Velociraptor

One of at least two Cooper's Hawks that are hunting the place.
The other is immature, and thus more brown than all these fancy colors

Counting birds, when suddenly all goes silent. Birds melt, some tucking up under the edge of the foundation, some in the Christmas trees that form a windbreak for the ground-feeding birds, some flying off as fast as light.

This bird, a flying appetite, sails over to perch on the big elm by the heifer barn, or in the nearby trees, or even on the roof of the house itself.

I haven't seen it take any prey, but he, or more likely she, as this is a big bird, has left some marks.

There is a Mourning Dove with a ruffled neck and only one tail feather and a White-throated Sparrow with no tail at all.

I have only one question...why, does this hungry predator not eat any and all of the 35 Brown-headed Cowbirds that come in to hoover every single seed off the big feeder and scare all the other birds away?

Why?

TB Ward

Check out the Chihuahua with delusions of grandeur. 

This place sounds like one. Every single one of the six of us is still coughing and hacking and sneezing and wheezing. We assume that eventually we will all get over it and things will look better. 

Meanwhile I will leave you with a young Amish fellow we saw racing his horses around and around his barnyard. 

No idea whether he was taking a little spin off them before getting out to work, or just having a good time. There was a second pair with some other folks watching as he went dashing through the snow in a two-horse open bob sleigh. They looked pretty awed, as were we.

I much admire his ability to balance, while standing up on a flipping and flying wagon like that....and to steer around all the stuff in that yard while not hitting any of it. Impressive!

National Milk Day

I am ever so grateful to have grown up in an era when parents and grandparents knew that milk helped build strong bones and healthy bodies, and considered it a necessary part of every meal. Thanks, mom and dad, aunts and uncles, and grandparents in Heaven.....

When we were kids there was always milk in the house, usually Glen and Mohawk, which we called Nelg and Kwahom, because we were just that weird. 

The milk plant where it was bottled was right down in town, and it was readily available in every little store around. When the folks had the antique and book stores in Fonda, the grocery where we bought it was just two doors down the street. Remember Collin's Grocery?

When we moved to the county to the north, where stores were not as handy, we bought milk from an area farmer. I don't recommend drinking raw milk today, unless it is from your own cows and you are confident of its safety and all, but we dipped it right out of the tank in those days and still managed to grow up pretty rugged.

Nowadays, Glen and Mohawk is long gone, but we buy milk from Stewart's two gallons at a time. Since the kids drink milk too, there are usually four gallons in the fridge. Whether it is poured on cereal, sloshed into every single cup of coffee that I drink (and there are many), or served with meals, we drink it every day at pretty much every meal. They look at us funny in restaurants when we order it with meals there too.....

I don't know what we would do without milk, but we sure wouldn't be happy. 

Thank you America's dairy farmers, especially the local folks who supply Stewart's with their award-winning milk. We would get awfully thirsty without you!

Winter Hardy

My mom shared this wonderful photo of our boy and my dad on Facebook
From whence I promptly and shamelessly stole it.
Aren't they sweet?

When you go out to walk the dogs without a coat or vest because it feels plenty warm...maybe 35 or 40 degrees....and come inside to find that it is a whopping 12 instead.

That's what a couple of weeks of single digits and foul winds will do. Gonna be in the 40s by week's end. We'll be wearing shorts and drinking Mai Tais. 

Except that, once I saw the temperature, I had to come back inside and get my hoodie......

Doesn't he look a lot like Grandpa now?

I'll save you some time....

A non-electronic dogging device

Looking up information on the new Electronic Logging Device rules for drivers. Working on the Farm Side today and learning a lot.

Below are some links to information I have found:

How the ELD mandate will affect the horse industry.

Giant Step Backward for Animal Welfare

A spot to comment if you have a dog in the fight..... or a pony in the dog and pony show....

Looking Back

Late with the bird feeders this morning...see yesterday's post....and today is a work day, so I got busy on the Farm Side for Friday.

Looked up from the computer to see a Mourning Dove perched on the windowsill looking in at me, craning his neck, and peering all around the kitchen.

"Where is she? Breakfast is always served at just before daybreak. What's going on here anyhow?"

A Blue Jay topped the arbor and a couple of dozen other birds were arrayed on it, under it, and all over the whole back yard.

I like to look out at the winter birds. Who knew that they were looking back?

