Scouting

This story was written on November 7th. However, due to the cloak-and-dagger nature of deer scouting, you had to wait to read it until deer season ended here. Now it can be published.

November 7th, 2017:

It is getting hard to get my walking in these days. 10,000 steps is more than it seems. It takes a lot of time to cover enough ground, and on these rocky hills a good deal of effort to get it done.

Thus this morning I started early, while the rest of the house was asleep, almost as soon as it was light. It was cold compared to recent weeks, and grey and rather gloomy. 

The birds were nothing exciting. The usual winter sparrows plus a few leftovers from summer. A couple of geese, a handful of jays, some lingering robins and the like.

I didn't mind a bit; just getting out and seeing them is reward enough for me.

Thus when I was done and headed down behind the barn I was content and full of happy comfort.

Suddenly I became aware of a loud rattling in the dead, brown goldenrod behind me. Now, even a Downy Woodpecker can make a lot of noise in dead vegetation, but this was loud. It made me a little nervous as it kept coming and coming and yet I couldn't see any thing at all.

I realized that it had to be a deer to make as much noise as that and then I smelled it, the rank stink of  buck deer. A buck smells a lot like a goat only less sharp and more musky. Alan taught me to recognize it on a trip to Montezuma a few years ago and now I find a lot of deer that way.

I waited and waited as it crashed around out there, still seeing nothing but I sure could hear it. Eventually all went quiet and I started back down to the house.

However, something made me stop and look back up the hill. Out of the western half of the field sprang a little four-point buck that lept across the farm road. 

Hot on his heels was a magnificent, calendar-picture, six-point, or maybe even an 8. It was hellbent on catching him, flashing fore hooves slashing at him as they ran.

They were so close. 

They never saw or smelled me though and only got out of camera range so quickly because they were intent on other things..one on getting out of Dodge, and the other providing the impetus to do so promptly.

I would share this with you today, but alas, I scout for just one guy....and he is in New Jersey right now.

Anyhow, that is the scouting report for the first week of this past November.

In the Spirit

Hunting season is still on.....

To go where no man has cut a Christmas tree before....or at least not this year

This would be a nice tree, don't you think?

Huh, guess she doesn't like it. Go figure

Some of us stayed at the bottom of the hill

Because of the tall grass and potential ticks

Others were bolder

Of the Season

Dizzying Dazzling

Out on the hill

You have days like that. Out in the snow yesterday morning, then we went to our usual haunts. Found no less than four Golden-crowned Kinglets, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a Grey Catbird, and a whole bunch of other cool birds. 

A view from the hill

Then when we were just getting ready to go out for the evening chore rounds one of our dear friends called having found a Snowy Owl right in our county. We raced up to see it and were just able to do so before it became too dark. Downright thrilling.

A few other things fell together to make for a pretty nice day. This morning it is cold and bright and quite inviting, but I am staying in off the hill because we have a lot to do today.....

Green Grass of December

Scat, Tracks, and Sudden Snow Squalls

What is is with all the wild game on the place using the road to the back of the farm for a latrine? Deer, rabbits, skunks, coyotes, foxes, turkeys, and mysterious creatures that may have come down from Mars just to produce scatological evidence. 

There are tracks too, many, many tracks. Some are obvious, once again, deer, yotes, foxes, and such, and lots of little sharp-nailed, pointy-toed critters of various sorts. I followed what I thought was a 4-wheeler trail into a field we haven't worked in a couple of years. It was beaten right down and I was muttering about danged trespassers only to find that it petered out into a dozen narrower trails....a set of animal paths instead.

Today there were snow squalls and cold southwest wind screaming through the Samaras on the Box Elders, about the only thing left on any of the trees. Even the oak leaves are now scattered across the fields like so many secret notes, dropped from somewhere in the sky, to be read only by passing mice and voles and missed by ent princesses who migrated south with the warblers.

It was an interesting walk just after dawn this morning, even if nearly devoid of any birds except crows, geese and goldfinches. It's pretty out there on a wild morning like this, but it was good to get back to the house and out of the wind.

150

Ring-billed Gull, so common as to form gigantic swirls in the sky over the river
and massive rafts on the sand and gravel bars there.

It's the little things....delicious Stewart's eggnog in that first cup of coffee. A sleepy jay calling from the Winesap tree just before dawn...no skunk so taking the doggies out is less fraught with peril.....little things, but welcome none the less.

Seeing 150 birds in your home county in a year. I know, I know, that is a pretty sad total compared to some of the knowledgeable and dedicated better birders out there. But for me, walking our own land and hitting a couple of area hot spots when the boss has time to take me...well, it's a big deal, at least here in my head.

I noticed the other day that the dark-winged gull we'd been seeing at Schoharie Crossing, hanging with Ring-billed Gulls, and Herrings, seemed small in comparison to the light-backed gulls around it. The normal dark gull for the area in winter is the Great Black-backed Gull, which is huge even in comparison to the Herring Gulls, which are pretty big in their own right.

I asked the experts and sure enough, it was a Lesser Black-backed gull, not terrifically rare, but uncommon enough and a first for me. There were only three reported on the state rare bird alert today so....

I guess I could just stop now and be content....but I am not going to. As soon as the sun comes up I will most likely head up the hill.....

