Lulling Us

Into a false sense of spring....

The sun tracks the tiniest of fractions higher in the sky each day. Although it’s still low enough at daybreak and in evening that there is nearly equal light on all horizons, you can see the changes in shadow and shine.

New warmth is swiftly perceptible, a welcome hint of joy on winter-wind-chilled faces and hands. It is good to stand, sheltered from the wind, to just enjoy it now and then.

The snow can feel its subtle pressure too.

On days when the wind is right, a nubbin of the white stuff will break off the shale cliffs to the west of the farm house. Then another and another, until a fine storm of natural snowballs flows down the steep face, each gathering rosebuds as it may.

Or rather gathering more and more snow, until the ditch at the bottom is littered with them... Imperfect nautiluses, ephemeral as spring.

Snow rollers we call them. I love to see them, although it is nearly impossible to stop to photograph them, what with the wild and woolly traffic on our little road these days.

Then as they melt away and the snow covering the cliffs does too, the bright blue ice below shows its colors. Each year sheets of ice emerge from broken rock faces, along many nearby roads. sometimes it is white, or dirty brown, but here and there it shows sky blue, turquoise, or greenish-blue, in a sort of weird and lovely road art.

I wonder when the next storm will come.....

Gull-ible

I see you, but I can't always ID you...(Herring Gull BTW)

 I am terrible at gulls. If the commonest, most ordinary, most every-day sort of gull, say a Ring-billed or Herring Gull, were to land on my shoulder and start pointing out its own field marks, I would second guess myself anyhow.

Thus I often post gulls, even such things as first cycle Ring-billed Gulls on bird ID pages....just to be sure.

Glaucous Gull

I was pretty sure I saw a Glaucous Gull today. Big, even when compared to adjacent Herring Gulls, the right color and all. However, I posted asking if it was an Iceland Gull, as that seems to be the go-to plain white gull around here.

However, happy dance, it was a Glaucous. Then, as I was deleting unwanted photos I noticed what appeared to be a smaller white fella, with an all black bill...

Iceland gull

Whadda ya know, an Iceland Gull in the same picture.

How cool is that! A twofer.

The twofer

Look who else loves the glow ball

A Mystery

A couple of weeks ago we noticed what appeared to be a trap near the Schoharie Crossing State Historical Site, where a flock of American Black Ducks has been hanging out since the worst of the ice went.

Hmm, who would be trapping "our" ducks.

There are often ducks inside the trap apparently eating some sort of bait. There are often tracks leading down from the shoreline above.

The mighty Schoharie from one of the spots where we look for ducks

We figured that it was some sort of scientific project so we weren't too worried, but still, inquiring minds want to know.

Yesterday I found this story, which led me to this story, and all became clear.

How neat that the ducks we count every day....looking for birds less common than American Black Ducks and Mallards...are contributing to scientific understanding of duck populations.

BTW, it is great fun to watch the Black Ducks ride the roller coaster of the little falls above the aqueduct. They are like fat black corks, gliding over the riffles and ripples and then flying back up. I think they are having fun.

American Black Duck

Far

Horned Lark, taken up in Stone Arabia yesterday

From spring, or at least far from real spring. However, one day last week the male American Goldfinches were singing up a cluttery storm. The Carolina Wren started a few days later. He has to be the loudest bird in NY.

 This morning three Tufted Titmousies were calling spring songs. A Northern Cardinal was singing, as were the goldfinches. A White-throated Sparrow spoke of Canada or Sam Peabody depending on your interpretation. Sounded like spring for sure.

We saw a Song Sparrow the other day too. The starlings are making calls like Red-winged Blackbirds. Can the real deal be far behind? I think I saw some at dusk up in Sprakers the other night, but we were going too fast and it was too dark to be sure.

To me, the RWBLs are true harbingers of spring. Everyone tags robins for this job, but they hang around all winter. Most years we see our first American Robins within a week of the New Year. We must have seen a hundred yesterday in our marathon Valentine's Drive Around.......

We saw genuine winter birds, too. Horned Larks and Snow Buntings were plentiful everywhere we drove. The latter are wildly beautiful when they undulate over a field in bright, thin sunshine.

