Recycling Part II

 

Some weeks ago, on a section of road we call "Raptor Row" because it is a great spot to find several species of hawks and owls, we passed a road-killed White-tailed Deer.

It was a big one, fresh and mostly intact.

Soon it looked much different

 Many creatures had their way with it. Friends reported Bald Eagles stopping by to feast. Coyote tracks surrounded it on many occasions and something dragged it from the roadside out into the surrounding fields. We saw Red-tailed Hawks and the corvids, jay, crow, and raven, frequenting the field. A pair of Rough-legged Hawks started hanging around.

Rough-Legged Hawk

Soon there was really nothing left to see. Snow covered whatever bones were left, and to be honest I had mostly forgotten about it.

Then yesterday, my best birding buddy and I were out hunting photo ops and good birds. It was a day for it, with snow clinging to every blade of grass, twig and limb. Every curve in the road revealed another calendar-worthy view of Winter's best beauty pageant.

We stopped to photograph a lovely Rough-legged Hawk that floated up out of the corn stubble to land in a nearby tree, glaring at us most frightfully.

We were ready to drive away when I realized that almost next to the car was a flight of nearly forty Horned Larks, skipping and scrambling around after something in the corn.

Click me! Click me!

They did not fly. If you are a peruser of "Field birds" or "Road Birds", the Horned Larks, Snow Buntings, and Lapland Longspurs, you know how skittish they are. Approach with your car...they flit away only to land behind you, or depart altogether. Get a nice shot lined up and another car will spook them. Get out of your car with your camera and they vanish as if someone was standing by with a magic wand. Hey! Presto! Gone in a flash.

Who? Us? Never happen

However, we hadn't even seen these birds, right next to the car, as they were not flying away. They stayed all the while we shot dozens of photos and were still there when we went off in search of other goodies. They were still there in late afternoon when we headed out owling. My friend figured out what was going on... I'm sure you have guessed by now. They were rummaging around in the corn for bits of that poor deer.

It was amazing to watch them squabbling and scuffling over tufts of hair, which must have had something nourishing still clinging to them. Their jingle bell calls belied their grisly business.

Nothing is wasted out there in the wild world. Not one tiny morsel of something that can feed something else in the food chain goes to waste. By Spring there will be nothing left, except many a lingering scent, just enough for a Border Collie to take a nice roll, and come back indoors reeking of puppy perfume.

Mourning Dove

Thanks deer, for the lesson and the chance to get some goodish photos of elusive and challenging birds. You've done your part.

Recycling

Drainage holes bored with a screw setter

Hinged lid

The wait begins

 An empty kitty litter jug.

Germination
Now, if only they don't damp off on me

My life as a Sous Chef

 

Yesterday I found myself browning chopped up sweet Italian sausage, ground venison, celery, and homegrown garlic on the small burner on the stove, in a bath of butter and herbs.

In the oven a tired head of cabbage was roasting, coated in dark, rich, olive oil, sprinkled with everything from fennel to Italian seasoning, with a bit more butter on top.

The basic recipe was not my idea. The methods and flavorings were.

See, I work under Becky now, as a sous chef. She works under the big yellow sign down in the village so she has no time.

I have nothing but. When she got home she assembled my contribution into deconstructed golumpki casserole, and let me tell you, it was awesome. We came away with ideas of how to make it better next time, but we really liked it. (More cabbage. Fresh cabbage. Less rice. Different, fluffier, rice) 

I have cooked since I was small, pestering at the elbows of my family in the kitchen when barely tall enough to see over the edge of the table....Uncle Larry, do you remember the horrible-looking cakes we made in Grandma Lachmayer's kitchen, all purple and green, with runny, weird-looking frosting that nobody else wanted to eat? Man, were they ever good!...

My brothers and I grew up tasting the Great Depression in the kitchens of our grandparents who lived it. We learned food from the ingredients up and how to substitute what we didn't have and enhance what we did with what was in the cupboard. Both grandmas, all the aunties, and many of the uncles, knew how to make do, and still make tasty and nourishing meals.

My next younger brother and I were cooking when we were just kids. We got off the school bus, ravenous as kids tend to be, but both parents worked, so we were on our own. Sometimes there were snackie things around the house, but that was not a major industry then, (I think there was only ONE kind of potato chip then) so we either made popcorn on the stove top, or corn meal muffins, and devoured same.

 Every single person in my immediate family cooked all through my childhood. Dad was a master at his own special bread recipe, which he would not, and never did, share with the rest of us, alas.

But it's all right. I can make bread. My brothers can make bread. My kids can all make bread...and pizza crust, rolls, muffins, etc.

Counting back, I have made at least fifty Thanksgiving dinners and many unofficial turkeys, including wild ones over the years.

However, when Becky started to get serious in the kitchen, I was admittedly in a rut. We ate good, wholesome, cooked from scratch food, but it was boring, same stuff, different day.