Lesser Black-backed Gull, the little guy in the middle

Hot Pursuit

Maybe it's the full moon

We have had many adventures while birding the county this year. We have been accosted by vicious dogs and scary people.

The boss has locked the keys in the car several long, cold miles from home, when everyone who has a driver's license was very far away. The girls and Jade choreographed our rescue but it it was a miserable moment in time.

Now we are getting scoped out by the DEC when we walk the bike trails at our favorite spots. It is amusing but understandable. We dress in bright colors during hunting season. The fact that you aren't supposed to hunt in the places we visit does not stop everybody and we like living.

The other day a state patrol truck drove by at least four times where the bike path parallels the road for a bit, peering through the brush at us. Eventually he must have seen binoculars rather than rifles because he went on his way.....but I guess we must look more like hunters than birders.

Can't wait until I can go back to dark and dreary, drab and dismal, brown, grey, and green, birding clothes. The little birdies can see bright orange as well as the rangers and react accordingly.

Common Mergansers and Mallard Ducks

Ice Fog

Walked out on the hill this morning and didn't see a single bird the whole way up and all the way down. I did HEAR a bunch and that counts too, but it was downright foggy out there. At least the mud was frozen so it wasn't so slippery as it has been.

I sang out several times as I walked along on the frozen leaves, "I'm not a deer, I'm not a deer"....I hoped that would deter anyone hunting on us from taking a sound shot and finishing me off....not that I have seen any tracks that I couldn't account for in the past couple of weeks. And I do wear bright orange, but you can't HEAR orange, unless of course you are ingesting illegal substances, which I suppose some of the less responsible among the deer hunters may indeed do.

Anyhow, it was pretty, if not so very birdy out there.

The Cradle

Lesser Scaup in front of McDonald's last winter

This is never the best time of year for me. The short days and gloom and all..... it has been somewhat better than usual this fall, what with chasing birds every day, but it is still a season I endure rather than enjoy.

And don't get me started on Christmas.

There is however, one phenomenon that only happens in the winter that I have been anticipating daily.

The powers that be empty our river about this time of year, turning it from a massive anaconda that eats at its banks as if they were a herd of feral pigs, to a thin ribbon of silver, slipping between gravel bars and shallow mud pools. (Wish it was like that year round.)

This brings the most amazing birds you could imagine to our tiny inland town. It concentrates them wherever that is a little open water. The area downtown by McDonald's, where Becky is a manager, Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, where we go most every day, and Yankee Hill Lock, where we go except in summer, turn into legit hot spots. Loaded with birds....sometimes quite rare ones. Some days we count geese in the thousands, hundreds and hundreds of ducks, and more gulls than you would conceive.

Winter water levels transform the barren banks and pools in front of our farm into a nighttime safe space for Canada Geese and Mallards. I listen for their thin voices through the clamor of the Thruway and the rumble of the trains, both morning and night when I go out with doggies or just go out in the dark. It is usually dark, after all.....

This morning they were there...rocking in the river cradle and chattering quietly in the late of the night and the early of the morning. I was glad.

Common Merganser at Schoharie Crossing SHS

She's Such a Drama Queen

November.......

What is it

About this time of year and being busy? Seems to keep me from posting here even though I want to.

It is as if we aren't doing anything and yet we are doing it all day long. I started looking for the office desk yesterday. I know there is one down there somewhere. However, a veritable blizzard of paper has fallen.....from the sky I guess....and there isn't a single spot where you can see the faux wood of it.

I suppose if I had actually filed anything since last April it might not be so bad. 

But I didn't. 

So here is a post....an Amish corner post in fact. They are nothing if not clever....

The Things you See

The majestic American Elk, all decorated for the coming holiday

Add your own caption here

Edwin the Elk studied fashion design online at the Academy of Art.
He specializes in baling twine twisting and macrame.

Rear view, demonstrating the other side of this creature's fine fashion sense

A pair of Great Blue Herons in the old "giant beaver" pond.....

And, yes, that is snow....

To all our Friends and Family

This is...or was....Lucy, a sweet and singularly box-of-rocks silly turkey we were once given.

Destined for the Thanksgiving table of Angelo, who delivered grain to us back in the day, she imprinted on humans.

She loved everybody.

Angelo didn't have the heart to eat her so he passed her off to us, imagining that we might be harder of heart.

Hah, around here, although we hunt and grow our own stock for food, there are still plenty of soft hearts.

Thus this pet bird had the run of the place until some wild varmint celebrated his Thanksgiving a little early and we lost her. We missed her...... In our defense, for weeks someone went out every night to pick her up and carry her into the pony barn. Have you ever been beaten up by a turkey? I have. I carted her in a couple of nights. Those wings! Dayam! She nearly beat me senseless. 

Anyhow, I hope you all have a lovely holiday. We shamelessly cooked and boned our bird yesterday, so all that remains for today is thawing and heating yams and jams and spamalot....no, no, I mean squash and the like...and making gravy and dressing and a couple of casseroles....and then eating and a bit of delivery.

Liz made pies.

And bread.

And lots of cookies......

Love to all, and a very Happy Thanksgiving as well.

Two by Two

In the Mist

When I first went out this morning Orion was so bright he seemed like ice fire in the sky. There was a wall of mist over the river....each car on the Thruway lit it up white, then red, then back to grey.

By dawn the fog had crept up the hill and blotted out the stars, but as the sun came up the icy mist was wonderful...