Don't Miss

 

The Logan Beck Farm Christmas display.

It is amazing this year. Can been seen on Route 10 out of Nelliston NY.

We drove up last night and it was well worth dragging ourselves out of our warm cozy chairs to venture out in the freezing darkness. 

Omens

 

Paused on the landing on the way downstairs, because the moon on the fringe of icicles dangling from the eaves looked like shining, drooling, teeth. Fangs even. I snapped a picture, but it didn't come out.

Dogs out, snow doubt it was cold and crisp and shiverish out. Snow creaking creepily, Mars hanging low on the horizon, sickly orange, dull and dreary.

Double shadows, darkness-in-darkness, moon and porch light one-on-one, so the branches of the locust mapped a set of sickly veins on gloomy downtrodden days-old snow.

And then....and then...a meteor!! Not blazing, but kinda wimpy, streaking across the sky.

Call it a shooting star if you will... but I hope it's out of ammo.

I don't know what is coming with the storm this week and I am not sure that I want to.

I'll Bet he was Hatched

 

Near Lykers. We found a neck-banded Canada Goose near McDonald's the other day. I was able to obtain good enough photos to read the letters and numbers on the band and submitted them to the USGS band report website. I said to Ralph at the time, "I'll bet he was hatched up at Lykers." 

It's always fun to send in the code if you do discover a banded bird. Some of those that we have found were hatched all over Canada and other interesting places.

And then there are the ones with yellow bands with black lettering. Nearly every one of those that we have found was hatched in a place we frequently bird, called Lykers. The connected swamps in that area must be a wonderful nursery for Canada Geese, or maybe just handy for the banding guy who tagged them all.

It's great place to bird in general, wild farm fields, big marshes and swamps, and miles of lonesome woodland. We have found all sorts of other interesting birds there, from American Bitterns to Long-tailed and Ruddy Ducks. Even Short-eared Owls!

This goose was a male, hatched (near Lykers, doncha know) in 2015 or earlier, as he was banded in June of 2016. Not too shabby to have survived all those hard winters, predators, and hunting seasons for so long. I was impressed.

I wonder if we will spot him again. It has happened before a couple of times, always with Lykers geese. I'm always watching for those bands.

Candy Cane and Buddy

 

Are making their annual debut today, December 1, because that is what visiting Christmas elves do. CC spent the past year on the mantel in the front room because a certain someone has been her friend since before preschool and can't bear to let her leave.

Buddy has been missing for over two years. Publicly we blame COVID quarantine rules at the NP, but in reality, someone who shall remain nameless sent him to exile and forgot where. (Hint, she writes more about birds than holidays and was sure she we would remember where he was placed so as to be easily refound) Anyhow, ol' Bud showed up in Great Grandma Peggy's old china closet sometime over the past summer and that Old Fogey Birder told everyone of his new location, making it a bit harder to forget.

Last night Peg, confident that Buddy was coming back this year, what with the pandemic over and all, wrote them both letters and left them on the dining room table.

Thanks to a reminder placed on FB by the middle daughter, as well as the fact that the OFB  actually remembered (!) they are now both lounging on the futon, reading their letters by a lovely blue lantern and guarding a chocolate intended for the finder. (I think OFB should get one too!!!)

Can't wait until rise and shine time to see the reaction. 

ONLY 23 MORE DAYS OF THIS!

Owling

Old Photo

 Alan spotted a Barred Owl up near the old pasture gate a couple times this week. I tried for it yesterday morning but was tied up with the holiday and I guess I didn't get out there early enough to encounter it.

Today rain was predicted so I didn't have much hope of a good chase. However when I got up there was just a tiny bit of frozen stuff coming down....little ice pellets that you could  barely see in the light from the headlamp.

The air was still. My breath curled around my head like smoke from a gentle campfire. It was about as quiet as it gets, what with all the trains and the Thruway so near, so I knew if there was something to hear I would hear it.

It is different out there in the dark, even with a good flashlight and a handy-dandy headlamp. Derelict milkweed pods look like something left behind by an alien spaceship. Dried goldenrod gleams ghostly, rimed by a thin coating of frost that will melt soon in the coming rain. Even the White-throated Sparrows that hit the feeder every day before dawn are still sleeping.

I climbed up about as far as where the old 892 chopper went to die. All was quiet. I played a little bit of hooting and hollering on my phone....and instantly there it was, off in the heifer pasture woods, a female solicitation call, clear as the lights of the town across the river. It went on calling as long as I stood there and most of the time it took me to walk back down the hill to the barn...but never when I was trying to record it.

And there you have it, one more thing for which to be thankful (and there are many).

