Night

There's lots to see outside in the dark.

And plenty of dark to see it in too....

You can see that the person bobbing with a flashlight down the lawn is leading a horse, even though it is a black horse, invisible in the nascent hours of night. Something about the way the light moves, where the faintly visible human face glows....nothing you can quite pick out...... just something. 

Somehow you can spot the evening pairing, animal and human, teaming or tandem...moving together toward twin sanctuaries of house and stable.

Difference senses make all clear to my Border Collie buddy. He poses, all sharp and alert, staring up the hill. He shows little herding instinct, which is okay, since he has no job of that sort. He sure is interested though.

The end of the ridgepole on the cellar entry glows in the outdoor lights (hooray for outdoor lights. We didn't have any for decades until Alan set them up last fall.) Other odds and ends unnoticed in the light of day announce themselves as well, reflectors, bits of metal and chrome, plus a few lonely stars glowing golden through the rising mist.

The moon is a hot orange banana on the western horizon. Wonder what it is saying about  weather to come. Thanks to southbound paths of migration and vacation, we have dear friends and close family square in the path of Hurricane Matthew and plenty of others close enough for attendant danger. Stay safe folks, stay safe. We sure are thinking of you here in the north....

Being cooped up indoors during the hours of daylight makes these hours of darkness much brighter from my point of view. I'll take what I can get.

Lyme Links

I have always been curious what led to the exponential increase in the tick population in the Northeast. I always thought it might be spraying, or lack thereof.  They used to. Now they don't.

However, it seems that the consensus is that it is the parallel increase in the deer population.

And rodents. (Yeah, yeah, chipmunks too)

And poo to the climate change warriors. Ticks do just fine during cold winters, so any warming trends are not behind the problem.

Some other links of interest.

Scary numbers

More Stuff Of course the eliminating predators thing is silly. There are plenty of 'yotes and foxes out there. And hawks. Eagles. Owls. Fishers. Stray cats. Honey badgers.....okay, maybe no honey badgers, but just ask our hens about predator numbers. 

What saddened me about doing research for this week's Farm Side (surprise, surprise) is the level of misinformation put about by major publications whose writers really should do more to collect and disseminate accurate information.

And on a totally unrelated topic....do you have any idea how terrifying it is to hear someone at the back door and look up to see a police officer in full uniform? Men whom I love work at very dangerous jobs......and not too far from here currently

However, he was here to tell us that he has leased the land next door and will be patrolling for trespassers. He wanted to enlist our cooperation in said activity.

I can get behind that. It's a real problem. However, it's going to be a while before my heart slows down.

On the Fence

Common Yellowthroat in summer clothes.
Not so confusing

As I came down the stairs this morning a flash of light out in the driveway alerted me to the presence of a cottontail I might not have otherwise seen. It paused a moment, but was obviously alarmed so I looked around for a predator. A blink and it was gone. I waited to see what had frightened it.

After all, during these non-birding weeks, I'll take what I can get. Coulda been a hawk, right?

However, a large, black cat, which I have never seen before, sauntered out of the garden. The only cats we personally have are Becky's three and they are strictly indoor cats. This guy is either a drop off or visiting from the housing development next door.

He strolled around as if he owned the place but was gone before I got outside with the doggies.

On one hand outdoor cats kill a lot of birds, and I do mean a lot.

On the other hand...hunting rabbits in the garden? It's hard not to like that.

And it is sunny this morning. I love sunny days even in the depths of winter. However, yesterday, even on a pretty cloudy day, I was driven out of the kitchen by the nasty burning sensation caused by my drugs. Had to hide in a darkened room for several hours. Ack! I've never been so glad to see the sun go down.

I would imagine a sunny day is going to be worse. Guess I'm going to find out.

On one hand I cannot do bird walks right now. I was trying for an eBird list every day during migration but that is not going to happen. Had to say 'no' when Alan invited me to go to Montezuma yesterday and if you don't think that hurt......

On the other hand I picked up a nice, confusing, fall warbler right when I was walking Fin this morning. Yellow throat like a Common Yellowthroat. Bright eye-ring, not like a COYE. Bright yellow undertail, which might be a COYE. On the other hand the tail pattern was completely wrong for a COYE, more like a Magnolia, only the color seemed too yellow. A Magnolia would be a first of year bird for me.

