In the Midst

Probably this guy

Of writing chores and Thanksgiving dinner prep we had to clear off the kitchen table. Seems somebody got their first deer and we will be processing meat this afternoon.

I am STILL making a blueberry pie....

Congratulations, Amber!

The Rock

Just as it came out of the camera

Walking the fields and roads most days....things I pass become landmarks of a sort. 

The round metal washer about half way up the hill that probably fell from some bit of machinery or other. Certain rocks, like the pretty bit of Feldspar almost buried near the old chopper, the potato rock complete with eye, which I finally relented and dragged down here, and any number of other things.

Changes get noticed too. Thus when a big old rock along the road behind the barn split when the boss was bringing the machinery down for the winter it caught my eye.

To me it looked like a dinosaur or a dragon or some other mythical monster, so I took a quick photo in passing.

After a little cosmetic work

This weekend I played with it in Paint, and what do you know...it IS a dinosaur.

Or maybe DinoDog

Upside

Downside

Birding has been slow lately, perhaps because the river is still high. The water is often smooth enough to take photos of birds' reflections though, which is kind of cool.

Red Sky

At Morning....or pink and gold if you prefer....It didn't last long, but it was nice while it did.

The Things you See

Amishman with four mules pulling a bale wrapper

Winterberry Holly.
I would love to plant some of this in one of our wet areas around the house.

As we troll the hidden corners of this and neighboring counties, in pursuit of good birds, groceries, and rabies vaccinations for the pups, we seem to find so many amazing sights....

Oriental Bittersweet, strangling native trees. There were many that had died in its loving embrace

  

A trail we walked this week

Schoharie Crossing SHS, one of our favorite spots to visit

Snow on the Roof

Check out these odd leucistic, or piebald birds we found over the past week or two. Above is an unusual Canada Goose with a white head. Below, an American Robin, ditto. We found the Canada at Lock 12 the other day, and the Robin at Lyker's Pond. Amazingly there was another one that was almost entirely white with just a little red on the sides, but I missed a photo of that one.

We also found a White-winged Scoter and a Pied-billed Grebe for the county, but missed a Cattle Egret, despite driving around for quite a while looking for it.....

If you see this Fine Man Today

Wish him a very Happy Birthday!

From the Useless Trivia Department

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the first official Thanksgiving in 1863 in response to a campaign by the lady who wrote Mary had a Little Lamb.

Dog Day

We also came across this lot, which is pretty darned cool for Upstate NY

The kids were all home for a bit this weekend, which made for some major fun indeed.

Also included time for our engineering-minded young man to do some work on the furnace blower so the house is actually warm.....which is a fine thing.

However, after everyone went on their way or about their business, the boss and I went birding.

Nothing exciting to report, but we had some delightful doggy encounters. 

First there was a lovely Redbone Hound having an excursion at Yankee Hill. She was a beauty-glossy, dark mahogany-colored, smiling, friendly, and funny. She just loved us when introduced and soaked up pets and admiration as if all was due her as canine royalty. You could tell she had never met a stranger. 

We compared notes with her folks about hounds we had known, photography, bird listing and just enjoying the park. Then we divested birding accouterments and finished up the trip list while they loaded up their car and were off.

As they drove away, she hung her head out the window and bayed at us, hoping I think for more lovely human contact and admiration. Her human chauffeur said that driving with her was an interesting prospect as that big, bell-toned muzzle was right next to his ear. We could hear her still at it as the car vanished around the corner......

Four-letter Words

There were at least three-hundred of these four-letter birds at Schoharie Xing yesterday
There was just enough ice to hold them and they must have enjoyed it as there were another two-hundred not far away. Ring-billed Gulls

Trying hard to wean myself off them....impressionable young person living here, and one who is bright enough to pick up innuendo, let alone outright cussing.

However, this morning, a little-known four-letter-word-type substance is fluttering merrily down to the ground.....the one that starts with S, you know what I mean if you live in the North Country.

Bah humbug.

So Cold

And the laundry is steaming too

It is so cold this bright and sunny morning that I can see the breath of the Blue Jay that is screaming from the Basket-tree next to the feeder.

Ah Poo

I love my family. I love my kitchen too. Where else could you listen to people joking about skunk scat and who else would you find doing so?

Yeah, truly.

See, we are not scatological experts or anything so some of the....stuff...we find remains a mystery. We were pretty sure the little collections of fruitiferous matter in the cow barnyard originated with a skunk. When I discovered that the material was apple, berry, and yellow jacket, we decided that we were right.

And that is when the joking came in, "Burns a little going down, but not bad...not bad at all."

And then there was the bigger fruit flop out on the hills. I debated over that one too. Coyote? Bear?

It was pretty big and consisted almost entirely of apple....hmmm....

