Binocs, Camera, Action

 

What happened here?

We've been birding Lock 12 in Tribes Hill lately as that seems to be the only place besides the feeder where we have been actually seeing any birds. 

Lemme outta here

Talk about the February doldrums!

We went down for a bit yesterday afternoon, saw the usual 2 or 3 hundred or so Mallards, a scattering of American Black Ducks, Common Mergansers, a couple of Hoodies, and lots and lots of crows.

Did anyone get the number of that truck?

Where we usually walk to the east of the lock the pathway was rendered impassable by ice dripping off the eaves of the little building. However, I really wanted a look down into the whirl of water below the dam, and the open waters to the east.

A muddle of Mallards

Thus I climbed through knee-deep snow and down a steep bank to go around the building a different way. As soon as I reached my destination a flock of fifty or so crows set up a clamor in the trees across the river. What a racket! They swirled into the air and began to circle, twist, and dart quite frantically.

American Black Duck

I soon saw why. In the center of the whirling flock was a silver-grey arrow slicing through them like a knife. 

A Peregrine Falcon!

Looking west one cold bright day

It selected its chosen victim and nearly lit its feathers on fire following hot on its tail. What a show!

Above the dam

Alas for its luncheon it missed, but what a great look I got as it flew right over me.

I turned back to the river after watching it race away to the north just in time to see two birds hit the ground hard right under the crow flock, which had landed, but climbed upward yet again.

I could see that one was a Red-tailed Hawk, as it was quite stunned, and adjourned to some nearby brush to recuperate. I thought the other was a crow. 

To the east

Red-tails will take birds if they can get them. We used to have one that came every day to attempt to get pigeons out from under the eaves of the heifer barn. It would cling and flutter, quite upside down, trying to claw them out. I don't know if it ever caught one though.

After a bit the stunned hawk flew away, the other bird having vacated the scene post haste earlier.

Imagine my surprise when I viewed the...admittedly terrible...photos later and found that what I thought was a crow was an immature Red-tailed Hawk as well.

Wonder if what I saw was a territorial dispute or something else altogether. Any ideas? 

Sure was exciting anyhow. I had a happy grin the rest of the day.

A Bull Story

 

Ralph and Walebe Jewelmaker
LV for short

It was sometime during the 80s. The boss wanted to make a trip to a Holstein auction in Pennsylvania and I rode along for the experience.

And it was quite an experience too.

When we arrived in PA the sun was shining and temperatures were in the 70s....Amazing weather for March and we reveled in it. He was interested in a young bull, Hunterdon Adonis, and a cow from a family he liked. He had bid on her and a son of hers at an earlier auction and he had seen her for a big price.

Adonis was a handsome one and he decided to bid on him, but the cow was clearly sick and he was afraid to even think of hauling her all the way home on the homemade (oak) cattle rack we had recently constructed. 

However, she had a bull calf by SWD Valiant at her side, and those who know me know how highly I regarded that particular bull. I learned that from the boss you see.

He decided to see if he could buy him.

We much enjoyed the sale and ended up purchasing both bulls. I don’t remember the logistics of loading them, but they were soon up the ramp and on the way north.

Enter the blizzard.

It was a big one and it struck the minute we turned off the flat central plains of the Keystone State and ventured into the mountains. 

The winds howled and snow fell so fast that the wipers couldn't touch it. Traffic was bumper to bumper with people who had never seen a snowflake before losing their minds all over the place.

It was so brutal that we tried to find a place to park and wait it out, but we were concerned about the young bulls in the back. We stopped at a mall to try to buy a canvas to wrap the wooden rack (it was made of thick oak planks and had a roof and all) but they just told us to go away, they were closing. Without the canvas to add protection for the bulls we didn’t dare stop but drove straight on through the storm.

