Same Goals, Different Tools

These photos and video are a sort of accompaniment for next Friday's Farm Side, the inspiration if you will for my weekly thousand words. We live in a truly beautiful county, with agriculture as a very significant portion of the economy.

Besides putting food on tables, from those in Amish kitchens to those of large scale farmers and their families and employees, agriculture paints this county in stunning landscape portraits, and all the colors of the alchemy of land and livestock husbandry.

Farming is a labor of love and it shows in every green and golden acre.

1000 Days

1000 days ago I set a goal to submit a bird list to eBird every single day for a year. And we were off.....(our rockers mebbe)

We birded in fog. We chased in snowstorms. Early morning. After dark. Every. Single. Day.

At the end of that first year I kinda patted myself on the back and shot for another year.

Lo and behold this morning I made it to a thousand days. Perhaps I should say "we" because the boss has faithfully and without complaint driven me most of those days. He will come to where I am sitting or puttering and make steering wheel motions with his hands. I will nod, yes, and off we go to the river or the hills or the hidden hay fields where woodcocks dance.

Some of those lists were pretty skimpy. Flu and Adenovirus made for days when I staggered to the landing on the stairs, counted the birds on the feeders below, and fell back into bed. Other days we went to Montezuma, or the Outer Banks, or oh, so many amazing places, where we counted with gay abandon.

I was pretty happy to make this milestone on such a lovely day for birding. We didn't see any real rarities, but an Osprey flew over at our Rankin Grove hot spot...and I heard something there that I have never heard before and more than likely never will again.

As I stood in the warming sunlight in the middle of the road...not much traffic...a Turkey Vulture soared over. Then another and another and another until there were an even dozen, using the warm air rising from the road for a frolic.

Normally they would only soar on static wings, bending a primary feather half an inch to soar miles in a different direction. They look like so many solemn undertakers floating on the sky. 

However, these birds were dive bombing one another, playing I guess. They cut through the sky as sharply as any falcon, wings bent almost in half. Talk about agile! Swoop! Swish! Slip and slide.

 As I marveled at their acrobatics I thought I heard a jet plane in the sky behind me. It was weirdly low.

Then a vulture stooped at another and I heard it again. It was their wings! And it was loud!

How cool is that?

This little person was right out in the middle of the road when we first saw him
but he sauntered over to the shoulder at our approach.
I'll bet his heinie was warm when his mama caught up with him.

The top photo I took yesterday morning. It was so foggy that it was hard to tell that these were Wood Ducks...eighteen of them all together...except by their weird whooping whistle. Whenever I hear them I think of the jungle.

The rest are non-bird things we have seen over the last few of the thousand day marathon. It sure was fun!

A Hopeful Sign

A relatively uncrowded bit of wire

Working on the Farm Side for this week, on the recent report on the massive decline in bird populations since I graduated from high school.

It's pretty awful with a third of our birds gone since then. Agriculture was blamed by some conservation groups. However, I feel that farmers do a lot to preserve birds and other wildlife, often without even meaning to. 

After all, where are you more likely to find a Snowy Owl wintering successfully so far south of their native range? The ones that spent the last two winters in our county lived on large farms with big fields. They seemed untroubled by farm activity, with one hunting most evenings a few yards from barns full of hundreds of cows and calves.

Upland Sandpipers breeding here? 

On farms. There is a well-known breeding population right here in Montgomery County just a few miles west of here.

Barn Swallows? You need only check out their name. 

The list of birds breeding or stopping along the migration route on farms is long indeed. I have counted over a hundred species on our little farm alone.

Sunday the boss and I were out on our usual peregrinations in search of Peregrines and such. 

What we found....one of the things we found anyhow....is illustrated in these photos.

As far as I can tell they are all Tree Swallows. A lot of Tree Swallows. In some spots there were a dozen crowded into just over a foot of wire. They covered a lot of wire.

It's for sure that they were all resting and refueling on their way south on two separate farms out in the Town of Root in our home county. Not scurrying for popcorn on a city street. Not snooping around in the bushes in a city park.



Nope, they were hunting bugs and sunning themselves chittering all the while...on farms.

I found the presence of the largest flock of them that I have ever seen to be.....hopeful..

My Husband took me Parking

My first ever Olive-sided Flycatcher

He does pretty much every day, nice guy that he is.

Of course we don't exactly spend our time in the traditional fashion. Instead we stop by the roadside at one of our favorite ponds or in a state park. I wander off with the binoculars and camera. He sleeps, listens to the radio or reads his farm magazines.

This morning we did just that. Since it has been foggy down by the water we have been visiting a little wide place on a seasonal road up in Charleston, where there is swamp on both sides. 