So even if I can't bird I can have fun trying to unravel a mystery bird before I have to head upstairs to my cave.

Trying to remain upbeat here, even if I can't play outside and the medicine makes me sick as a dog......

Another Rare Bird

Immature White-crowned Sparrow

No, not the sparrow... I lived in the center house  from the time of my earliest memories 'til I was 8 or so. It was my grandparent's home and our family lived upstairs. 

The house to the right as you face them, the downhill side, housed two elderly ladies, sisters I think. The lower enclosed porch was open then, with huge hydrangeas burgeoning over the railing. Snowball bushes they called them. For some reason I hated them....maybe because the flowers were usually green, rather than resembling snow in any manner. I wonder if those ladies enjoyed the daily....or oftener...visits of brother and me, when we whiled away the summer hours, regaling them with our adventures and listening to their stories. It was a real old fashioned porch of the sort songs are written about today, where people sat and watched their world go by and neighbored.

Between that house and home was a row of lilacs where we sometimes tied the egregiously naughty hound dogs we always had. I remember one that ate the linoleum under the kitchen sink.......Down at the bottom of the block i was bitten in the face by a dog. My own fault . Guess he didn't want to be hugged by a strange kid.

Next to our house was a wide bed of lilies of the valley, which we were allowed to pick to our hearts' content. We knew just how to pull them smoothly out of their sheath of leaves so that they had a nice, long stem. I never smell their heavenly scent or see their fragile bells without remembering my father's mother.

The backyard was an entire world to my brother and me. We played there endlessly, running under the sprinkler when grandpa watered the lawn, and building tiny forts for our toys among the roots of the giant maple trees. We rode horses and shot toy guns and were cowboys and such, with no thought for political correctness, which hadn't been invented yet. 

The street in front was lined with other massive maples; indeed the street at the top of the block was Maple Street. Under their shade we pounded caps on the sidewalk with stones to get a bang, if our latest cap guns were broken again. My brother was coordinated enough to light matches (a skill I later acquired) so we could fire up those black pills that turned into "snakes" of ash too. All the kids had them, and sparklers every 4th. Somehow we managed to survive, with only memories to show for our daring.

At the very top of the hill was our school, to which we walked each day.

At the bottom was a corner store selling any grocery you could ask for. Malls were a thing of the future, and family-run groceries were a staple of small town life. We walked there too, with a quarter for a quart of milk or a loaf of bread. There was usually a reward of penny candy for the gofers from the change.

We had everything that kids could ask for. Aunties downstairs who spoiled us silly. Uncles in the military who came home every now and then with tales and souvenirs of exotic locations. We didn't understand the danger they were facing, but we enjoyed the celebrations and family meals eaten downstairs with the grandparents when they came home.

We were free to come and go pretty much as we pleased. No internet. No TV or not very often, except for grandpa's, always tuned to Yankees baseball until the Mets came along.

Those were the post war days when America was a pretty lively place. I don't remember grownups paying us a whole lot of attention, although they certainly must have, as we grew up to be more or less civilized. 

Anyhow, i hunted down a street view of the old house just for the heck of it, and the past was just unleashed for a minute.

That didn't take long

Two days on the darned medicine and I started feeling myself sunburn in the living room on a cloudy day after about half an hour. Becky has ordered me some special sun screen products, which should arrive Monday, and got some curtains to try to cut the sun in the living room. Those will need to be installed by a person with some tallness going on....after all the plants are moved. And there are many.

Meanwhile, seems the kitchen is my only choice when the sun is even filtering through the clouds. Lots of fun that. 

I know, I know, there are worse things etc. and one of them is Lyme's disease.  Meanwhile I simply do not know what to do with myself.

A Rare Bird

I saw this bird the other day...some species of mocker, as it was making fun, flapping its arms  er...wings....and laughing out the window at the lady in the driveway with binoculars and camera.

I so wanted to include it on my daily eBird list, but alas I don't think the ABA would recognize it even if it showed up on their doorstep.

Cooties

Evidently an hour's bird counting every morning and a lot of dog walking has a price. For the first time in all my years I was bitten by a tick yesterday. A trip to urgent care today and I now have drugs with so many side effects just reading the literature is like a Stephen King novel.