Also spotted two Northern Rough-legged Hawks flying together up on Fiery Hill. They are also northern birds, here for the hunting during the cold times. These two were stunning, with one almost pure white except for the diagnostic markings they sport. They were quite obliging and flew around us for a few minutes before sailing away.

It's certainly not spring yet, but it is kind of fun birding the cusp

Rainbow Dash

Book Huntin'

Dr. Peggy holding surgery with her dogs, cats, and horses...
and unicorns, and tigers....and other creatures great and small

Peggy has finally decided that it is okay to sit on my lap in the evening. Sometimes she watches a movie on her Kindle while I read on my NOOK. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes stuffed animals act out this and that, and sometimes we just enjoy each other's company.

I would like to add reading to her to this mix, but I don't want it to be the same old-same old. Her mama reads to her a lot in the evening, and she has plenty of books to love.

However, I would like to share the books that delighted me when I was young, some of which are especially timeless and pertinent to us animal loving folks who like to learn.

Thus I renewed a search that has been ongoing for me for several years now. My late grandmother worked in a news shop, which sold magazines as well as books. Christmas was about guaranteed to supply wonderful reading material, from comics to hard covers.

I remember one, a great, big, shiny, hardcover, that had stores and poems about animals. I know I wore it out. I still remember some of the poems.

However until today I have been unable to find it, even by searching for the text of the poems. 

Suddenly, while looking at hundreds of covers from the fifties and sixties I remembered the title!

Dogs, Cats, and Horses....... It's a bit pricey for a used kid's book, but still.....

This will always be Your Bird

It's been a year and almost a week... I've been through the stages I guess. Reminders sometimes make me smile, and a good thing too, as there are many of them.

 This time of year seems to be the hardest though. Picking away at the accounts for the taxes, the one time of year when we got to talk face-to-face for a couple of days instead of fast on the phone....unless we dropped something off at your house when the garden was making extra or something like that.

Sitting in the office in the same chair you used when you visited, I puzzle over an entry...what account, what account....and I remember labeling such data in a weird fashion, knowing that when you sat at this same desk, teasing the useful numbers out of my tangled tales of income and expenses, you would ask, "What's this?"

And, memory jogged, I would explain, and you would fix it as it needed to be.

Now, I still puzzle and just hope our accountant catches it.

Auto-fill in the bookkeeping program you set up for me. When I pay the power bills it offers your name as the first suggestion, from back in the day when I still paid you in money rather than in soup and homemade bread and before the days when we were both paid in time spent together...talking....waiting for the best birds to come out to celebrate your visits....just being friends. We were, weren't we? Great friends, the kind they talk about who can be separate for weeks, months, years, and then take up as if we just had coffee yesterday.

You know how the kids say BFF, best friends for ever? Yeah, that still holds.

It's a Cat Eat Duck World

Last summer, the boss and I watched a yellow tom cat nearly murder a much smaller black cat that was hiding among the rip rap at Schoharie Crossing. It was quite a fight.

We never saw either cat again and thought little of it.

Fast forward to now. We have been going to the museum side of the Schoharie to count the American Black Ducks there. Yesterday there were sixty!

Today there were not quite as many, but there was a deadly predator on the ice stalking them.

Critter A) the big yellow Tom, or the big yellow Don, as the case may be
Critter B) your guess is as good as mine. Click to see if you know..

That blasted yellow cat! He was right at the edge of the ice just a few feet from the nearest duck, which would soon have been within his reach. Behind him on the ice was something, which may have been a chupacabra or some other killer...or maybe just last summer's little black cat.

Anyhow, the ducks all flew when I walked down to see what it was. I was okay with that. Maybe I saved one from this cat, which I will henceforth call Donald.I mean seriously, a cat, hunting ducks almost as big as he is? Mind boggling.

If looks could kill I would be at the bottom of the Schoharie

The Big Reveal

Or....didn't we feel silly! The "owl" we saw in a hay field we were passing the other day was an errant cat....as you can see from the edited photo.

Now every time we pass a cat I say to the boss, "Look, an owl!"

Rare Whiskered Owl

Click for a closer view

Found in the Town of Glen. We actually stopped to photograph this guy before realizing......

Did She or Didn't She?