Conditions grew steadily worse. Being an experienced Upstate NY driver the boss was pretty successful in keeping her between the guard rails. However, other folks in lighter vehicles had unreasonable expectations of their maneuverability in 4-wheel drive. Truck after truck, with cars interspersed, flew by in the snow packed left lane and vanished into the whiteout, only to reappear a few miles later mired in the ditch. It was a mess.

It was so awful the boss even stopped for coffee. He hates coffee and has only drunk two cups since I have known him. Most of that ended up in a snowbank too, but at least he tried.

Eventually we made it home, unloaded, and went to work. 

The little Valiant bull became terribly ill with probably the same thing that laid his dam low. Our vet saved him though and he went on to be quite a sire. His name was Walebe Jewelmaker, and he sired Frieland LV Dixie, the only cow we ever had go grand champion Holstein at a show. She did it twice. We had Dependa-bull come in and draw him, so he continued being an influence in the herd long after he was sold.

Adonis wasn’t much one for the girls and only sired a couple of calves. He was sent to auction after he attacked the boss with great enthusiasm. The two or three daughters he sired were good ones though.

One way or another I will never forget that stormy ride….and the threat of a big storm today that didn’t materialize was a sharp reminder. I think a trip like that would kill me now.

Liz and Frieland LV Dixie at the Cooperstown Junior show
she was a cow who just got better with age.

Never Gonna Let You Down

 

That could well be the theme song for Lyker's Pond, a swampy entity dissected by Goldman Road, just off Corbin Hill Road near here. 

It is a rare occasion that we don't see something interesting there, whether it be a new beaver slide from the edge of the road to the east pool, an Osprey circling with a pair of Bald Eagles, once a swan, probably a Trumpeter by the call, not to mention all sorts of Easter Eggs.

One is the sasquatch, which can clearly be seen from the parking pull off, stalking into the woods after drinking from the pool.

There is also an elk or deerlike critter a bit east of him.

Spring, summer, and fall are Lyker's finest seasons though. It tends to be frozen in winter.

However the other day we did a drive by just for the heck of it.

And for obvious reasons we were glad that we did. Seems as if the pond never lets us down.

#timeontheirhands #pants #warmerweatherwillprobablyletthesepantsdownthough

A Walk on the Winter Side

 

Well, really a series of drives and walks. If you don't mind the ice crystals circulating in your blood stream Upstate NY is beautiful in winter.

I am not too chuffed about the two big storms we are supposed to get this week though. Wood pile is getting scanty so we will have to buy in another load...hopefully that works out all right.

Meanwhile, we finally found a few birds yesterday at Lock 12. Winkled one scaup out of a couple hundred Mallards and Black Ducks. I am calling it a lesser as the bill looks thin, but maybe the eBird reviewer will see it otherwise. We shall see.

Otherwise, it is just a sad, stressful season, with little to recommend it beyond the beauty among the snowflakes and the promise of better times to come. I forced myself to throw out some really scraggly geraniums last fall. I compulsively keep plants forever if they are even remotely alive (I have one that is fifty years old that my mother gave me when I still lived at home), but I somehow managed to part with these sad and battered things.

However....there is always a however....I took a cutting from one of the prettier ones, wintered it in a jar on the kitchen windowsill, and potted it up the other day.

And, man, oh, man, did it ever feel good to get my fingers in dirt, even just a little pot full. I always find it hard to believe in winter when the grass is green and the cannas are blooming. Alas it works the other way too, and imagining spring while borrowing the boss's boots to go to the compost bin is a real challenge. I kinda wish my mind worked a little differently

Meanwhile, stay warm friends, stay warm.

Another old Farm Side

 

From December 2018.

FARM SIDE: WHAT’S THAT BIRD?

Posted by Recorder News | Dec 27, 2018 | Local Commentary, Local News, Opinion


By Marianne Friers


Over the sound of the car idling and chatter in the back seat I heard an unfamiliar call. A sort of shriek, urgent, raspy, primal. Creepy really, like something you might hear in a Tarzan movie right after the dramatic music.

