The Sunny Side

Ring-billed Gull

I try.

I really do. I understand just how fortunate I am.....to be in reasonable if not great health, to be ambulatory, able to see adequately, to hear quite well, and to be surrounded by loving people, literally living my own dream...that is in the country, on a farm.

However, after a week, or however long it's been of curtailed everything and a continuous onslaught of terrible news and terrifying headlines, I got up this morning grumpy. I didn't cheer up much as the day went on.

We stole a few minutes...literally...down at the Crossing, but had to come home to take care of Peg because school is...rightly...closed.

No biggie, although I miss the luxury of lots of time to wander and peer. However, just a short while after we came home friends emailed that there were two Wilson's Snipe and an American Pipit being seen down there. Peg was still asleep, having had some late nights lately. We just couldn't go.

We did go down later when we could but the birds were gone.

I was not feeling too sunny.

However upon checking my email I discovered that because I turned in over a thousand eBird lists last year Cornell gave me the rest of the year's free access to their new site Birds of the World.

I immediately typed in Wilson's Snipe and had me a good old time learning a lot more than I knew before. I didn't do more than dip a toe in the well of information available. There is an incredible amount of detail.

Talk about a sunny side!

I feel much better now. 

Hope you are all safe and well.

Gadwall

Update: When the boss was done with his work and Liz was home from hers, he took me back down to the river and we found the bird! Well, one of them anyhow. Life bird for me, a Wilson's Snipe!

Hang in There

Hertrude and Greathcliff

Hertrude, there's something wrong with the water!

I can't swim, can you?

I dunno, Greathcliff, it looks alright, but it's not very wet.

I know!

The carp are social distancing!

Social Distancing

Is not abnormal for us. We mostly only see family and the people we meet while shopping for food and other necessities. Birding is largely solitary, but never boring, as you can see from these photos.

The first two are from Schoharie Crossing this morning. Nobody there but us and a few geese.

The little yellow chair was set carefully, right at the edge of the racing Mohawk River at Yankee Hill Lock. It was the epitome of lonesome.

The lower set...well, your guess is as good as mine. "It" cropped up along Queen Ann Road sometime since we last visited the lock. A horse? Maybe? 

An excellent social distancing tool at any rate. Be safe and well, dear friends. 

Spring Goes On

Regardless.....

And at least so far the powers that be say we are still allowed to get out and experience it. I hope that extends so far as to let us drive down to the Crossing and hit the big ponds up south of us. There are few or no people there and plenty of birds and wild things.

Yesterday marked the first Spring Peepers for us. Their strident shrieks were first heard down in Schoharie County, through which we drove on our way home from an appointment that had to be kept.

Then we stopped at a little pool on Rankin Grove Rd. where we have seen oh, so many amazing birds. Nothing around but a couple of chickadees, but from the watery wash at the base of the brightening magenta of the Red Osier Dogwoods came the barking grunt of several Wood Frogs.

I have not heard them in at least 20 years, as vernal pools are in short supply on our upland acres.

Ring-necked Ducks

We also found some interesting migrating ducks, a small group of Ring-necked Ducks on a pond in the Bear Swamp complex of waters and a Long-tailed Duck up on Lyker's Road.

That was a thriller  as we only see one or two of these per year and only if we are lucky, and only on the river as a rule. I still remember the first one I ever saw, decades ago when they were still called Old Squaws, out in the confluence of Schoharie and Mohawk. If I have seen more than twenty altogether in the ensuing at least four decades I would be surprised.

Rana  Lithobates Clamitans

And once upon a time, in another life way back when, I learned or thought I learned, the names, both Latin and English, of all the frogs and toads found in NY and many of the other amphibians plus reptiles. Pointless in my line of work, but fun. Then they came along a couple of years ago and changed the Latin names of most of the frogs, so all those Ranas are now Lithobates (thanks a lot). Peepers are no longer Hylas either. Pseudacris Crucifer now I think? Anyhow, I thought I was well versed in local herp lore.

Imagine my amazement when I discovered that parts of NY have chorus frogs. There seems to be some discussion on whether they are Boreal or Western Chorus Frogs, but dang, I did not know they were there atall. However, there was a video yesterday of Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge frog song, which sent me off in a flurry of research and frog learnin'.