Now, she sees a recipe and wants to make it. No time for elaborate preparations, as she works most days. Enter mom, who is sick of thinking up stuff, but knows how to sauté and season, and has had a lot of practice. We did a whole chicken the other day, stuffed with a large onion, garlic, thyme from the garden, and sundry other spices, seasoned with sage and that kind of stuff. Made soup from the leavings. That one bird fed us four days and well. We made chicken stock, which bammed subsequent soups and sauced up a notch, big time. 

Our brainstorming and cooking by committee has produced all manner of new kinds of cookies, great (and interesting!) meals, and a lot of fun. I like it.

The other two kids have always cooked as well. Being deeply stuck in the stereotypical rut of my youth I did not expect my son to become a homegrown chef. However, since his early teens when he made lemon bars for school, entirely on his own, he has been a master in the kitchen. As a teenager he taught me things about seasoning meats and cooking wild game that I still use every day. He sends me pictures of things he cooks....and I know from eating at his house that they are spectacular. Wish we lived closer...

Liz feeds her farm family with special dietary needs things that sound fabulous to me and keeps them happy and healthy. It's her pizza crust recipe that helps us feed Ralph well, while keeping him within the boundaries of his diabetic diet.

Anyhow, I am liking this new role as a sous chef. I know how to do my part and i don't have to do the other part.

As the Barred Owl says, who cooks for you? And what do you like?

I don't usually do This

 But....

It might help ease the grim January weather...

Nesting Season

 

We saw a Bald Eagle carrying a big stick to the Sprakers nest today. It was the first time Ralph had ever seen that and perhaps the third for me. It almost felt like Spring despite the foot of snow on the ground and the winter field birds thronging the roadsides.

Much more exciting were the events of January 5th, when the nesting season gave to us a brand new granddaughter, Riley Mae Friers. She is a beautiful baby and joins her delightful sister Bailey Rae, and lovely cousins Peggy Ann Marie, Madeline, and Claire, to give us a full house of grandbabies.

It won't be long before the owls are hooting sweet love songs in the night, but none will be as wonderful as all those little girls.

Have a Very

 

Take two, they're small!

Christmas Gull

 

I guess a Christmas goose is traditional, but Becky made us chicken, which was excellent. Nice having a chef in the house and home on vacation. I don't think I've cooked in days, and no lie, I don't miss it.

We did our traditional Christmas spin around our local favorite spots and found a pretty good representation of expected species, plus the above Iceland Gull, which although not the first for the year, a decent find. Hope he sticks around until next week.

Otherwise the holiday was about as uneventful as it can get, which was fine for me. Talked and video chatted with some family members, saw videos of our distant baby and had a visit from a closer one. 

Nice

No complaints.

Hope things stay calm. A very, very, very, super important event is to take place in our family really soon and I am at once nervous and excited about it. And praying hard as always.

Hugs from Northview and best wishes for the coming year.

Conversations of Dairy and Derriere

 

Twas the Eve of the Solstice.

When inside the house....

"You almost had to drive me to the hospital."

Said by a man in outdoor boots and clothes, steaming and huffing at the edge of the dining room door. At least he was kind enough to keep his boots off the rug.

"What!" Three simultaneous gasps from the audience in the living room.

"I fell off the woodpile."

"What the heck were you doing on the woodpile?"

"Putting a chain on a log."

Mind you it's dark out. There are plenty of daylight hours, but he is a real night owl.

"Are you okay? Did you break anything?"

"Well, my butt is sore. Maybe my hip."

Not even funny. He in fact did not sustain any serious injuries and seems okay today.

I figure its the gallons, and gallons, and gallons of milk he drank over the years, and the large amount he still does.

And the toughness. He is farmer tough, ( old fart foolish), and farmer brave.

But (and butt)...

We are getting too old for this stuff. 

Roadside Friends and Acquaintances

Peaceful Puppers

I think this guy would have come right in the window, 
if he could fit.

These ladies were munching at a hay feeder when
we encountered them while counting birds.
As soon as they saw the car their heads came up and they looked with great interest
When we paused to chat with their owner they
ambled right up. Friendly ladies indeed

Patience

 

Down the Rabbit Hole

 

The Internet has given us a lot of things, some of them horrible, but it has also supplied us access to an incredible wealth of information.

I can remember not so many years ago having family members get into intense discussions over many esoteric subjects. They/we would argue for hours and hours and even days and weeks over who was right about something of such utter triviality as to be meaningless. Sometimes we never found out.

Now, you can learn just about anything you want to, almost instantly, and if you are handy with search engine research, you can dig pretty darned deep into the topic of your choice.

A couple of cases in point...a good Facebook friend shared a meme comparing the relative sizes of polar vs black bears. It was a holy cow moment. I probably spent an hour, when I should have been hanging up laundry, delving into just how big bears are. I discovered that a polar bear could easily bump its head on our living room ceiling, which is ten feet above the ugly red shag rug. Dang! I am glad they live a heck of a long way from here. There was a black bear out in our woods a couple of weeks ago, at least according to the trail cams, and that is more than enough excitement for me.