Plus I have to protect myself from the sun. Dagnabbit. This is me who wears shorts and crocs until November and hates hats. Now I must wear sunscreen and sunglasses and all that nonsense.....

I would revolt, but it's already revolting.

This Guy

Afforded Becky and me a few minutes of nearly dangerous laughter yesterday. I normally pretty much wage war on chipmunks. They get in the house and do bad stuff and carry disease and all.

However, I may give this guy a pass.

I was on my way to the sink to attend to a big mess of dishes when something flashed past the window, caroming off the blue bird feeder and falling through the air, flip, flip, flip.

I could see it was a rodent of some kind, but the flipping was pretty fast for clear discernment.

Thus I lingered by the window to see what was up.

Dippy Chippy swarmed up out of the grass and quickly got up on the garden pond pump, which is lying on a tree stump drying out to be stored for winter. It consists of two long arms, one to shoot water into the air and one to suck water into the pump. It was balanced not  so securely on the center part...the pump.

Dippy ran out onto the filter. It tipped dangerously and he levitated into the air and ran back to the center...then down the air spout, which once again acted as a chippy teeter totter. Airborne once again.

He was incensed and ran over to the old bird feeder pole, which is about three feet from the tray feeder that was his goal. Next he shuddered his way through the cinnamon vine that grows on it, nothing showing but his bottle brush tail.

See, I had found some old almonds in the cupboard and put them out there to see if the jays wanted them (nope). The chipmunk wanted them though. He sat in the catbird feeder on top of the pole and wiggled his fanny like a cat about to pounce on one of his brethren.

Nope, too far.

He vibrated his tail like pom pom at a football game, bouncing up and down to ready himself for the jump.

Nope, too far. 

Back down through the vine, tail a-quiver, to the oak stump again.

There he sat, eyeing the feeder and swaying back and forth as he contemplated the jump.

Nope, too far. You could all but see him deflate in disappointment.

Sigh....so close and yet so far.....

Then he did what any normal chipper would have done in the first place. He ran up the honey locust tree and onto the clothesline and out to the feeder. Of course there was a certain "first day on the new feet" air about his line running skills.....A Flying Wallenda he ain't.

Once in the feeder he was rewarded with a lovely, if a couple of year's worth of stale, almond. 

It was too big for his mouth. 

He turned it over and over until he figured out a way around it.

He sat there for a while nibbling the shell until he had a hand....er....tooth hold...and then contemplated egress from the feeder.

Looked at the old pole with the cinnamon vine.

Nope, too far.

Looked at the tree.

Nope too far, with only that scary old clothes rope to run on. 

Looked at the blue bird feeder hanging over the oak stump.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

Wham.

He caromed off the blue feeder again and down he went to the stump...

Flip

Flip

Flip

If there is a Darwin Award for chipmunks I have an inside tip on this year's winner

Wrenching it

When we traded for this old John Deere we still had the cows. I have sat upon it many times running the PTO to dispense feed for whomever was feeding them that day. I liked that job if I wasn't setting up and washing stuff in the milk house. There is a lot of time to ponder life and watch the sky while waiting to shove that lever.....

The tractor has always knocked. Always.

Borked

Anyhow the knock got serious recently so Alan had the boss park it while he looked it over to see what was going on and ordered some parts.

Borked vs unborked

Yesterday he and Jade tore it down and applied a fix that should get it through whatever hay weather we get the rest of the season. At one point it was barely recognizable as a tractor at all.

At least some of the tools were supplied by the farm girl

Then they need to replace a shaft in it, which clearly was defective right from the factory. They figure that some of the parts were designed to let it wobble!

Peggy and Uncle Alan wrenching on the tractors (Photo stolen from Liz who took it)

Anyhow there was a lot of grease and southern clay (still caked here and there from its original home) involved. Even though Peggy wasn't feeling the best, she got her own green tractor out and wrenched on it too. It was fixed quite quickly, as she was tired and wanted to rest. The big one will do for now as long as the boss babies it. No asking it to toss bales all the way to the back of the wagon until they have time to replace that shaft.

