The Big Three, no O

Happy Third Birthday, Peggy Ann Marie!

Survival

It got cold last night. Not Alaska cold, but winter in Upstate NY cold. Three extra blankets were not quite enough cold. The wind even whined about it all day yesterday and all night too. I worried about the Carolina Wrens. 

They have a history of moving north, freezing out, and coming back again. We lost ours several different years, including 2015, and had to wait a while for new ones to pioneer our buildings and fields. Poor things used to come in the barn to find shelter, but even that couldn't save them.

Last summer was a bumper year though. At least nine fledged here on the farm and I think probably more than that. Some of them hatched and started flight life in the old cow barn, finding ingress and egress through the ventilation fans. I think one nest was actually in the back fan.

However, last night was perfect for killing. Very cold on the heels of a really miserable day. I put out every kind of suet and seed I have to fill everybody up good, but was still concerned.

Then this morning, before I was even up, before it was completely light, before even the doggies were stirring, that "tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle" call rang from the tiny elm across the driveway, the favorite singing perch of this year's local male.

Yay, they made it! There's one singing right now.

Startin' Em Right

Look who's studying the Nat Geo field guide. "What is this mommy? What is that mommy?"

And hard at work herding poultry

Dogtor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Changeable weather and variable dogs in our forecast these days. As Jekyll, Finn looks as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, ooooohh, pet me, pet me, pet me, but when he is out barking at Ren or challenging House Sparrows...danged Sassenachs anyhow....to duels on the lawn...he gets a whole lot fiercer and scarier.

And as a Border Collie he is bound to be strange, right? Not atall murderous though.

We'll leave that to the weather. Balmy and lovely one day, wind chill below zero and so miserable you can barely bear to go outside at all the next. My heart went out to all those affected by the massive power outages all over the county after the big wind. How awful to have to go to a shelter and leave your pets behind. Hope everyone is back home and warm and dry now!

Alan and I succeeded in an amazing feat yesterday. He needed to go down to his union hall to take care of bidness. I have gone with him a couple of times before and every single time he had to leave me sitting in the Camaro in some ungodly illegal parking place. I always wait in trepidation...when will the city's finest show up and haul me away to the pokey?

Or worse, will they expect me to move the CamCam to a legal parking place? Not that I can't drive standard or anything, but I can barely see over the dash and legal parking places in Queens are about as common as bikinis on Mount Washington. 

I have always feared that Alan would exit union hall to find both his mother and his car gone......lost in the big city.....Kinda like Home Alone.

However yesterday we found a legal parking place in Queens. I feel as if there should be a medal involved or something. His visit was longer than usual, but I didn't worry a bit!

And on a fun note I did bird lists...just little short ones...in both the big city and New Jersey. How cool is that?

There are birds in this photo....

Yankee Hill Lock

As you know the boss often drives me down to the river to bird. Alas, the past few weeks there has been not much of anything there...maybe a goose or two or a couple of gulls, but nothing worthy of note.

Last night he suggested going down to Yankee Hill Lock instead. It is only a few miles further away but someone told him that there were often birds there.

It was far from disappointing. I love the lore of the Erie Canal. I remember learning about it in grade school and reading Molly's Hannibal and just loving the story. It took me years to get my own copy but I do own it now.

Thus visiting this old lock for the first time in many moons was a treat in itself. The birds were a bonus. Nothing new for the year, but a flight of ten male Common Mergansers flew right past us at eye level. They are truly beautiful and dramatic birds.

Then the geese started alarming and popping up off the water in a scramble. I was wondering why when the boss found a Bald Eagle harassing them. It in turn was being mobbed by a murder of crows.

We spent at least an hour walking along the old canal and down by the river, just enjoying what turned out to be a very pleasant prelude to this nasty rotten storm. Guess what was going through my head as we were walking back to the car......

The Erie was arisin'

And the Gin was a gettin' low.

On a personal note the boss's mother's grandfather was a canaller and once broke his leg jumping from the roof of the cabin to the deck of his canal boat. His wife cooked at various establishments along the canal as well.

Things that go Bump in the Night

Woke up to crashing and banging outside and my bed swaying. A lot. This old house is broadside to the wind and sometimes that happens a little. This time, however, Yowsa! Frankly my dear, I was scared! I got myself downstairs in a hurry.