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, as did we, what with kids and grandkids in and out all day, and a terrific meal, which everyone tall enough to reach the counters helped prepare. Happy Owlidays from all of us at Northview to all of you everywhere. And hugs...lots of hugs. 

November in a Nutshell

Woodcarvers

Dad, as Mom saw him,
holding Becky as a baby

 While moving wrenches and pliers and objects of similar ilk around on the kitchen counter this morning...so as to have room to do the dishes and all... I came across a little notepad the boss was using to plan out fixing my sitting porch.

It brought to me suddenly that this would have been Dad's 91st birthday. I suppose even though he is no longer here to enjoy it, it is still his birthday but... The header on the little pad announced his name and Mom's and mentioned, along with phone and address data, that they were woodcarvers.

Drawings by Mom

They sure were, and so much more.

Prayers would be appreciated for Ralph's good friend who was injured yesterday. Thanks

You need

 

I knew I saved this pic for something, just read it right to left.

To go see what Ruth has today. It won't be fun, but it will sure be eye-opening. 

Old Timers Say

 

I love this shot from Alan's trail cam! Click for detail

...that winter can't come until the swamps are full.

In recent years this has not been notable. The swamps were full from the first day of the first month of Janus, until the day before New Year's Day.

However this year anyone who is out and about has noticed empty ponds, barren wastelands that were once wetlands, and low, low, lakes and rivers.

Personally I have been much enjoying the way the dry has been barring the gates to my least favorite season.

But then last night that fat, blowsy trollop, Nicole, blew in on a groaning, gusty, tropical wind, and did her level worst to change all that. I am sure folks whose wells were wanting and cows were getting a wee bit thirsty are more than glad.

However, on this dark and gloomy, rainy morning I wish she would just begone and take her shower curtains...or curtains of showers if you prefer...with her.

I'll bet this is under water now.
 I was way out on the dry bed of the Schoharie,
almost all the way to the confluence with the Mohawk,
and found this tree stump buried in a crust of zebra mussel shells

Thanks for our Freedoms

 

All who served...

A Morning on the Marsh

 Liz needed a ride to work after dropping off her car for some maintenance, so we were already well west in the county. Be a waste of gas not to turn it into a little birding trip, right?

The choice was Beardsley Reservoir or Cline Road Marsh?

For me it was easy. I love the marsh.

The sun was hanging low in the morning sky. I could not look east. It is November after all. However, the colors were as joyous as if September still reigned, just different...glowing red-gold cattails, soft grey and tannish phragmites, oaks as rusty red as the denizens of an old tractor graveyard. Late maples punctuated the grey stretches with lemon yellow, and tamaracks the same.

Just standing beside the car on the gravel road that runs there brought deep peace.

And the birds....in the time it took me to walk to the back of the car a swirl of Black-capped Chickadees had me lined up for inspection. Tufted Titmice dotted the flock. Common Ravens quothed out at the edge of the forest, with crows and jays quarreling everywhere.

I found the quietest bit of road to walk upon (gravel makes an awful crunch) and stepped slowly along the reeds.

There was a warbler in here, somewhere....

There! Just up ahead, low down in the phragmites! Something yellow!

I trained the bins on the busy little body, to find, much to my delight, the brightest Palm Warbler I have ever seen. His breast and undertail were thick, rich yellow, brighter than the nearby trees, his cap as delightful a russet as any forest oak.

I tried for a photo...or twenty...but the movement of exchanging binoculars for camera sent him whirling off into the marsh like a distant memory of a long-lost friend.

He never reappeared....

However, that dreaded...or anticipated, depending...yellow bar for a rare sighting appeared in the eBird window. I waited until we were in the car and within reach of cell signal to fill out the required data for the listing. He was not really all that rare, just late, but it is fun to make the state rare bird alert just the same.

Dark-eyed Juncos, Eastern Bluebirds, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and more and more chickadees appeared as I walked. A Common Yellowthroat showed up to cuss me roundly, and also to refuse to sit for his portrait. It was fun...cheap, easily obtained, really good fun.

As I stood beside the car at the end, not wanting my marsh time to end, something flew over calling. Not a sound I knew, so I whipped out my old hear-the-bird phone (new one doesn't pick up bird sounds well, so I carry the old, unconnected one to record sounds, then upload them home with the wifi),

Merlin said Lapland Longspur. I would have been skeptical, but saw three Snow Buntings yesterday so anything is possible. I hoped to post the recording on What's This Bird? when we returned home, but alas, it junk.

So I'll never know, and didn't count it.

Still it was a great time. We stopped briefly at Beardsley on the way home, but as has been the case for the last couple of years, it was a disappointment...a few Mallards and not much else. Oh, well, it's been a really weird migration so far with winter sparrows here at the same time as lingering warblers. I am loving this late warm weather, call it what you will. It is great to get outdoors every single day and be able to enjoy the beautiful, if more subtle, colors of late fall at the edge of the Adirondacks.