Did Ja Miss Me?

Pretty much how we all feel

We have been and are continuing to be sick with a rotten cold. Praying that the man flu doesn't hit the boss, as he is about the only holdout from this plague.

This has not stopped me from doing a bird list a day, although the cold, cold, cold, weather has curtailed where we have been and what we have seen.

That is all.....

This too

Chance

I nearly always turn on the yard light when I walk the doggies before dawn. Kinda creepy out there you know.

However, this morning, what with the barely waning moon, I left it off. I was hoping to see the deer that have been coming down to look for leftover bits of hay around the yards. With such short snow cover this winter there are still a lot of them hanging around even this late in the season.

I was quickly rewarded by ghost bunnies drifting silently into the bushes after cavorting on the lawn all night. For some reason the dogs never seem to see them.

Frost outlining the cars seemed lit from within, its haunting luminescence casting an eerie glow over their mundane shapes.

Shadows from the house and trees were stark, sharply defined as ink drawings, and the lights across the river seemed almost magical.

It was almost ten degrees, which felt like summer after the cold and winds we've been having....back to that tomorrow night btw...and for once I didn't mind Finn's usual Border Collie deliberations about just which "spot" was the right one. 

Then as I looked up at the sky for who knows what reason, except that I look at the sky a lot, a shooting star blazed and winked out, right over my head.

Amazing. I don't believe I have seen more than one or two since I used to take the kids out on the hills when there was a meteor shower...... I had to come right in and tell you about it, even though I am supposed to be racing to complete the Farm Side, having goofed off with the CBC yesterday and the holiday on Monday.

CBC

Looks like a moonscape, but not far from home

We did our portion of the Johnstown Christmas Bird Count today, and alas, it was far from exciting. We saw perhaps a fifth as many birds as normal, possibly due to the extreme cold. It was supposed to hit 22 but never surpassed 9 degrees!

The fact that ALL our favorite open water spots were frozen over and covered with snow probably didn't help. The boss was kind enough to drive and Becky tabulated birds....we didn't work her too hard...while I ID'd. It did not strain my skills much to pick out crows, jays, juncos, and a few other birds. Best birds were a few Wild Turkeys huddled on a brushy hillside. Credit goes to the boss for spotting them.

From out of the far, far North, the little KeeKee birds.....
Snow Buntings.
Some years we are lucky to see any. In the past few days we have seen at least 800

Oh, well, better luck next year and we had a fabulous day yesterday looking around our own county. I didn't list them, because I was not 100% positive, but I am maybe 80% sure we saw both the Short-eared Owl that was spotted on a road we know, plus a Lapland Longspur among a group of Snow Buntings and Horned Larks...great incentive to get out there and look again when we have some time.

New Year's Day Traffic

In Upstate NY.

Happy New Year from Northview

The last bird I saw yesterday as the year ended, and I believe the first for the New Year as well
Or at least there was a White-throated Sparrow sitting in the same bush this morning as the sun came up

And the New Year's Eve moon, putting on a big show to send the year out with a bang

This Song

Because Yankee Hill Lock isn't supposed to look like this

Because it fits perfectly.

Especially the lyrics....."Canadian cold front movin' in....."

And staying, and staying, and staying and staying.....

BITD

We showed bulls at the fair

Walebe Jewelmaker, by SWD Valiant, out of Wiilsondale Citation Jewel

Showed ponies in halter and harness....this is Major Moves

In a calf halter....elegant, no?

Had to learn to put the harness on first....looking perplexed here

With Deranged Richard

And sometimes painted horses for friends

A Christmas Bird

Common Yellowthroat

Warblers make for tough IDs. They change plumage from bright to dull between spring and fall...or at least some of them do. Males are often glowing rock stars while females are drab as dirt. They hybridize sometimes, in the shadowy alleys behind the trees and bushes. Their kids are odd. Really, they are worse than Indigo Buntings for sporting a dozen different looks over the course of the year.

Even experts argue over them often.

Thus this fall, during migration, when our yards and fields were graced with gazillions of them, I struggled.

And struggled. I saw life birds, almost daily, as I learned to recognize Blue-winged from Tennessee and sorted the myriad Common Yellowthroats in all their variations from everybody else that looked just the same...only different.