On the way I saw that the kayaks had taken wing and flown across the driveway. The boss and I went out and got them and moved Peggy's slide, which was also heading for the high country. Or really he did all that stuff and I hovered around him, wringing my hands like the little red hen.

The sky is falling.

Or it sure seems like it.

New New York Fishing Regulations

How redundant is that? And am I weird when I search these things out whenever they come out and read them over thoroughly?

Check em out here.

For the record I also spend hours perusing the changes to the taxonomy of birds I will never see and get updates on Florida fishing regulations daily, even though I never have and probably never will fish in Florida.

Thinky Links

Big news on the ag front yesterday was that the president is insisting that the EPA take another look at WOTUS, the Waters of the United States. 

Billed as one of the biggest power and land grabs in recent history, the regulations are based on some pretty shaky ideas. Besides the whole regulating puddles and roadside ditches business I mean....

For example, the furrows in farm fields are the same as "mini mountain ranges"....yeah, seriously. When I stumbled on that little item while writing a Farm Side column last fall I was dumbfounded. However, there are plenty of stories that support the tale. Not to mention.....

Here is the Senate committee report with the details.....

Meanwhile the 6th Circuit Court has placed a stay on the rule, preventing the government from implementing it. Hopefully whatever is done now is an improvement for farmers and landowners who might have puddles and ditches....

Your Bird

Just as all Eastern Bluebirds will always belong to my dad, the Tufted Titmouse is your bird. Ever since that day when we stood in the driveway listening to a whistle off in the horse pasture and debating, Northern Cardinal or Tufted Titmouse, it has been your bird.

We had a fine time talking and waiting and wishing it would show itself. I would know today which bird it was. Practice, practice, practice. However, that day neither of us was sure until the little grey ghost came out of hiding and sang right at us. Titmouse, sure as sunrise.

I have always since then associated the bird with our friendship. Spring is hard upon us now with all the little birds thinking about matching up and making more little birds. I hear titmice all day long. At least a half a dozen of them are hanging around the house and more up in the fields.

Thus there are many reminders every day and I shall treasure all of them. I will think of you whenever I hear your bird.

Vicarious

Photo by Linda Brown. Used with permission

I will probably never see a Sandhill Crane from home, unless I get really lucky on a flyover. I certainly spend enough time looking up....

However, I have lovely friends who live in other areas, who generously let me partake vicariously.

You too can enjoy these magnificent birds.

Here

And Here

And here

And here is a cool video

There you have it. Cranes from Colorado and cranes from Pure Florida. Cranes from all over. It doesn't get any better than that. 

Weather

Before

We drove all over half the state today looking at this and looking at that. It was nice almost the whole time. However, Otsego Lake was white capping up a froth and every stream and river was snarling brown and bank full. Returned home to evidence of recent rain and lots of wind. The Christmas tree, which was tied to a bird feeder post for the convenience of the ground birds, had blown over to the swing set and tipped over the chair that is there, which was wedged in the grass, upside down.

Yowsa.

However, it was sunny when we drove in and just a little gusty, so I put the pups out for a bit. Suddenly it turned downright black and the wind got up so bad that the boss moved the car away from the trees. When I went out to bring the puppers in out of the wind I was pelted by pods and branches off the Honey Locust and plumb pummeled by the wind.

Wild, wild, weather. I hope all the family that is up west at the farm show is okay....be nice if they would fire me a text and all....just sayin'....

TWTWTW

Migration has begun. Alan saw a few hundred thousand assorted geese up by Montezuma this morning. I saw a good 500 here. Oddly, I was watching for the lone Snow Goose that has been hanging around all winter and didn't see it.

However, when I came in to look over the photos I took there it was in the only skein of Canadas that I photographed.

Meanwhile, all is quiet here. Everyone but the boss and Becky and I went to the Farm Show. Hope they have safe travels and a great time. If it doesn't rain I'll prolly get the boss to drag me up to Bear Swamp to see what we can see.

The Song of my People

Won't you sing with me? A-B-C-D...arf arf Pull me along. Pet me.
Little creeper! I dug it out and Liz is going to dispose of it....er...put it away

I was taking the dogs out just before sunrise. Mack the terror races around even on the porch. He would make a great barrel horse, so small a circle can he make. This morning his rummaging assault on all things porch-bound was accompanied by the weirdest music.

Sound track for a rat hound or something.

For a minute I thought I had somehow acquired a new ringtone on my phone. Who would be calling me so early and what was that awful music?