Much of birding is recognizing the noises made by birds that don’t deign to show themselves to the observer. I recognize some calls but this was new. Not quite right for an owl, although they can fool you with screeches and shrieks that don’t much resemble hoots. No woodpecker of my experience ever made such a din either. Our chauffeur shut off the car and the backseat participants went silent as we listened. The calls went on and on, screams interspersed with harsh, grating bawling.

What on earth was that?

We were stopped along a small farm road in Fulton County, participating in the Johnstown circle of the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. The road runs through a farm where I was milking cows when I met the boss. It was good to see sturdy grain corn still growing in the secluded fields, although I am sure the farmer would like to get it harvested and stored before the snow flies.

The CBC is the longest running citizen science project in the world. All over the Western Hemisphere teams of birders, from newest beginners to the best-trained scientists, venture out during the weeks close to Christmas to count as many species and individual birds that they can. Each count circle encompasses fifteen square miles. Each participant is a volunteer.

The count was initiated in 1900 to take the place of traditional Christmas hunts wherein birds were killed competitively just for the heck of it. Frank Chapman, an American ornithologist, suggested simply counting the birds instead and a great tradition was born.

Although we haven’t participated for all…or even most…of the 118 annual counts since, our family has been a part of the Johnstown circle for most of its 37 year history. Mom and dad used to do it. This year three of their grandkids, a grandkid-in-law and first-timer to the game, and I covered the traditional Mayfield South portion of farms, city streets, mall parking lots, and wild woods.

The road we paused along has always been one of our favorite CBC birding spots, yielding good raptors, wonderful woodpeckers, and a bounty of bluebirds over the years.


We peered eagerly through assorted binoculars hoping to somehow pick the screamer out of the tangle of golden cornfield and grey woodlot, under a watery sun. Nada. Nope. Nuttin’.

I made recordings of the noises, hoping to submit them to a Facebook group run by the American Birding Association, What’s this Bird?, but alas you can barely hear the thing over the background noises.

Then a faint memory emerged from the depths of our driver’s mind. A long, long time ago, he remembered loading hay we were buying for the cows. The bales were stored in a remote barn, far from any other buildings. While he dragged bales out of the stacks to load on the pick up and take home to the girls, the owner waited nearby. Loading hay is hard, tedious work, but ya gotta do what you gotta do. He grabbed a bale and pulled it out. Yaw! A screaming, squalling bundle of fury emerged from the stack and came at him, hollering and snarling all the while. It wanted a piece of him and wanted it bad.

And it was making the exact sound we were hearing from that bird count woodlot. He escaped safely from the enraged creature thanks to the quick actions of the owner of the hay barn. Seems the attack was not an isolated incident and they were always prepared for same.

The encounter did not turn out quite so well for the furious raccoon, but when choosing sons over wild animals I am okay with that.

Our backseat complement searched Google for raccoon sounds and there it was, our wild woodland performer — procyon lotor himself.

Why a raccoon was repeatedly screaming from the edge of a wood-rimmed cornfield will remain a mystery. The land is posted against trespassing and I didn’t exactly feel inclined for an encounter like the one in the long-ago hay barn.

Over the course of the day birders in our CBC circle accounted for 4,912 individual birds of 52 species. Overall numbers were down roughly 300 from an average year, but this was attributed to an open winter allowing birds to disperse to find food away from roads and feeders.

Our carload experienced much the same phenomenon. We often tally well over a hundred Black-capped Chickadees, but found only 25, and we had to look pretty darned hard for those. That isn’t an awful lot over the 72-plus miles of road we wandered during six-and-a-half hours of driving and walking.

If the low point of the day was being bamboozled by a ticked-off mammal, the high point was a bird spotted in a distant tree near the silos on an active dairy farm. (Farms are good for birds, don’t ya know?) The roofs of those storage structures are always a reliable source of Rock Pigeons for us to count. Evidently they are also a reliable source of nourishment for the unexpected Peregrine Falcon we found. Suddenly it became my lucky day, as not only did we find a bird that was new for me in the county, but our boy gifted me a window mount for my camera from out of his spotting scope case. He had two, and thought I needed one to take over for not-so-steady hands in such situations.

