

At Beardsley Reservoir

Just a bad bird shot that turned out kinda cool

Another without the cormorant

Appomattox Courthouse

Who loves having his picture taken?
Not this guy.
You can see why I always sneak up from behind

Where we encountered the ghost...Becky and I
heard footsteps right behind us as we walked down this remote roadway....counting birds and enjoying the beauty
We thought it was the boss who had gone farther than we did toward some monuments
he wanted to see.
We both heard the loud, crunching footsteps in the gravel, but ignored them for quite a distance...
Until we turned around to find
No One There. 

Does anyone know the story of this tree and gravestone?
Update, thanks Denny for the info...this is the grave of Lafayette Meeks

Back on the Islands

I hope you have time to watch these videos.....they take me right back to OBX

Siri Lives up to Her Name

No, not the one that begins with S. The one we routinely call her and her colleague from Samsung that resides inside my old S-4 when they take us places we don't want to visit....like Middle-of-Nowhere-Istan.

This past week we went places we had never been before...voluntarily for the most part but sometimes not so much. We had actual paper maps, but on teeny tiny back roads in the middle of nowhere they are essentially useless. Most of the roads aren't even there.

Thus we used the navigation tools on our phones.

My phone is outdated,  slow, and full of errors, so we eventually used Becky's modest version of the iPhone.

Once we persuaded it to use the route we wanted rather than the one through downtown Washington DC, it worked pretty well.

Until yesterday.

We wanted a route diagonally north from Appomattox to Route 81. Siri found one, or so she told us. In reality I don't think one exists.

Our first clue that something might be wrong was when she turned us off Route 64 and we had to go under that thing in the upper photo.

Things got worse from there. 

When you find yourself looking for Sheep Creek Rd. you tend to get a wee bit nervous.

When you see the sign above you get a little nervouser.

When the road turns from a skinny, twisty, upwardly mobile, paved two-lane to a one-lane rock chip horror that tangles and untangles its way up a mountain you think about turning around. We didn't think about it anywhere near soon enough. 

When we finally gave up we were many miles up in wild mountains, where it was incredibly beautiful, but very, very far from any place we needed to be and by the time we got back where we started we were nearly an hour and a half behind.

 I Googled Sheep Creek Road and looked at the way Siri wanted to take us north I am well beyond wildly grateful we gave up when we did. OMG 

We eventually found our own way to I 81. We eventually found our way home. It was a great trip....but home is home....

*If you wish to trace the route where Siri was trying to take us, follow Sheep Creek to Murrells Gap and see if you can find a way to I 81 North.

BBB Tour Continues

He insisted on doing this over our misgivings

Finished the beaches part yesterday with a heavy heart. Alan said we would fall in love with the Outer Banks and I sure did. Hated to leave, as predicted.

I love Florida, but OBX is more by being less. Off season, so fewer people....less developed.....a lot more welcoming. People were just plain nice to us.

Looks as if we are going to be fighting the Hatteras Island Inn for a refund over our stolen food and toiletries though> However, I'll bet I can write a negative review as well as the next person. Not letting that spoil our fun.

Wall O' Water

We found 50 species in North Carolina over the short time we spent there. Many of them count as life birds for me, although I saw them in Georgia and Florida in the 70s on my first trip south. Those include Little Blue Heron, Snowy Egrets and such. At least one was a real life bird...the three Whimbrels on the very first day. Yesterday we visited Bodie Island Lighthouse and racked up a mess of birds. It was pretty much paradise as I have imagined it.

Then we drove across rural NC into Virginia to Appomattox to begin the Battlefields section of the tour. Everything was closed by the time we got here, so we will be visiting the various places today. 

Sanderlings......because......because.....Sanderlings!

Of course in my world the Birds part of the story never stops.

The last Beach

Far from Home

We made it to the Outer Banks today after a pretty rough trip. It is everything the kids told us and more. As I sit here in our hotel room, which is very pleasant, a Laughing Gull is calling over the parking lot. We went to a lighthouse today and to TWO beaches. 

Somebody found a lot of shells for Miss Peggy.

Saw tons of birds without even looking too hard. 

Great fun, and kudos to the boss for getting us here in one piece against great odds. There are some pretty crazy drivers around our nation's capital, dontcha know?

Fish Crow staking out some territory. They sound like
regular crows after helium

No Joking

***Update, Jade came through OK and was up in a chair this morning. Thanks!


Here today. This morning Jade will be having his second major surgery since his nightmare started on New Years Eve.

Please hold him in your thoughts and prayers. Liz and Peggy too. Liz has been keeping their family afloat while caring for him and Peggy and all their livestock.

Peggy is worried about her daddy....a lot to deal with for someone who is only five, even if she is five going on thirty.

*Meanwhile, here is an oldie from this day in 2016.

Yakushima Ducks

They're Back

Killdeer

A glowing melon rind of moon was shining through the dark, bare trees just above the eastern horizon. It was as orange as a cantaloupe and as unexpected as a snowflake in July. Some planet, probably Venus, blinking in and out among loose clouds, bright as a lodestar.

5:30 in the morning. Mack and I were outdoor kennel bound. He is a devilish dervish after being in the house all winter and it is plenty warm today even for a Jack Russell coat. Let him run some of that crazy off out there for a change.

I heard a tantalizing twitter as we walked. What was that? Sparrows in the bushes? Something rodenty over by the barn?It was too soft to be sure. Used to be, just a couple short years ago, that on Sunday mornings the traffic noise was quieter than the rest of the week. Not any more. Now I guess the business climate has improved or something and even at this dark hour the trucks are steady and noisy.

Then just as I closed the kennel gate I heard another sound.

Close. 

Right next to the lawn.

Peent-t-t-t-t.....an American Woodcock.

The first in many years here, at least since the cows left us.

As it took to the sky in its mad, twittering sky dance, another began to peent nearby. For a while they alternated calling from the ground and flying their magic mating flight. Then they flew an incredible duet right over my head.

As night wound down and dawn began to break, a dozen robins began to sing. Two song sparrows chimed in, while a small flight of Mallards quacked over. 

A tom turkey gobbled from the hillside, two Killdeers screamed around me another species that has been gone from the farm for a while. 

I was as close to Heaven as I need to be just now. Paradise in your own back yard. What's not to like?

Bama Breeze