When this photo was taken one July day three years ago, I think she did. Today, well, it is pretty darned sunny out, so six more weeks of winter.

But wait! In Upstate NY, on the second day of the second month, there are ALWAYS six more weeks of winter for our eager anticipation. 

Always.

Meanwhile, check this out. Turns out the things below may be more accurate than the rodent.

Milestones

It would be great if you could wish dear Rebecca happy birthday today. She is a very special person, as her co-workers, customers, friends and family well know.

And she makes the best darned coffee you can get anywhere in town....heck in both towns....I am having a cup of not-so-superior stuff this morning because she is off work for her birthday, and I miss the good kind.

Happy Birthday, kiddo! We love you!

Good Birds

Ring-necked Pheasant...calling him my nemesis bird
the past couple of years, as we just couldn't find one
until today

Rough-legged Hawk

Northern Harrier...the Grey Ghost

Pileated Woodpecker, a pair, right in the yard today

Been lucky the past couple of days, although we missed the Snowy Owls and the Short-eared Owl we've been chasing.

A Glaucous Gull, right down on the river today
a lifer for me

Great Black-backed Gull, not rare, but he posed nicely

Sneaky

January, the hard, white heart of winter, kinda like a jawbreaker that just won't melt....And yet....a different season is sneaking in unannounced and mostly unheralded. 

Or at least pretty much. 

A friend has shared photos of maple sap flowing, but he is a kidder, so it is hard to know.

However, down at the boat launch yesterday, we saw a big sapcicle, hanging in a maple tree so...guess it is true

And the Carolina Wrens are singing their hearts out after being quiet all winter.

Still, whether the trees or the southern transplant birds believe it or not, there is a lot of winter yet to come.

Alas.

But we did find a fork in the road

Oxygen

Blue Ice

The wind hoots like a Great Horned Owl, hoooo......hooooo....hoooooooo.....howling through the Honey Locust tree just before the break of day. It's cold out here, the ice like glass between the places where the boss has sanded. I am grateful for that I can tell you. Wouldn't be walking without it...and driving down the driveway....oh, my, such peril, without the benefit of grit and rock salt.

Not much fun in darkness with dogs...hurry up boys, fingers getting brittle here...

The Mulberry trees that feed the Mulberry Express in summer must feel the same way, as they rattle and clack in the heavy draft a'blowing. 

One of them is creaking ominously. Finn, let's take care of this business somewhere else, eh?

Still dead dark at 6 AM, not even a glow in the East, the dregs of Orion fading in the West. He can fade into spring anytime he wants to!

A domestic Greylag goose that used to hang out with the Canada Geese
Down by the river. I miss her!

Birding's been barren lately, of anything of much interest. A Hairy Woodpecker on the suet feeder, for a FOY, that's first of year, and a strange little goose down on the river, and that's about it, except for Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks. We see plenty of them.

The goose was DD, diagnosed domestic, by the experts. I knew the head wasn't right for a Snow Goose, but what an odd little bird to find with the Mallards on the ice down there. Funny how you find a few domestic geese and hybrids hanging out with the wild ones. I've seen two of the domestic Greylag sort, and now this one, said to be a Swan Goose.

Anyhow, props to Becky for finding a cold medicine that works. We have tried about everything and even some home remedies, (and a hearty thank you to those who sent the recipe!) which helped for a while, but didn't last long enough.

This stuff....oh, my, I had just about forgotten how it felt to breathe. Oxygen, it is terribly underrated these days! I like it!

A picture Becky took of me when I wasn't looking
Or at least not in her direction

Good Morning to You

But wasn't the Schoharie pretty the other evening when we went down?

So this morning we awaken to tsunami warnings for the left coast where two of my favorite guys are....centered near Anchorage, where a good blog friend lives, and flood watches and warnings for our local area, with one of our girls spending her work day a few yards from the river.

And squirrels on the bird feeders.

Dagnabbit. 

Actually, I haven't even put the feeders out yet, as it is still pretty dark and it's pouring, but there was just a squirrel looking in the kitchen window at me.

***Update, tsunami warning cancelled. And it's not raining anywhere near as hard as it was. 

We were in a traffic jam the other day......