On New Year’s Day, bird counters all over the world will start anew on county lists. Every species will be a new “year” species. I hope your New Year will offer as much good fun, and that 2019 will be a much better year than ‘18, which was pretty darned dismal for agriculture. Happy New Year!

Fultonville dairy farmer Marianne Friers is a regular columnist. She blogs at northviewdiary.blogspot.com.

Ice Harvest

 

Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser

 

American Black Duck

*Update Our mysterious benefactor was someone that I had not thought of. It was a kind and sweet gesture in honor of the folks, who were eager birders themselves. Profound thanks from all of us here at Northview.

But amazingly kind.

Yesterday I was on the verge of running out of sunflower seeds. No nyger seed in the house either, as we haven't been able to find any in weeks.

We had all been home most of the afternoon, but had just come in from bringing Becky home from work and were going out for a spin looking for winter birds when....

Much to my amazement when I went out on the porch there was a huge bag of sunflower seeds and the biggest sack of nyger seed that has ever come through our door. 

Common Redpolls

No one at the house had a clue. No one I asked knew either. However, I have an idea who the birdie benefactor may have been...although he usually stops for a visit. Probably something else we can chalk up to Covid (and entirely understandable).

If it was indeed him, thank you a million times. It was great fun to go out to fill the feeders this morning and have nice fresh seed for our flying neighbors.

Cranky Carolina Wren

If it was someone else, thank you just as much. What a wonderful, if mysterious treasure to find on the porch on a chilly winter afternoon. 

***And in other news, will I finally see or hear an owl today, so that I can call it Superb Owl Day?

Common Redpoll

A Great Big Bucket of

 

Nope

Missing Birds

 

This has been the year for missing birds. We keep seeing huge raptors spiraling over the mountains, and they vanish just as I get the bins on them.

Over and over again. Then yesterday we went down to the river late in the afternoon. There were sixty or so ducks out where the Schoharie meets the Mohawk. Probably ninety percent of them were American Black Ducks, plus there were a few Mallards and a sprinkling of Common Mergansers. 

And something else. Six diving ducks that spent mere seconds on the surface before disappearing below the ice-strewn water. I could not focus the camera on them before they vanished. I finally got the one terrible photo, which you can see above.

Next we went owling out on Lynk Street and environs. We probably saw two Short-eared Owls. One was perched in a distant elm. I just got him in the camera view when my glasses (distance, can't see through the camera with them on) thumped off my head over my eyes. By the time I shoved them up he was gone.

Within half a mile another bird flew up off the edge of the road right over the windshield. Right size, seemed the right color, couldn't focus fast enough to be sure. Close, but no cigar.

Fast forward to this morning just at the edge of daylight. I was out with the dog. Traffic was heavy already so it was hard to hear, but I swear I heard an owl. Trouble is it was so darned noisy that it could have been a distant dog barking, and there was no way to discern the pattern of the call. "Whoo cooks for you" or "Two Two twoo twoo"? Hard telling, not knowing.

Curses, foiled again!

There is a consensus between what I think and what a birder on the ABA ID site thinks that the ducks were Surf Scoters,  but I don't think the photo is good enough to call it. Dagnabbit.

Thus, I remain skunked for the past couple of weeks alas. At least it appears that the ducks are finally starting to move through our area. Better luck next time.

 

Owling

From December 2019

Another old Farm Side. We are looking at another incoming snow storm right now....photos are from yesterday.

Two days before the storm. At least one college had already canceled classes.

Out in the unmown horse pasture, ungrazed since Magnum died, the frozen grass was the color of a sunburned fox’s pelt, tawny, tangled, tipped with cold rolled gold, waving in the frigid wind.

The day had dawned bright and icy. Thought was given that maybe, just maybe, it might could, possibly, be time to put up plastic on the windows that are always last. Time to get the staple gun back out.