Stay focused....and get out there when you can.

Oh, we also passed a Water Buffalo dairy on the 
way home, so there's that.

History

 

I got to thinking about my old boss, Dr. Mark R. Crandall the other day. I learned a great deal from him in the 8 years off and on that I worked in his hospital, first as kennel help, later as receptionist and helping in treatments and in the operating room....how I hated that darned autoclave. Got one of the two best dogs I ever had when someone abandoned him at the kennel. Brandy would do anything I asked him as long as I could communicate what I wanted.

Anyhow, I Googled him and came across this interview and listened to it....couldn't believe I could actually hear his voice again after all these years. And I do mean years! I was 15 when I first ended up at his hospital because the guy I was dating worked there as weekend kennel help. He had never had a pet and I was animal crazy to the bone, so I went to work with him, and did at least as much as he did, cleaning cages, running dogs in and out, etc.

Even though I wasn't old enough to have a job in NY I ended up taking his place when he got sick of it.

I heard some of these stories in person and many others not included here. I think my favorite might be about the time Doc, as we called him, went on a farm call in a blinding snow storm.

He made it all the way to the farm driveway only to have a mishap when he tried to turn in. I don't remember too many of the details, but the farmer came out to see if he was okay and peered into his car.

To his horror Doc was dripping with watery, red, ichor.

Or at least he looked like it.

Turns out the crash had broken several bottles of scarlet oil, a topical wound dressing for livestock that is bright, bright, red.

Actually there was no harm done.

I doubt that I was the greatest of employees. I was just a kid and didn't know a darned thing about medicine or animals or much of anything else. However, he was patient with me and kind in his way.

And as I said, I learned a lot in those years and used that knowledge all my life. Thanks Doc.

Give this a listen if you have a few minutes. It offers a view of a world that is long gone.

Something Spooky this way Comes

 

As I sat in my lawn chair on the driveway in the space I make into a "patio" in summer I could hear a nibbling, crunching sound behind me.

I don't like to move when I am out there...for about an hour and a half most mornings...because I am counting birds and and I want them to think I am just part of the scenery. For the most part they do, and sometimes Song Sparrows hop right up to my feet seeking the seeds of the weedy grasses that sneak in along the herb and flower beds.

Thus despite the somewhat uncomfortable feeling of something behind me, I tried to interpret the sounds rather than getting up to check.

Deer? I speculated. Probably not. It is bow season and we are not seeing them. Besides, what would they be eating there among the frozen cosmos and California poppies?

Bunny? Yeah, could be. Mr. Bun, Liz's tame domestic rabbit that escaped and lives among the wild things has no fear of me and seems to enjoy my company out there. But, no, he was over by the sheep in the driveway to the barn.

Birds! It had to be birds. Maybe sparrows shuffling leaves for buggy tidbits. Maybe the Golden-crowned Kinglet I have been unable to photograph so far this year was just that close.

I tried to concentrate on the waves of titmice and chickadees shuttling in and out of the feeders...but that weird shuffling, crackling, sound made me kinda nervous.

Finally I stood up and turned around to find.....dum, da, dum, dum.....the mulberry trees were dropping their leaves. Sometimes they do it like that, just shrugging off every single leaf in one single day, almost in a single hour. There was a steady, ruffling patter of them joining their cohorts in golden-green heaps on the ground behind my chair.

I went back to counting, but no matter how long I sat there, that sound, so reminiscent of something...or someone...creeping up behind me, kept the hairs raised on the back of my neck and my mind on high alert.

I gave up and went walking instead.

Clean up on Aisle Five

 I first noticed that many of the pumpkins in this field were broken. 

Then I spotted the sheep.

I wonder if they open them by themselves or if the Amish kids go out and smash them for them.

They seem to like them anyhow.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing....

Liz's sheep love vegetable scraps and leftover bread from the house as well, and it is a lot of fun to go stand by the gate and call, "Sheep, sheep, sheep."

They come boiling down the hill to snatch eagerly at whatever I bring. You can tell who is the head sheep by who grabs the donuts first. They are big favorites. Tomatoes are not. 

And surprisingly they would rather nom a slice of stale bread than nice, crispy, apple peelings.

 Who knew?

Mistake

 

Last night I played a message on the answering machine, not surprisingly from a politician, inviting me to a town hall.

I attempted to delete it and instead deleted my last message from my mother, asking us to pick up something for Dad at the pharmacy.

 I was shattered to lose it.

I knew I had made this recording when our old answering machine died, so I knew I still had her voice...somewhere.