Then there was the matter of the Buffleheads. We saw a little clutch of them during a bird count, energetically diving into the shallows of a nearby lake. It was downright awesome to find them on a CBC as open water is rare here this time of year. My friend and mentor opined that they eat vegetation and are highly popular with hunters as they taste really good. No question that fish ducks, such as mergansers are said to taste like a good dose of cod liver oil, but I thought diving duck=fish duck, and thus disagreed.

Thanks to modern technology, I now know, that although they occasionally dine on mini-minnows, their cuisine of choice consists of crustaceans, insects, and snail-type critters. (The former might explain their tastiness.) It all made sense after I thought about the matter a bit. Most fish ducks are streamlined for catching fast-moving prey, while Buffleheads are fluffy and fat and ridiculously cute. I don't suppose they have to essentially fly underwater like mergansers to catch snails after all.

However, I had to wait to get home to delve into that bit of trivia. No Internet in the 'Dacks. It was like flying blind!

I have to say that I in no way miss those prolonged and tedious discussions about minutia that often plagued our personal argumentative clan. (Montgomerys love to argue and Friers aren't far behind.) Nowadays when I hear one start to brew and bubble here in our normally peaceful living room, with a click of a mouse, clatter of a keyboard, or tap, tap, slide on a cellphone screen, I can shut them all up almost instantly.

BITD

 

Not Quite

 

Northern Mockingbird

Eighteen hours of birding, spread over two days and two Christmas Bird Counts. 

What an adventure! For the Schenectady count the weather was ridiculously nice, mixed sun and light clouds, balmy, and pleasant.

Driving around with the windows down and the sunroof open didn't seem weird at all, but then it didn't feel like December.

October maybe, but not December.

We saw throngs of birds, although no real ooh-ahh birds, just a lot of them. A lot is good though. You sure don't get bored!

At the end of the day, we had 39 species, which is not bad at all. Best bird from my point of view was a Barred Owl first thing in the morning, but the many Black-capped Chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets and 3 Brown Creepers were pretty interesting as well. And who can resist 3 Swamp Sparrows buzzing up out of the marsh to greet us! I am always astonished to see them in winter, but sometimes we do.

Largest of several flocks of Cedar Waxwings we saw
There were at least 100

Day two, the Johnstown CBC, produced an abrupt turnaround in the weather. Although the temperature lingered in the 40s most of the day, there was a lazy wind...it went right through you, rather than around...and it was shiverishly damp. However, there was open water and there were ducks!

With a nasty storm impending, we again saw a lot of birds. We ended with 32 species, and once again, a tiny bird palooza of a count. It didn't hurt that friend, mentor, and leader for this part of the circle, George Steele, is a master at pishing. Within seconds after he stopped the car and started the show, the little birds came boiling out of the woods to investigate. They screamed and peeped and clucked their outrage at the invasion of noisy alarm calls. It was great fun to watch and listen, and oh, how I wish I could pish like that. I am getting better but...

Cryptic little Brown Creeper

Usually the Black-capped Chickadees were first and we saw amazing numbers of them. It reminded me of the good old days doing the count with my dad, when we saw hundreds every year. Next Tufted Titmice, Golden-crowned Kinglets, Red-breasted Nuthatches, White-breasted Nuthatches, and Brown Creepers arrived. I have never seen as many BRCR, RBNU, or GCKI in one year before, let alone in one day. We ended up with 291 BCCH, 15 GCKI, 29 RBNU and 9 BRCR. 

At some stops other birds showed up too, Blue Jays, shrill and strident in their opinions, and Norther Cardinals cheeping urgently. A couple of times Common Ravens came soaring over to intone Nevermore-ishly from above.

At the end of the day, kind of cold and tired, it felt good to get home. I foolishly had dressed for Saturday's weather and it was insufficient for Sunday, alas. However, as I said to George, when he asked if I was up for another bird day sometime next year, I said, "If I'm not dead, I'm game."

And I am. If I can I will chase birds, pretty much every time, even if it's just in our backyard.

BTW, the promised storm is no joke. A local friend says water flow in the Schoharie has reached the level of the 93 flood. Hopefully the rain stops before it gets any higher!

Don't know if you can see these, but here are links to our trip reports for the two days.

Schenectady CBC

Johnstown CBC

House Sparrow, nasty things remind me of today's weather

Like a Scene from a Book

 

Three-o-Nine AM.

The loudest, longest crack of thunder you could imagine. It rolled and tolled long enough for me to awaken from deep sleep, wonder what was going on, and realize that it was thunder.

Windows rattled, the house shook. The whole valley reverberated. Ralph said he timed one boomer and it lasted six whole seconds. That is a long one in thunder hours.

I was reminded of the scene in Mercedes Lackey's book, Joust, one of my all time favorites, when the thunder goes on for hours but brings no rain. This storm brought plenty of it though and now the morning is all weird with opaque clouds painted pinky orange by some vestige of sun hiding somewhere.

Guess we are going to get a big storm tonight. If that was just the prequel, I shudder to think what's coming.