I’m always reluctant to let go of autumn, to take that long, cold, slide down to the doldrums of winter. I try to hold it back by leaving the calendar in the office set on September, but alas, that tends to fail abysmally.

I shouldn’t be so negative. Winter is actually a great time for birding. However, in winter you have to pay to play, and the season’s coin is often painful. Frozen toes, frigid fingers, frosted, fogged-over binoculars, and other uncomfortable and annoying miseries.

It appears that the pair of Red Squirrels that has taken up residence in the honey locust tree outside the back door have neither staple gun nor rolls of plastic.

However, they seem to have a large measure of rodent ingenuity. I keep a mesh turkey bag full of wool from pretty little Echo the pet sheep, hanging next to the orange board the boss made me to feed Baltimore Orioles and Grey Catbirds in summer.

It’s a delight to photograph tiny warblers tugging earnestly at single threads of natural insulation for their nests each year.

It was not quite as delightful that cold, pre-storm day, to watch the squirrels stuffing great wads into their toothy mouths to hustle up the tree looking like furry orange Santas.

On the other hand squirrels are great planters of trees, as evidenced by the black walnut tree growing where the milk house used to stand, back when the heifer barn was full of Jerseys and the land owned by someone else.

It’s half as thick as a telephone pole and nearly up to the barn roof, but we didn’t plant it. Some enterprising rodent carried a fat nut there, probably headed for the cow barn or the old hop house, where grey squirrels love to mingle. The original trees, given to me by the first author of this column and planted a decade or several ago, are north of the driveway, a goodly distance from the barnyard. I’m not sure we need a walnut tree in that exact spot, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Then it came. Like a sheer silver sheet, spreading relentlessly horizon-to-horizon, first a few mealy dots, then more and more, until that tawny brown grass was shrouded in white and the trees hidden from view. Within an hour the accident reports started to fly. It was really slippery stuff and the cold ground made it worse.

As the weekend progressed and inches and feet of snow fell and dozens of schools closed, we spoke among ourselves of farmers facing their work in such awful weather. I am rarely glad not to be milking cows, as our life’s work was something we both loved.

However, semi-retirement looks real good when you realize that there are no frozen water lines to thaw. No tanker to get up the hill, requiring constant plowing all through the day, sometimes starting in the wee hours just after midnight if we had an early truck.

Fast forward three days, though school closings, and road closings, and accumulations well into the double digits. Blue robin’s egg sky frosted with scarves of drift flakes. Shadows a darker blue, almost denim, stretching across the old horse pasture against the cold white ground.

The roads are mostly open, but no doubt the wind will drift some of them closed again and make it almost as hard to see as it was when the snow was falling at its heaviest.


The weather pundits got it right this time and the storm was a doozy. Do we dare hope that it got it out of its system for a while and we can look forward to nicer weather? Probably not.

Happy Birthday

 

To the the Crazy Card Lady

Queen of her Crochet Kingdom

Fish Whisperer

Guppy Guru

And all around Good Daughter.....

We love you, Becky.

The Farm Side

 I just discovered that many issues of my old newspaper column, the Farm Side, are now available online for free. You can find a whole bunch of them here.

Meanwhile, here's the text of one if you would like to read it. The photo is what I used to look like a number of years worth of moons ago when my boss made me get a new profile pic for the column. I look older and uglier now.

For The Recorder

A bully moon in full regalia gave me the third degree the other night. Not a truncheon in sight, but she shined her blinding spotlight right into my room and chased my sleep from pillow-to-pillow. Arghh, but not-so-soft, what light through yonder window breaks, and in all-night misery the sleeper wakes?

When I rolled out of her way, she used the white paint on the door to reflect on her accusations and wake me up again. What happened to the nasty drizzle of rain that was falling at bedtime, I wondered. I am really, really sick of rain, but least it was dark then.