Then Becky pointed out that the coyotes have been out in the orchard tuning up every night.

Nuff said.

Fool Hound

My boys sleep indoors at night and come in when the weather is bad. This time of year they like to be outside when they can.

This translates to the cable for Mack and a nice dog kennel we built for the late, great, Mike, for Finn.

In summer the houses...of course there are houses...are filled with shavings. Mack is afraid of his house, but we are working on that. Finn usually hauls his shavings out to jump in them after a couple of days.

Oh, well.

This morning, hoping to offer Finn a bit more comfort, I filled his house with fluffed up hay. 

Should be cozy right?

I even swirled it around a little to make a sort of nest.

And then I brought him out.

I barely got the leash off before he bolted over to investigate.

Ooh, new toys!

When I left he was pulling out all the hay, stem-by-stem, fluff-by-fluff, and shaking each mouthful thoroughly to kill it good and then tossing it aside for more.

Back to the drawing board I guess.

The Ag Canary

In the news coverage coal mine.....

I often see agriculture as something of a canary in a coal mine when assessing the trustworthiness of a news outlet. With less than two percent of the population engaged in farming, it is to be expected that not too many farm kids make it to the news network big time.

So the question is, how well do regular reporters do their homework?

Generally not particularly well. Mainstream stories on ag tend to skim the surface very lightly...and I do mean VERY...or else to sensationalize the most ordinary and time tested of practices, or to just not get it at all. They embrace the cuddly, touchy-feely aspect, or bash those awful farmers. 

There are the big stories like "pink slime" and "mad cow" and there are little ones all the time, slanting and manipulating the views of the non-ag populace, probably more often than not unintentionally. Sometimes just a little homework, just a couple of questions for someone with boots in the barn, would clarify an issue, or bring out the actual facts.

However, sometimes those steps aren't taken.

I figure that the same folks probably treat the other news the same way. Who you gonna call?

The Excitement Never Ends

Red-breasted Merganser

So yesterday we went back down to the river, and although we didn't see the Black-bellied Plover again, we did meet two expert birders, with whom I was delighted to chat a bit. (Met one of them last spring in the same spot...so nice to encounter him again and to meet his friend .)

They identified a little flock of small shorebirds that kept whirling past us as Dunlin, which are new for me in the county, although I have seen them before at Montezuma.

A little better photo of the scoters....but only a little

They went down to Yankee Hill with us too, and confirmed that the birds there were indeed Surf Scoters, as they were still hanging around.

It spit and spat and sputtered rain all day today, so I did a short walk around the house and called it good until late this afternoon.

Then we went back down to Schoharie Crossing, as it had stopped raining for a bit.

It was COLD (!!!) down there and the wind was roaring, so I bent over to zip my hoodie.

There, right at my feet, right at the edge of the water, was a merganser. I have been looking, both here and at Montezuma, for a Red-breasted Merganser for at least a year. I have seen dozens of Common Mergs and find them delightful....but I wanted the rarer one.

And guess what..... 

Red-breasted Merganser

The Things you See

Cheap Date

Greater Yellowlegs

I am. Point me at the outdoors and hand me my binoculars. We ran down to the river today to celebrate getting the taxes paid. (Thanks for all the help....you know who you are).

We saw the most amazing birds! Yankee Hill Lock and Schoharie Crossing SHS at the boat launch are exciting places for good birds. We saw Pectoral Sandpipers a week or so ago at the latter but today, just wow.

Black-bellied Plover

First we spotted a little white sandpiper-ish thing hanging around with some Yellowlegs. I thought (and hoped) it was a Black-bellied Plover and the experts agreed. 

Then when we came home I looked at some photos of the Yellowlegs, which I had thought were all Greaters, and thought we had a Lesser. Experts agreed.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Next came some odd little black ducks at Yankee Hill Lock. Folks have been seeing Surf Scoters up in Saratoga Lake for the past week or so and I really wanted to see some over here...just one county away...but I didn't expect to. 

These birds were all the way across the river, the light was poor, and they were almost the color of the water. Couldn't see them at all without the binoculars; I had to photograph them by finding landmarks nearby and taking photos of those....just hoping the birds were in the frame.

Hopefully Surf Scoters (in front of the Canadas)

After much discussion the good folks at What's this Bird mostly agreed that we had indeed found Surf Scoters, lifers for me, and rare birds here, according to eBird. There is still some discussion that they may be White-winged Scoters as some were seen here about five days ago. Whichever, they were pretty cool. Guess we will see what the eBird reviewer thinks. 

What a tremendous amount of fun we had, what with worrying about taxes off our minds. The best part from my point of view was that I got them right...or kinda sorta right...or I at least had the right answers among the birds I was considering, and hoping against hope that my wildest guesses were the correct ones.

What a day!