As they say...you learn something every day. yesterday I learned frogs.

Stay well dear friends. Stay strong. Stay safe. We will try to do the same. 

This little round mountain centers the view on many of our travels
Anyone know its name?

I Know Where I was

30 years ago today.

Happy Birthday, Alan, hope you have a great day. Can't thank you enough for all the crazy fun we have had. 

Love you,

Mom

Survival Tip #442

Pick up the phone.

Make that keyboard sing.

Call your mother.

Chat with a friend on Facebook.

Video conference with friends and loved ones.

It helps.

A lot.

A short virtual visit with a dear friend half-way across the country yesterday....

A quick conversation with our boy before he started work in New Jersey this morning...

Solving the world's problems and laughing over stories from the past on the phone every evening with my beloved mama...

Powerful medicine in this time of wild uncertainty.

Hope you are all safe and well, adequately supplied with what you need and not going too crazy yet. The girls and the boss worked together to get me out for about a half and hour's birding yesterday and that helped too....

Something Different

I read this pretty much every day and prop myself up with it quite often. Not my usual, but it is what it is.

“I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Philippians 4:12-13

Rain

A young friend shared this fun draw a bird thing and so I did

And babysitting. The girls are working all the hours they can while the getting is good.  So the boss and I are home pretty much all the time.

We woke up yesterday to a dead furnace fan. Many thanks to friends and family from all over the US who offered suggestions on where to find a new one with everything closed or crippled. It took all day but the boss bought one in Albany, rewired it, spent hours installing it, and it is rumbling quietly away right now, taking off the chill of still-winter-in-the-Northeast.

I have always been glad I married a farmer, never more than now......Not every fellow would know how to do that stuff. And thank God for technology. Where would we be right now if we couldn't communicate or entertain ourselves?

This is the one of three neck-banded Canada Goose we have found this year.

Each day's news brings more madness. 

And less birding. Good thing I have a stock of seed on hand to fill the feeders. Scored a year bird despite being stuck at home...an Eastern Phoebe has showed up in the hedgerow along the long lawn.

In my Facebook feed I am seeing both small farmers who have lost their commercial customers for eggs and similar farm products and townspeople finding shelves in stores empty of same. Hope these folks can get together somehow. Nothing like farm fresh eggs. 

In other news, Peggy is making a book....All off her own bat with neither help nor influence from her staff. She made a bunch of highly colorful paintings and stuff and is carefully and patiently gluing them together with a cover made from cardboard. I will grab a pic if I get a chance. It is going to be a pretty darned nice book I think. 

Hope you are all well and coping somehow with both the demise of our culture and economy and the threat to our health. Must be getting used to it I guess, as I slept through the night last night for the first time in a while. Take care.....

The Wearing of the Green

Nope. Not.

Just too gloomy and doomy today to bother.

I am one of those silly SAD people and it is snowy (!) and grey and unpleasant and the plague has me staying home providing child care instead of birding.

On top of that the knowledge that I have nothing to complain about, being well-fed, as healthy as I was pre-plague, living in a house with huge windows, maximizing available light, and able to get outdoors even at home, plus having a wonderful child for whom to care, makes me feel guilty about feeling gloomy.

You know, that Irish guilt syndrome and all. My great grandfather, Lawrence McGivern came over from the Ould Sod as a boy and I knew him as a child, so the ties to the green are strong.

Anyhow, instead of the dark green Henley and the green plaid flannel I had saved back for today, I grumpily went with grey Henley and orange plaid flannel.....with a black sweatshirt on top.

Take that plague!

In my defense I long ago gave up on St. Patty's day as far as good times are concerned. When we were kids we ALWAYS missed school because we had measles, mumps or rubella. Or the creeping crud. Or the galloping zook as my old boss at the veterinary clinic where I worked in my youth used to call it. The kids were always home sick too. March is a terrible month for seasonal contagions and always has been.

So here I sat at my computer, thinking about working on the story I started in lieu of my old job, listening to a cardinal wearing his heart on his song, when I happened to glance down.

And by Jove, I am in fact wearing green. Becky did my fingers with nail wraps for the High Kings concert last month, in green, and blue, and white with glitter. Kinda like an ocean wave breaking on pink sand. I liked them so much that they are still there.