The first robin started yelling at quarter-after-four and within minutes was joined by a dozen more. This place is baby bird central, a veritable assembly line of fluffy fledglings. Robins are the most numerous and full of early noise and drama. Little ones dot-dot-dash across the lawn, chirping for hand-me-down worms and looking cute as puppies.

Enough baby bunnies to fill a dozen Easter baskets are lined up along the garden edge every morning drooling over the beans sprouts as well. Tiny fawns hide among the bushes in the heifer pasture. We watch the does slipping through the tall grass, all secret and sly, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, as they visit the places where their babies are hidden. “Nothing to see here, move along, move along.”

We know they are there though and pretty much just where. It is a wonder how they stay hidden when the coyotes hold howling fests just yards from their secret nests in the tall grass.

The moon was relentless in her questioning so I gave up on sleep to start the day. It’s summer after all, moon to noon and dawn to day’s end. I don’t want to miss a minute.

As sunlight shivered on the other horizon at just about dark thirty, that meanie of a moon fell off the edge of the west, smirking in the early fog and pointing chilly fingers as I stumbled down the stairs.

Her sleep robbing midnight rudeness could not deflect from the delight of not one, but two, Indigo Buntings singing furiously from a pair of Box Elders in the front yard. It was surround sound awesomeness at its finest. After the robin opening sonata the other birds tuned up for the adagio movement, although daybreak is not so very slow in June at all.

Grey Catbirds snap crackle popped a medley of a dozen other bird songs from the shrubbery. They can’t bring me a shrubbery, but they sure can sing me one.

“Look-up, over-here, see-me, up-here,” a Red-eyed Vireo played his cheerful flute notes, while a fledgling Northern Cardinal banged on daddy’s shins, as he sat in a tray full of sunflower seeds, begging to be fed.

A Carolina Wren suggested with his “tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle” that I put on a refreshing morning beverage to shake off the last dregs of sleep deprivation. I went with strong coffee instead and another June morning was off to a brilliant start.

June is my favorite month. It’s better than December with Christmas…who needs the stress and hassle anyhow? There is no need to agonize over appropriate presents in June, just a few brotherly birthday cards for the guys I grew up with. And what’s not to like about Father’s Day?

Golden June is way superior to February, chocolate hearts or no chocolate hearts. You can, after all, eat chocolate in summer too.

There is more fizz and bang in June than all the fireworks of July or the thunder that punctuates May.

It’s even better than Thanksgiving. Turkey is all well and good, but even the smell of homemade dressing in the oven can’t compare with the seductive scent of Riverbank Grapes blooming in their myriad millions all up and down the valley.

Despite delays in planting, corn is popping up all over, dressed in the exuberant shades of bright spring green. It has been a great pleasure to watch the river flats fields we pass, as the corn seedlings double in size overnight and triple their tall by the weekend.

Hay fields have been sheared and fertilized and are racing toward second cutting faster than a speeding lawn mower, only better.

June is also Dairy Month and that may just be the best part of all.

Dairy Month began as National Milk Month in 1937 and was originally a program planned to promote dairy products. Today it is still aimed in that direction, but I see it as a good reason to enjoy delicious things and have a lot of fun too.

It’s the perfect month to take a drive through perfumed air under an azure sky, heading for ice cream that tastes like Heaven.

It’s fun to change up the destination. We have a couple of favorite ice cream shops, where we indulge in a range of delights.

My favorite, and Becky’s too, Hawaiian Moon, a decadent concoction of coconut, cherry, and pineapple, is only available in summer, and as far as the Internet can tell, only right here in our area. Despite being named after that midnight nemesis that robs our sleep, we love it. We wait eagerly all winter for the first cone, and save a pint or two in the freezer for the winter wasteland.

And what’s a picnic without ice cream to follow the cheeseburgers from the grill?

There are more delicious dairy things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!