Rushing it

The coming season that is. Although autumn has just arrived and robins are still trekking through on the way to warmer places, some people can't wait for snow....to the point of getting all their toys, new and old, out on the lawn for some photos. 

No way I am going to ride one of these things. If nothing else you ride them in the WINTER!!!!.....I do want to find some bravery somewhere in my timid makeup and learn to ride the quad though. You do that in SUMMER, the appropriate season for outdoor activity....and it would take me to the back of the place for birding without a two-hour hike.

Forcing It

There are days when, from the moment you wake up in the morning, you know you are not going to get anything done. Oh, you'll be busy all day, but at the end there will be nothing to show for it.

I am sure you have had days like that...we all do.

There's cows in them there hills

This is going to be one of them I think. Everyone else is up to something important...it is like a bee hive around here, the young men working on the John Deere tractor, the boss off to the doggy-wog amusement park dump with the trash, Liz toting stuff to the men with Peggy's help, and Becky at work down in town.

I started out to write a Farm Side about the new methane emissions regulations for dairy cows in California, but I tabled that about 200 words in. A job for a quieter day.....

 I am grateful to have men who can fix major problems with important tractors, a guy who will get the cleanup done, a cute, if slightly under the weather baby to keep things interesting, and her mom to do the goferring....but dang....it is a madhouse around here.

I am not going to even try to force myself to concentrate on writing something complicated today or tackle any big jobs. Just go with the flow, enjoy the excitement, and walk the doggies every now and then.

Almost

It nearly froze last night. A couple of degrees and it would have. I hustled around all yesterday afternoon bringing some of the house plants indoors and covering up others. Some lacy tablecloths are out there this morning, none of them woven by spiders.

It is so obviously fall...

All day long you can hear the patter of leaves falling and the louder, more insistent patter of woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches hammering at the honey locust pods. I don't know whether they seek the fat beans inside or insects that may infest same, but the sound never stops while the sun is up.

Canada Geese took wing today, over a hundred passing through during my morning bird count. They add their mournful calls to the rustling and shuffling of wings and the ring of Blue Jay calls that mark these cold fall mornings.

Caught three of the four guppies yesterday and brought them in. Number 4 is going to be sorry.

Debating on the plants that are still outdoors. All the memorial plants are in. The Ida Hollenbeck memorial spider plant, all of the Grandma Peggy plants, except for two foxtail ferns I grew from seeds off her original one, which stayed indoors this summer, and the big split leaf philodendron from a get-well bouquet of someone I knew in the seventies. My first ever plant, a Christmas cactus my mother gave me is in. I was eighteen and still living at home when she gave it to me.....

The two-year old datil pepper is in....and covered with little orange peppers. No one seems to quite get why I feel it is such an accomplishment to keep this St. Augustine native growing here in the cold Northeast, but I do love having it. Can I keep it over one more winter? I sure hope so. 

My sister-in-law's pothos are both in but kind of grumpy. The one that spent the summer on the sitting porch seemed to like it out there and it is not admiring the kitchen window much. It took me a while, but I finally got the hang of them.

Gift plants from son and daughters are in. Aunt Ann's giant wandering Jew is in. It did well this summer, after I got serious with the Miracle Grow. Should I bring the cuphea in? I love the little thing, but they are so prone to bugs and disease....guess I will have to decide this afternoon whether to gamble or not.

The geraniums will probably weather a degree or two of frost and we really are only supposed to get close to that tonight. I hate to lose them as I grew most of them from seed, but I would also like to leave them out a couple more weeks, as it is supposed to warm back up.

And....last but not least....the boss turned the heat on in the furnace plenum this morning. Feels good too.

Migration Madness

What were they? I was watching a gratuitous flyover Bald Eagle this morning. He came over low enough to be photographed from the porch without even leaving my chair. Then he sailed slowly, almost ponderously, higher and higher into the dramatic cumulus clouds that soared to the zenith, until he was little more than a lateral speck.

If you look very closely you can see the black speck that is the eagle,
 just a little below the top/center of the cloud. If you click and enlarge the pic you can see him
maybe......

As I watched him to and fro-ing, a few blackbirds scattered into the view field and then very high and far, just a little too far for my binoculars, there they were, sailing right under those same clouds.