Trouble was I had looked and looked for it before, but didn't find it. See I was looking in the files on this computer. Never thought of YouTube until Becky reminded me that I had probably put it there....this morning I checked....and there it was.

I am still sad to have lost the much better quality one that was on the machine, but this short clip of family members leaving me birthday recordings, and several short messages from Mom make me feel a lot better.....

Do you ever stop missing them?

I also slept a lot better after receiving a 3:43 AM text telling me that my boy had reached his destination safely. Never, ever be afraid to text your mama. She wants to know...I was actually awake and thinking that it was about time for him to be there...so....

Random fisherman on the great Schoharie...just thought it looked cool

It was as if

 

The moon was sweeping the stars away on this dark and frosty morning.

Stars that bright are only seen here, so close to the lights of the towns, when wintery air descends upon us. 

Today at pre-dawn dog walking time there was a center line in the sky, bright, gleaming, glowing stars sparkling on the west, foggy blue-grey nothingmuch to the east with the moon holding court just east of center.

But no, it was the sun, wielding the broom from his hiding place just below the horizon. No stars now, just clear, icy blue skies with a narrow touch of lacy ice fog around the edges.

First Frost

 

Someone's horse all ready for the coming season

The latest I can remember, one full week after the usual on the 12th. Hard ice on the car windows....brrr.

Now we will have to dig the cannas, a job I heartily dread. I have bad knees and hard shoveling is terribly unkind to them. However, their high-flung red flowers, feet above my head, are like magnets to hummingbirds, and beautiful to boot. Also I need to plant some garlic in one of the rows.

It won't be long now

Been putting up plastic and the like over leaking windows and doors and in the course of so doing found out why my bedside sheepskin became so moth-eaten as to need to be tossed out.

See, last spring we found flying squirrels, mama and babies, living in the closed off space between the windows and the plastic in our bedroom. They were cute and tame, and Liz caught them all and released them in a more appropriate environment...that is to say, outdoors.

Anyhow, down behind the chest next to the window, I found a sweet little nest, round and fluffy and golden....not to mention woolen...made up of curls from my bedside rug.

Dagnabbit. I've had that rug for nearly forty years. And I never heard them pillaging it as I slept. Unless maybe they did it in the daytime. Wretched creatures.

Redhead

Best birds of recent weeks were Surf Scoters in two counties, plus a Redhead duck with one set of scoters. Redheads are usually late winter/early spring ducks for us, but this lovely male has been hanging around Lock 12 for at least a week.

Also the flotillas of sparrows of various sorts eating weed seeds in the yards have been quite entertaining. I marvel at the variations in color in the Song Sparrows. From pale tan through rich honeyed golden tones, to cinnamon and chocolate. No wonder people have trouble identifying them...myself included sometimes, although I am getting better. And there are a LOT of White-throated Sparrows around, at least twenty each morning. They often come in to the feeder when it still dark and then disperse out into the fields for the day.

Anyhow, the growing season is done for us, hopefully the yellow jackets as well. They seem to love me and want to get all too friendly. Happy Fall to all.

This ewe is ready for the season,
Sporting a fashionable jacket of fun fall grasses

Well, actually, the sheep ate the center of the round bale first
and it appears that some of the outside fell on her.

Iris was unconcerned and enjoyed her newfound popularity

October BIG Day

 

Winter Wren

We started out yesterday to hit the river and then see what we felt like doing. Turns out there was a bass tournament at the Crossing, thus nowhere to park. We went straight to Yankee Hill instead.

And turns out like we felt like driving around all day.

You can get an idea of our adventures here: eBird Trip Report. If you click on the little green icons on the far right you can see more detail plus photos.

It was an amazing marathon of great fun, with the added benefit of peak fall color on area farms, woodlands, and fields, which was pretty spectacular. I thank Ralph for patiently driving, and then sleeping in the car while I hiked...although he did walk with me in the Lost Valley State Forest, which was an autumn cathedral of stained glass leaves, and whistling winds. (Hardly any birds there, but the beauty was well worth the walk.)

Mystery Tracks
Pad shape says canid but no claw marks?

Highlight birds were first of all, amazing good fortune in seeing lots of birds that, while not rare, are certainly not seen every day, such as Double-crested Cormorant, two of the commoner falcons, TONS of Wild Turkeys, an early morning Killdeer out in the yard (completing our set of common migrants seen at the house this fall) and a lone Hoodie.

Best birds from my point of view were an obliging little Winter Wren that came out to the bike path to scold me and pose for photos and recording, and TWO Pied Billed Grebes at Goldman Road.

All in all it was a spectacular day that I will treasure long in memories. Foggy today, but I will go chasing here at the house as soon as it gets a bit lighter.

BTW, I am so impressed by how fast local farmers got the corn harvested this year! Wow! Well done!