One day, out in the foggy morning, I saw a Connecticut Warbler. Well, actually I saw two, but more about that later. My bird was almost like a Mourning Warbler, only different. And almost like a Common Yellowthroat, only different. Saw it, couldn't photograph it, shared it on an eBird list.....

And then deleted it. The bird was right. Greyish head. Yellowish belly. Bright eye ring. However, similar birds were causing excitement among better birders down in the  Big Apple and all.

Who was I to think that I saw such a bird right in the bushes next to the driveway?

And then there was the green warbler in the heifer barnyard. It sat there, back turned towards me, fat, happy, and the prettiest off-green you could imagine. I got the binoculars on it for mere seconds, but there was no mistaking that it was something different...and cool....Never figured out just what it was though.

Fast forward to Christmas. Besides Herkimer Diamonds and tools, foodstuffs (they know me, don't they?) and my amazing lamp, people gave me birding things. Suet blocks, fancy seed concoctions, all sorts of goodies......I am smiling even now, just thinking of them.

And The Warbler Guide. I wanted that book so badly and it made me really happy to find it under the tree so to speak. I put it next to my chair and every night I read a few birds. Peer at plumage. Stare at stories, songs, and photos.

Fat, green, and visiting our barnyard last fall

The other night there it was...the green bird in all its glory, just like the one we had in the barnyard, plump, pretty, and a Connecticut Warbler, all day long.

I know I'm gonna love this book.....

Now, if only these pests would migrate south and leave the birdseed for the northern birds

Back to the Grind

The road not traveled

700 words written of 1000 that are due tomorrow, all about what's going on in farm politicking. From the president speaking to AFBF next month, to NYFB's Circle of Friends, to the new Farm Bill website put up by the House Ag Committee, it's all fodder for me and Google Docs. I need one more short topic. Or maybe two if they are really short.

Wood is going through the stove like salts through a goose as they say, bird seed vanishing ditto. Looks as if we are in for some chilly weather the next week or so. Dunno what it is with Upstate NY, but we are often colder than southern Alaska.

If you were wondering where all the birds were during the long, warm, calm autumn, wonder no more. They are on or around our feeders from before I put them out in the morning until after I bring them in at dark. If you go out before dawn you will literally almost step on Mourning Doves and Dark-eyed Juncos waiting for the seed.

And then, while I was working on my writing chores, the bank called. Someone in Florida has been using the boss's debit card.....wonder if this story had anything to do with it.....

Just Because

When you share Christmas with someone who is only 3 there must be photos and videos

Merry Christmas

You Won't Believe It

This beautiful lamp is made entirely from recycled glass except for the light mechanism. Amazing huh? Made by Amber and her mama.....thanks!

Gifts from my Father

A close look inside the one Becky chose. Do click for added detail

We took a little Christmas to Mom and Dad yesterday, fruits, nuts, a few cookies and candy canes......

While we were there I was admiring some Herkimer Diamonds Dad had in a container on the table.

He offered me and Becky the chance to choose a few and it was impossible to resist. I do love rocks, stones, minerals, and particularly lovely shiny crystals like these. Guess it's the magpie in me.

I have wonderful memories of collecting these with Mom and Dad, of chaperoning school trips to do the same, and digging with my younger brother too. Finding them is at least half the fun. Thanks, Dad!

Best Bird of the Year

There have been any number of times when I might have said that. The Snowy Owl my friend found. The Black-bellied Plover at Schoharie Crossing. Surf Scoters, Pied-Billed Grebe, White-winged Scoters. Lots of exciting birds.

Today marked the icing on the cake though. The boss and I went out to do our rounds, hit the boat launch, walked Yankee Hill, and then settled into the public parking spot on Riverside Drive to enjoy the goose and duck show. On any given day you might see a couple of different kinds of mergansers, hundreds of geese and gulls, hundreds of glowing Mallards, and lots of other goodies.

I was picking out the American Black Ducks from the Mallards, when an eagle swooped over, strafing the ducks and sending them swirling. I watched it for a minute, then grabbed a quick photo as it was pretty close and went back to counting and sorting.

When I looked at the back of the camera I would have sworn that it was a Golden Eagle. However, I didn't dare believe it until I put it on What's this Bird on Facebook. Fortunately my impression was correct and it was! Only the third I have ever seen other than out west! A big day for the Northview bird pursuit crew.

Great Black-backed Gull