I chased down some recipe suggestions for dairy month delights and found cucumber yogurt dip, another great possibility for picnics by the lake. Or how about a Tangerine Strawberry Creamsicle Smoothie? If you can’t find just the recipe you want you can be sure that the American Dairy Association has your back.

I hope you are enjoying June as much as I am this year, rain or no rain. After all, June is Dairy Good.

Fultonville dairy farmer Marianne Friers is a regular columnist. She blogs at http://northvilledairy.blogspot.com.

In the Pink

 

No not me, I am in my usual lousy wintertime shape.

But this guy, a Common Redpoll, is sporting a lovely pink winter vest, raspberry-red cap, and pinstripe suit from Birds Brothers.

Isn't he natty?

Common Redpolls breed way up in the taiga and boreal regions of the Arctic and only encounter people much in irruptive years when they come south to partake of our feeders. Poor cone crops in northern conifers is what drives them our way.

In earlier years we saw them on our feeders nearly every year, if not every single year, but more recently they are much less common. Last fall however, I saw flocks of as many as 90 both in Maine and here in our yard.

Now we have this pretty fellow and four of his cohorts coming in for seeds. Fine looking birds. I like them.

Still no Owls

Oh, the boss got an owl the other morning. He was up filling the wood stove just before first light and there was one calling from over by the cow barn. Alas, it was gone by the time he came in to get me.

We have spent quite a few hours driving out where we find them, to no avail. Not seeing much else either. I was talking to a friend in Alabama the other day though, and their feeders are full of irruptive winter finches, so maybe that is where all the birds have gone. We did get a Common Redpoll on the feeder this morning, only the second for the year, but it mostly the usual cast of winter characters.

Sometimes Lynk St. is good for Short-eared Owls
Not this year though

I always get antsy this time of year, wishing to see something, anything...interesting. Get anxious over the dearth of birds. And then February rolls around and they start moving slowly north and it gets fun again. This year though there haven't even been many ducks down on the river or even Canada Geese. Have they moved farther south to greener pastures? Or has the open water in other areas seduced them away from us?

Hard telling, not knowing, but better days are coming, it says here in fine print.

We do have a pair of Carolina Wrens (my favorite birds) wintering in the old cow barn and visiting the feeders regularly. February is always a bad month for them, but we will do what we can to keep them well fed.

Meanwhile, I am sorry I have been so lax about writing. Just no heart for it. Restarted working on the book I began writing when the Recorder fired me, so there's that. Maybe when the birds start moving the words will too. 

Hang in there friends...you know what they say about better days. Much love from Northview Farm 

Anybody missing a kitty? This guy seems to have moved in.
Pretty fellow.. as long as he leaves the birds alone

Owling

 

As is the case with every other aspect of life, the plague has influenced our ability to go owling. Some days we have responsibilities. Some days we have no heart for it.

Thus we have yet to see or hear a single owl this year. No Short-eared Owls out on Lynk Street. No Great Horned out at Lyker's. Not a single Barred Owl peering nearsightedly down from roadside twigs and branches.

And nothing here at home. I go out almost every evening and every single morning to stand and listen. In fact, I just came in from breathing quietly out in the darkness as large soft flakes whispered down and the traffic growled on the Thruway. 

Not a sound.

Nope.

Nothing.

Kinda fitting somehow.

Day by Day

 

Snow Buntings

One step forward and ten steps back. I played the messages on the answering machine to retrieve one the boss needed. And there was Mom's voice asking us to pick up something Dad needed.

Backslid big time there.

I just don't feel like writing and so I haven't been. Been neglecting everything but the things that have to be done. Hopefully things will improve as the season advances. I have a hard time in winter anyhow.

Heavy, clunky, wet snow today to greet us. Might rain later. I guess it's pretty and I guess I should get up and hang up the laundry, feed the birds, and walk the dog again.

Hope you are all well...much love from Northview farm.

BTW, thank you for all the sweet and comforting comments, and for the cards you have sent and the kind words contained. They mean a lot to all of us and we are really grateful that you have thought of us in that way.