They were white. There were six of them. They were not any bird that flies with neck outstretched like a goose or swan. They were heron-sized, but going away, so i could not quite get an outline. The wings were long enough to note the deep curve when they reached the bottom of their slow, heavy wing beat.

Great Egrets? Maybe. I don't know what else looks like that  might be here, but even though I was counting I won't count them....if only I had not been watching the eagle and had seen them sooner.

Meanwhile, here's what I saw over a couple of hours of counting without leaving the driveway around the house and down to the road. I try to go out for an hour every morning, but today I got carried away.

Grey Catbird 4
Northern Flicker 2
Blue Jay 4
American Goldfinch 10
European Starling 11
Tufted Titmouse  2
Black-capped Chickadee 9
Rock Pigeon 2
Mourning Dove 2
Hairy Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 3
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
House Sparrow 3
American Robin 4
Song Sparrow 2
Wilson's Warbler 2
Eastern Phobe 1
Red-winged Blackbird 7
Cedar Waxwing 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Common Grackle 4
Bald Eagle

And I didn't even go to the barn. Ain't migration wonderful?!?

Black-throated Green Warbler from yesterday

A rare migrant wanna be.......a mama bird on a snowmobile....
probably as close as she will ever get to actually riding one.

Equinox

So the switch has flipped and it is fall, even though nature has been dabbling her toes in autumn since way too early in August.

It's official now, and it's supposed to get pretty chilly this weekend.

Each morning count of the morning glories may be the last, so I number with great gusto. Ten some days. Eleven others. Sometimes only eight but never quite twelve. All lovely faded denim blue and each almost as big as a saucer. I shouldn't gloat as I did not make them but......

The warblers are still around, the same Black-throated Green each day in the same place in the same cottonwood tree. Saw some Prairies yesterday, none today, but one lone, lamenting, Common Yellowthroat sang a fragment of a fragile song when I went out on the porch for part of my one-hour morning count.

More jelly cooking today, so Liz and I will be busy. One batch is done already. She brought home some green grapes and they make the tangiest jelly in the prettiest pink. I like them much better than purple grapes in jelly.

Sure was a misery trying to sleep last night with the races to the west going on. We can barely hear the regular speedway most of the time, but last night the other one sounded as if they were racing in the driveway under the window. I finally turned on a fan and an audio book to at least diffuse them a bit. Us old folks need our rest you know. 

When I finally did get some sleep I sure had some crazy dreams. I dreamed we visited one of my particular friends who happens to live well inland and did some serious birding...she is a serious birder....and also watched sea lions hunting herring outside the picture window in their garage.

Yup. Ain't been smokin' nuttin strange, but dang....

Back to the jelly.

Harvest Help

Plenty of willing workers around the place.

Food on the Farm

Yellow tomato sauce to freeze for winter

Red ditto

Bizzy Lizzie

Birdin' and Jammin'

When the weather radar shows big blue sunbursts of migratory birds taking off early in the morning, right within fifty miles of your home, it's a good time to go birding.

It has been amazing around here this week! I didn't think I was going to crack 80 species this year...so many common, counted-every-year birds have been absent. 

Swamp Sparrow, species #81 for the year

However, now that migration is really moving the yards are full of birds, just full. Picked up three new ones in the past two days, Black-throated Green Warbler, Prairie Warbler, and Swamp Sparrow, to crack 80 and even hit 81. I sure would like to see a record this year so i go out every morning at least for a few minutes.

And, of course, it is also the season of putting by. Three batches of grape jelly the other day and Liz is busy freezing squash and tomato sauce and such. Big pumpkins are forming up in the top garden, the last flowers are blazing. We use fresh herbs with a lavish hand. they are so good and soon will be so gone. I keep a few indoors, but it is a job to keep them growing.

Frost soon, alas. 

Duck, Duck, Goose

First the duck. The white on this duck is actually white, not an artifact of the light in the photo. I have put it up on every bird group I belong to and no one has ventured a suggestion of what it might be. Leucistic something or other or some kind of duck we don't recognize? any ideas?

It was hanging with a bunch of Blue-wined Teal.

And then the goose....er......geese.....as you may guess we went up to Montezuma Sunday, before visiting Sundae on the Farm later in the day.

And finally....swan lake