Over the past few years it has become one of my very favorite places to chase birds as it is about as wild as you can get and stay on a safe surface. However, the whole road has been closed all summer up until about a week ago due to a much needed makeover in the construction department. Used to be you took your life in your hands if you met another car. Now it is nice and wide.

While the boss snoozed I mostly just stood still near the car and listened and watched. For someone who loves the outdoors as much as I do, just watching the morning unfold is a joy. Kind of like church for us wild folks.

Yesterday and today fall warblers were busy. The other night we got two Barred Owls. There is always something.

The bar in the foreground is the roof rack on the car.

Today while I was standing a buck came out right behind the car, stared at me a while, and then slipped back into the trees.

A few minutes later a dark flycatcher showed up on a dead tree. I took about a dozen photos, because, although I was pretty sure it was just an Eastern Phoebe, something didn't look right. There is always the possibility that one of the dozens of phoebes I see will actually be something rarer, right?

I won't tell you how many photos of Eastern Phoebes and Olive-sided Flycatchers I pored over before I finally put it up on What's this Bird? 

And guess what....It was an Olive-sided. Rare enough to get that yellow box on eBird that you have to fill out to report it. A lifer for me. 

Happy dance.

Anyone have any opinion on this unusually Pale Great Blue Heron?

Later we went parking again over at the Sprout Brook Auction. That time I sat in the car while the boss walked around looking at all the stuff. Then we came home and he stored some hay and raked some more. Hope he can bale this afternoon.

A good time had by all. 

The Things you See

Green Heron

Great Blue Heron

Sunday

Short grass, long legs

Not knowing he was being watched
Double-crested Cormorant took a bath

Foggy Mornings, Golden Sunsets

Sometimes a not-so-foggy morning

And, at the boat launch, a requiem for a woodchuck, complete with paper
plate gravestone. I think by the looks of the chewed up fur he met a dog
that took issue with his marmotiness. I feel kinda sorry for the park staff guys,
who have to clean stuff like this up every morning. They are real nice
fellows and deserve better.

To my Beautiful Mama

Happy Birthday, Mama....much love and admiration from all of us at Northview.....Hope you have a wonderful day and all your kids call you and may visit too.

Flavored Milk is not the Bogeyman

The beginning of this week's Farm Side is about apples. It is after all, time to pick and eat NY finest fruit delight...and this is where we bought some Honeycrisp yesterday. I am going to have a nice apple snack for breakfast today....

The middle of my weekly thousand word quota is about China dropping some of their retaliatory tariffs on soybeans and pork,

The rest is about the proposed NYC ban on flavored milk. Why is it that authorities in big cities are so often way behind on current dietary research? When it comes to getting off the fad diet bandwagon and actually reading current research they are frequently much less well informed than people who are closer to the land and their roots.

It's not like it's hard to find research from all over the world that concludes that flavored milk increases milk consumption (sooprise, sooprise) which results in higher intakes of vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats, not to mention more energy. 

From the USDA

From Australia

From ENVIRON International Corp

Milk beats traditional sports beverages as a recovery drink too.

There are plenty more studies of similar ilk and none of them are hard to find. At least one upstate legislator is on this like a JRT on a racing rat.

Assemblyman Brindisi

And NY Farm Bureau has addressed it as well. I hope the Big Apple Dept. of Ed reconsiders and continues to serve chocolate milk and maybe adds tasty NY apples as well. 

Cool Nights Flaming Days

Autumn paints the spider webs, turning each night's effort bright silver and pinpointing the hunting grounds of every tiny creature. 

 Lazy loops dangle from half-way up the tallest trees to end in funnel webs on burdock leaves. 

Shining strings form lacy tablecloths, high in the branches or low on the goldenrod. The temptation to reach for the camera pounces every time, but good photos are hard to find.

It is nice to see them though and to be able to duck without accidentally donning them like sticky garments, most unwanted, especially the hats and hair ribbons.

All the pines and hemlocks firs and spruces mutter in the chilling winds, virtue signaling to those flamboyant hardwoods, such a bunch of showoff these short autumn days, stripping and pole dancing to the tune of those same breezes.

Falling leaves bring dismal thoughts of months to come, but they make it easier to spot warblers, not that there are many around just yet.

It's still warm enough for shorts and open bedroom windows...barely...but a lap blanket is welcome of a too-soon-darkening evening. Sweatshirts and flannels have come out of hibernation, taming goosebumps day by day.

The sun, tamed by the movement of the earth, is gentle enough for morning porch sitting, even facing to the east as it is, and that is nice as well.

I like this time of year for the most part, although it is easy to fall prey to melancholy as the year winds down.

Reality Before Vaccines

Of course it could have been a mining disaster, but I don't think so. How horrible for this poor family.

Remember

Carl DiFranco

The Things you See

Are you brave enough to cross this bridge.......

Wood Duck art installation

Female Red-belling Woodpecker