Huh, whaddaya know....

Anyhow....

Hope you are all well, and finding what you need, and able to remain as calm as possible under the onslaught of scary information. And that the luck of the Irish smiles upon you whether you are or whether you aren't. 

Betcha can't listen to this without a smile. I sure can't. 

An Unexpected Kindness

In the birding world I am pretty much an outlier; always  been interested, always excited about them, haven't gone anywhere without binoculars since I have been an adult.

Which, as it happens, is quite a while.

However, while we were dairying, which we did together for all of our marriage up until six years ago, and separately on different farms for a good while before that, there wasn't much time to be serious about it.

Kept the bins in the car, stopped at good ponds or tooled through Montezuma, but nothing like the real deal.

In retirement I have making up for lost time. However, between the above history and being more than slightly introverted, I never got to know other birders. Over the past few years that has been changing. We keep running into cool people, particularly at Schoharie Crossing, a popular hot spot, and making their brief but delightful acquaintance. Seems as if I learn something from every single one of them too.

Saturday we were checking out the geese and  ducks there when a gentleman pulled up behind us and introduced himself. We had corresponded online but had never met. It was really nice to put a face to our pleasant virtual conversations.

However, I wanted to check out the local farm ponds and so we took off quite soon.

Way up back of beyond in the southern part of the county, my phone pinged with a text. It was from another birder, from NJ, whom I had met in much the same manner a couple of years ago. He was asking if he could give my phone number to the gentleman we had just met.

Seems he had found a Greater White-fronted Goose down in town.

Yowsa! You betcha!

We headed for Dunkin' as fast as traffic and our ancient conveyance would allow. The nice man who found the goose waited for us so he could get me on it too. Thanks John! Also, thanks David for taking time to relay messages so I got there in time to see the bird.

And a very good thing too, as it left only minutes later.

Wasn't it nice of both of them to make sure we got to see this rare and exciting bird? Made my week, and with all that has been going on recently it was a week that needed it.

Thanks again to all involved, including the boss who transports me to the wild and not so wild places where the cool chicks...and geese....hang out. 

Purple Sky and Plague Perception

This photo is unedited

Tweaked this one a tiny bit, but this is pretty much what we saw at the Crossing

These photos don't do the morning sky yesterday justice. The little temporary pool at Schoharie Crossing was actually purple. It only lasted a minute or so, but it was stunning.

Thanks, God, I needed that.

The Erie Canal at Yankee Hill Lock

We all need a little purple sky, a smile, or a kind word these days.

No matter where you live, no matter what you do, I  imagine that the plague is affecting you. We are somewhat socially isolated at the best of times...color me as introverted as that pool was purple....but this is unprecedented. It has hit us in many assorted ways from empty grocery stores to closing businesses.

Look out below! A Red-tailed Hawk hovers like a kite in the high winds the other day

Peggy's school has closed for at least two weeks; her mom works two jobs. Thus she will be spending a lot of time home with us or with her other grandma. Should be interesting...

As rumors fly and rules multiply, it is hard not to spend all your time worrying....... relentlessly increasing government control of everything we do, and unavoidable fear of both the disease and the unknown.....it's a major challenge to stay calm and normal.

I think we can all help each other with that though without getting close enough to exchange germs. I believe that if everyone who is the least bit creative shares a little of what they do, say photos of your latest project, a pretty sunrise, a good yarn if you are a story teller, and most of us are, a photo of your favorite dog, cat, horse, arachnid or whatever you love....we can help each other approach some semblance of normalcy.

I've encouraged the boss to write and share more of his short stories about his life growing up on a farm and continuing at it all his life. They are funny and uplifting even if I have heard them all a hundred times. Find him on Facebook if you want to read them....he is kind of outspoken politically, but you can skip all that and enjoy tales of riding cows and life on the land.

Best I can do for you is birds, but if we can keep getting out to see them I will keep sharing them.

Meanwhile.....

Female Common Merganser, gettin out of Dodge

Male Hooded Merganser looking all sleek and shiny.

Best wishes and love from Northview Farm and lets see those dogs, cats, memes, and ads for local meat and eggs if you got 'em. 

A Bald Eagle practices social distancing at Yankee Hill Lock yesterday