Swampers

No, no, not those swampers.....just the birdie ones.. We went up to the swamp today to try out the new camera. Alan got some really nice shots with it. I stuck to old faithful and got some that I liked too. We left around 5:30 this morning so we could be there for the early light.

Well worth it. The slanting, low angle, fall light, especially early in the day, made for spectacular colors and sharpness and the array of birds was phenomenal. We pulled into the road to one water meadow where we often see eagles and saw a whole flock of Sandhill Cranes.

Northern Harrier

Ducks were ridiculous. Dozens of American Wigeons, Northern Shoveler, Ring-necked Ducks, Northern Pintails, Mallards, Gadwalls, Canvasbacks, Red Heads, Ruddy Ducks, all three teal (!!! on the Cinnamon) for a total of 36 species. Oh, and geese. There were tons of geese too flying up and down, whirling, twirling, to-ing and fro-ing. I have a video for another day with sound....

Since last week a platform at the end of the loop had a lovely eagle statue added, which can be seen from the Thruway and some of the other ponds. Really nice.

Male Northern Shoveler

Female Northern Shoveler

Tomorrow I will tell you a little story about this.

And about the one-legged Ring-billed Gull.....Photos without labels are usually mine.....

First Official Real Frost

This morning when I first went out it hadn't yet really frozen. The sky in the east was just barely brighter blue than the star-spangled midnight of the zenith. The grass was still wet with just dew, sparkling in the glow of the flashlight.

By the time Alan went to work just a short time later, his car was covered with frost and by the time the sun came up so was the grass.

Brrr......

I am tying this on a Windows 10 computer. He decided we needed one to process photos and mine is still on strike so....the obliging Downy Woodpecker above posed for him for these photos. Not bad huh?

And in big birdie news he got a good, close look at the White-eyed Vireo we have been pursuing since high summer. I have seen it too, but not the eyes, which are pretty much diagnostic. There really isn't much else quite that color, but without seeing the face I wasn't going to call it. Now if only we can get a photo so the eBird moderators will believe us.

Meanwhile, I keep trying with the new camera. It is pretty amazing, but I seem to have an inordinate number of thumbs where it is concerned. I cannot wait until I can go out in the sun and take advantage of good light!

However, here are some stained glass sumacs.

And one from the little camera

Learning Curve

I waited until Alan came home to take the new camera out of the box yesterday. It seemed to work fine so we took it out for a spin yesterday afternoon.

It takes fantastic photos...at least in his hands. He has always had a knack with cameras and this big one sure shows that. I am kinda blind and slow......

I took it out this morning to start learning it. A pretty steep learning curve after all the years with the S3IS, which is as familiar in my hands as a bar of soap. Thank you Steve for all the years with it. I have had amazing fun taking pictures with it....I don't think a day goes by that I don't take at least a couple.....It is still a great camera, although in need of a good cleaning I guess.

Anyhow, I am excited about the possibilities with the new one, although for a while Alan will probably spend most of the time in the driver's seat. 

Sure does bring the birdies in close though. 

****All photos except the potatoes taken by Alan.

Obviously a Mail Drop

National Farmers Day

A day to thank your farmers for all they do.

So, thanks farmers for milk for my coffee and to drink with supper, beef, pork and lamb, and farmed fish and vegetables, and leather, and soap and other items too numerous to mention.

And ice cream. Did I mention ice cream? Thanks farmers!

Guest Tirade

Mad blogger with the older camera

So I'm using Becky's computer, which is really Alan's computer, but he lets her use it, because mine seems to have fan issues......thus no new pictures.

Fan problems were, alas, not solved with canned air. Hopefully a certain nephew will be able to repair that situation. I could get a new computer I suppose, but I am a great fan of Windows 7 and really, really, really don't want to change.

Plus, you know how you get everything all trimmed up and ready to sail after you run a computer for a while....yeah....that's how it is.

Now for a rant. Alan bought me a new camera from Best Buy. A bigger bells and whistles critter, which we can't wait to point at birdies. 

Alas they ship with the brown truck people, who do not do well delivering to us. Every single package we get has to be chased down either at their warehouse or wherever they decide to dump it.

This time I got a notice that it was delivered....yesterday.....but no camera. Called the brown truck guys. The not very helpful lady there said it was delivered to the stump at the bottom of the driveway.

So, you mean to tell me that an expensive electronic device sat outside all night? Unguarded? A tenth of a mile from the house and out of sight?

Color me delighted.

Then the boss went to look for it and found it was at the bottom of the BARN driveway! Yeah, the driveway is overgrown with brush, way down the road from the house with no buildings in sight. Farther away even than I thought. This was no mistake. This was deliberate and perhaps a reaction to our political signs, some of which have been stolen btw.

The box is damp, although the camera seems maybe dry....hard to tell, it's so darned cold.

I will be contacting Best Buy later when there are live people to talk to. The brown truck lady said that her company was not in any way responsible for leaving our package at the wrong address on a stump.

Meanwhile, both the US Postal Service and FedEx deliver our packages and mail with no problems. FedEx brings stuff right to the back door and has never messed us up. So it can be done......

First Frost Nope

All day yesterday I watched the weather forecasts and listened to the quieting of the crickets and katydids.

And dragged house plants indoors. There were only a few outside yet, you know, the ones that are too big and gangly and prickly to fit anywhere well. The water cannas. Easter cacti with nasty little hair spines that make life sharper than it needs to be. The rest of the geraniums. I grew most of them from seed and can't quite let go. Every winter they get all thin and sprawly and sad. Every summer I nurse them back to lush and bloomy and all kinds of colors. Then every fall I drag them back in again.

Tweaked my knee filling the twenty-gallon fish tank so one of the big water cannas can winter there in the big window. They will bloom in the winter you know. This one has orange blossoms on big green and yellow stems. Pretty pretty. I have one in the smaller tank in the office where the guppies will (hopefully) winter. I keep that one in and it grows from the tank to the top of the window and waves its orangey flower flags there. It's a biggun.

This morning.....no frost. The fog came in around three AM and cloaked everything in protection....thanks to the river I guess. Weather Underground says 33 degrees. Those last two are most important. They were predicting 27....

I'm glad. Who can resist the last few morning glories, another couple days of zinnias, impatiens in red and orange and pinky-white along the foundation? And tomatoes, still coming in late from the garden? We had some last night with baked bacon, a fine sandwich feast indeed. Looks like we will have at least a few more days of all of the above.....

I Shouldn't Have

But I did. I'm supposed to stay out of the sun. I don't feel the greatest either, thanks to the medicine I'm taking.

Assorted ducks, digiscoped by Alan

However, when Alan wanted someone to go to Montezuma with him yesterday I volunteered. How could I not? I love road trips with him and I love the swamp....such an amazing place.

Sleepy Green-winged Teal, also digiscoped by Alan

Hat, hoodie, sunglasses, four layers of sun block, shirt over the window when we were in the swamp, hat over my face when we were on the road, and we got it done.

Ditto

Worth a bit of burning too. The swamp was full of American Wigeon, Ring necked Ducks, Redheads, Northern Pintails, a few Northern Shovelers, the usual Green and Blue-winged Teal, thousands of Canada Geese, a number of Gadwalls, Ruddy Ducks, a few Yellowlegs, lots and lots of other birds.

Pied-billed Grebe

Northern Harrier

I'll bet we saw a thousand just on the way up. it was a great time and since I've only been out in the car once in the past ten days, even just seeing the fall colors was great.

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.