But, no, it was one of the many noisy toys Peggy has stashed here and there around the place, singing me a song of small people. Evidently it is terrier-triggered and does not feel safe there under the cooler where it is hiding.

All I can say is ACK.

The Really Big Pigeon

The spring blackbirds are all back, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Common Grackles, and Red-winged Blackbirds....the sky just rings with their calls. Yesterday was such a great day for getting out and seeing what was happening that I opened the Sitting Porch and went out there to....well....to sit....

It was great! Warm, breezy, birdy... I was training the binoculars on the river, while snatching glances at the flyway over the Horse Pasture, watching for blackbirds and checking out ducks and geese.

Plop, something landed just to my left. There were pigeons on the steeple, I figured that they had been eating well.

Plop! Plop! 

Dang! Whatchu been eatin' Botat?

It kept happening. I kept watching the river.

Finally a faint giggling reached my ears. 

Far from overfed pigeons, the culprit was the guy above, throwing little snowballs to get my attention. He wanted to see if I wanted to ride down to the river to see what might be down there. I did. We did. Nothing stirring....but wow, that was a really huge pigeon! Not to mention an awful wise guy.

Great Grey Owl

This has been a big winter for rarities in the Adirondacks, what with the Ross's Gull at Tupper Lake, and now some Great Grey Owls at Massena.

And no, I didn't see any of these birds.

However, there is a Great Grey on my life list just the same. Back when my next younger brother was finishing up college in Ft. Collins, CO, my significant other at the time and I went out with my truck to bring his stuff home.

I had never been so far west before...and haven't since..and it was quite an adventure, fraught with flat tires, and high altitude, which is not the friend of the old Chevy carburetor, and many other interesting phenomena.

Not the least of these were the birds. We saw Magpies, Golden Eagles, Steller's Jays. Grey Jays, Clark's Nutcrackers and one morning at dawn, a Great Grey Owl.

Alas, I didn't even have my glasses on, just got up from the camp bed in the back of our truck and peeped out the window to see him roosting on the picnic table right next to us. He was so different from anything I had seen or imagined at the time that it took me all day to get him ID'd. What a great bird! I don't need photographs because he is imprinted forever on my brain.

Innocent

I was in the living room yesterday, talking on the phone with our boy....when I heard from the kitchen the sounds of the auxiliary family coming home...Peggy laughing, boots stomping, sheep blatting....

Wait! Sheep? Or lambs really. I'd know that shrill cry anywhere. But there were no lambs a few minutes ago....

We quickly disconnected and I hurried to the kitchen to find two bum lambs that were given to the kids yesterday. Peggy was ecstatic, dancing and singing and laughing.

The lambs were less so, exploring, little hoofs banging on the floor, bawling, and piddling all over the place.

They are now down at the barn, which works for me, even if it is less to Peggy's taste in lifestyles....just file it all under never a dull moment....this time I am innocent in the whole livestock in the kitchen thing.

Farm Chick Chic

Ready for mud season!

Finally

Got up the nerve to call our accountant and explain that my lifeline in all things bookkeeping is no longer here to save me and I don't know what to do. How to fix the mess I make of the books each year......It is a terrible thing to have to be practical when you have lost one of your dearest friends, but alas, taxes still loom and somehow I must do this alone this year.

I talked to a really nice lady who understood and suggested bringing in a backup copy of my books for her to go over.

So Becky and I are printing off bank statements that I seem to have lost...I'm not completely alone I guess....and piling papers together. I have been stalling...and stalling....and stalling.....

And being sad, yeah, that too. I will miss the days....I already miss them....of talking in the driveway on bookkeeping breaks...we were always so busy that if we didn't have work to bring us together we would never have seen each other.... enjoying the birds and the sun, things that were much more fun than talking taxes. I miss saving things and thinking, 'she will need this, and she will need that'. Being tidier than is my nature to make the job a little easier when we finally got down to it.

Miss phone calls that may have been infrequent but always lasted for hours, while we took on the troubles of the world. Miss having my friend in the back of my mind, pretty much all the time. Whenever we spoke we always said, "I think of you every day."

And it was true. Sometimes we kept in touch via this blog...she liked to read it and we would talk about blog stuff when we did find a minute.

It's been a little over two weeks now. Two minutes. Two lifetimes. Too much to think about but I seem to have no choice. Guess I had better get busy piling papers.