When the Newest Bird

In the mood for love

On your 2020 eBird county list is a Black Vulture, you tend to get a little nervous.

Especially when you count a pair of them right at home, right behind the barn.

At least they didn't hang around and I haven't seen them again. And they did get me back up over 90% in the county at least for a little while.

We haven't been out much, what with the disease and baby sitting. We make our winter loop in the car, as there are some decent ducks on a couple of ponds we frequent, and we go to Schoharie Crossing State Historical Site, early before everyone else is out. Not seeing much of excitement, but there are some cool ducks available for viewing.

Do you think he was looking at the skid steer?

Our skid steer quit and is currently experiencing major, and no doubt expensive, repairs. Meanwhile the boss was forced to find a different way to get wood from the barnyard to the stove. He says what he is doing now, dragging logs with the tractor and cutting them up in the old calf yard, is actually better, so there is that.

Home schooling is taking place via computer and packets delivered by our neighbor who combines farming with school bus driving. So far I haven't participated much as Liz is tending to that business.

However, I have been roped into convinced to play Farmopoly with someone who is more than slightly creative with the rules and quite fond of the stacked deck concept. And yes, I lost resoundingly, as did Becky. I am okay with that.

I hope you are all remaining safe, sane, and well. Much love from Northview Farm.

Bright spot in all the gloom provided by Liz.
Thanks!

Ears like an Owl

Jill waiting for me to kick the nab ball
Like every other Border Collie we have ever had
she does not admire the camera.

There's a little dog from Oklahoma living here with us now. She is trending toward middle age, tiny for a Border Collie, and smart as you might expect She is trained well and wise and fun. Her name is Jill. We all have loved her since the day she arrived a couple of months ago.

She also appears to have phenomenal hearing. She is Liz's dog and prefers her, but in a pinch I will serve well enough to provide walks, kibble, and pets, hugs and ball propulsion...did I mention she is a nut for a ball?

However, when push comes to shove and a choice is offered she is Liz's girl...well except for that one time when she bounced onto Liz's bare feet in pursuit of her ball. Claws out. That elicited a painful shout and she raced over to sit behind me and peer out around my legs for all the world like a little one hiding behind mommy's skirts....

But I digress. (As usual, right?)

Yesterday, mid afternoon. Dogs had all been walked and played with and fed and Jilly was sleeping in her crate in the pantry at the back of the house. Suddenly she began to moan and whine like she does when she hears someone, particularly Liz, coming home. Of course she knows all the cars and trucks. She IS after all a Border Collie.

It was close to time for Liz to come home from work so I perked up my ears Nope, nothing, nobody in the driveway.

I relaxed again for a moment when there it was....the rumble and grumble of that old Dodge lumbering up the hill.

The whines from the pantry grew stronger.

I was astonished. Jill had heard that truck way down on the road, probably half-way to town from her kennel in the farthest back room of the house. The driveway alone is two-tenths of a mile and, even with all the restrictions, traffic noise from the interstate and trains is constant.

What a dog!

That'll do Jill, that'll do.

Hope you all continue safe and well. At this second the Carolina Wren is Judy-judy-judying right outside the window and that makes me happier than I might otherwise be. Much love from Northview Farm.

Yep, still raining

Essential

Even though it is only March our local farmers are on the land. They are fertilizing, fitting ground, getting everything ready to plant, sometimes even when it is raining.

Whether Amish or English they are not stopping in their all-important quest to grow food for everyone.

My heart lifts to see the rounded backs of rich black furrows rolling out behind the plows and even to smell the sharp tang of valuable organic material sequestered from cows involved in producing dairy products. 

While the world descends ever deeper and ever faster into a whirling spiral of terror, something is still right and strong.

i am ever so grateful for farmers and not just because I was one once.

Hats off to our neighbors with tractors and teams.

Hope you are all staying safe and strong. Much love from Northview Farm. 

Flight of the....

I have no woodcock photos,
so this load of sawdust...
made from wood
will have to do

Not the navigator....

Nor the bumblebee...

The flight instead of the Timberdoodle.

Better known as the American Woodcock, this fat little shorebird, who looks nothing like others of his ilk, is doing his thing these days. I first heard of this magical spring dance in Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. I have always loved the outdoors and the wild things, but stumbling on that book in the college bookstore way back when was a real game changer.

Then I first experienced the joy at the cabin in Caroga Lake. We sat on the tailgate of my truck every night in fair weather, listening to the show across the road and straining for a glimpse of the dancer.

Light rain and dog walking in the early dark today. Not much traffic, which is the right kind of weather for this kind of doodling. First dog, no joy.

Second dog, Jill the Border Collie, and almost instantly the twittering tumble of flight feathers began. We have heard several others this spring, but none so very close and clear.

It was right behind the house. If there had been any light I am sure I could have seen it but for today just the music will do.

I am thankful for these things of spring, the four-robin chorus going on right now, the thin trickle of migrants coming through already, and the magical flight of the Timberdoodle.

Stay safe and strong dear friends and family. Much love from Northview Farm.

Staying Alone

Sunup at Schoharie Crossing
Nobody here but us and the birds

They say it equals staying alive. We have to go to the stores and mail out bill payments and all....eating is still popular here.....but birding was already a solitary endeavor, and we are endeavoring to make it more so.

It's not DiGiourno

We go to the river early before other folks are out. We bird from the car or in the wild places that no one else seems to have discovered.

Mr. Patience, Patiently waiting

Or at home, where the area around the house is thronged with birds, however common and tame.

It's as alone as we can make it what with folks who live here having to work at essential jobs.....

Stay safe and strong dear friends and family. Much love from Northview. 

Common Grackle is just that but pretty in spring plumage.

The FOY Dance

Tree Swallow from a couple of years back

Just a little relief from the virus fears and worries...performed when I see the first individual of a species for the first time this year. It's short. Look fast or you'll miss it.....and at that maybe you would want to.

Today it was the first Tree Swallow of the year dive bombing some Canada Geese down at Schoharie Crossing.

One swallow doesn't make a summer, but it makes me break out in dance. In public.....

Thankfully there is little or no public down at the Crossing these days, except the boss.

And I think he was asleep.

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.....