High Summer

 

 The stress is higher than the heat index....but still....

Mappy

Happy Birthday, baby brother. Sorry you have to spend it so far from home. 

The chicken was incredible!

Love you!

Chick-fil....A Prime!

You can't beat locally grown chicken that goes from coop to cuisine in less than 24 hours.

My dear brother's family raised chickens this year and he and my nephew processed a few this weekend. They gave us one. (Many thanks!)

What a chicken! Eight weeks old, but it looked like a small turkey. I stuffed in some herbs from the yard, added a little garlic and the top off a walking onion, a little butter and roasted it until it was almost falling off the bone.

Delicious!

Chicken casserole with the leftovers tonight, the Good Lord willing....

Contrasts

The other day we found that the Schoharie Crossing State Historical Site had been vandalized since we had last visited, albeit in a fairly minor way. The mess was promptly cleaned up and many more signs warning visitors against everything from COVID to Zebra Mussels appeared.

Yesterday there was a big pile of empty (and incidentally illegal as heck) fireworks boxes to greet us. However, they were neatly piled for pickup by the crew. There have not been very many backyard displays this year, whether because the governor has troopers at the border to stop folks from importing them or people are afraid to travel out of state...might not be able to get back in and all...I just don't know.

However there was something else on a rock out in the river that was very different.

A bit of red and green caught my eye from some distance away and I put the bins on it. Weird.... but It was very birdy just then and I wanted to keep hunting. We had a short amount of time so I almost ignored it.

However curiosity got the better of me...I am one of those people who just HAS to know...so I moseyed on over.

What I found is pictured above, a small pack of plants, a bouquet of flowers, and two candles in glasses. My first thought was a memorial for someone's loss, so I said a small prayer for the deceased and left quickly.

Killdeer

However, as soon as Liz saw the photos she said, "Somebody is romantic! I'll betcha someone is going to get a really sweet proposal today, maybe in a kayak."

And it all made sense.

I surely do like her version a lot better. Everybody loves a romance.

Nice and tidy 

Even Here

In this majestic rural park........I feel bad for the maintenance crew, really nice fellows, who have enough to do with the mowing and trimming and picking up of all the lazy people's garbage. Now a little dose of vandalism too. Not nice.

Imagine

Growing up where you never find a black raspberry overlooked by foraging birds and pop it in your mouth to savor the wild, tart flavor.

Never being able to ramble at will, wandering aimlessly, lost in imagination, immersed in passive education, learning from living. Letting your mind run unfettered and free.

No mud puddles. No tire swings.

No secret rays of sun slanting down to reveal some hidden delight, deep in the wild jungles of the backyard or the edge of the hay field.

Missing out on that first wild deer staring back at you from a dew-soaked hedgerow, and the thunder of a Ruffed Grouse winging away through the pines.

Never climbing a real tree, skinning your legs on the sharp bark as you shinny and shove your way to a mysterious vantage point looking down on a different world.

Never hiding in a grass fort with a magical book that spirits you away to places no one has ever seen except among its pages.

Imagine a world without the Internet and never missing it.  Dewey Decimal anyone? I have since embraced it with great glee. It's kinda nice to be able to know almost anything you want to learn but freedom was better.

 I feel sorry for kids who are missing out on the joy of running wild in the world and trusting yourself to find your way home.

It's kinda sad. 

A Pretty Lily

A Fun Game

This is the most inclusive shot I took.
Note that there are birds all the way to the edges. I think
there were some outside the photo as well.

Called "Count the Commons".

Mergansers that is, Common Mergansers.

A portion of the frantic raft o' ducks

This little flow of water around the edge of an island at Yankee Hill Lock was crammed with them. It was impossible to count through the bins so I took photos.

A lot of them.

However, between the rocks among them and the number with their heads under water a rough count is the best I could do.

*Hint-there are more then 20. 

Let me know what you think, as I have to finish my eBird checklist for the location.

Thanks.

But wait, there's more!

Or should I say there were more. At least 14 additional birds were resting on rocks downriver a bit.

It was a fish duck extravaganza. 

Full o' smiles, taking my turn to wait in the car. Cheery eh?

Osprey

We found something neat the other day.

While waiting at a stop sign over in Fonda, I looked down at the county building. There was a bird on the cell tower there. A closer look through binoculars revealed an Osprey nest complete with adult Osprey.

I think that may be the first time I have ever been glad of a long line of down-the-hill traffic. I snapped a few shots, the traffic let up and we were off. Once home I realized that the nest is in the atlas priority block we live in. We have found a number of breeding species here, as mentioned the other day, but there sure haven't been any this exciting.

Ospreys not only nesting in our county but right across the river from us. I wonder how long the nest has been there and if others have noticed it and I just haven't heard. I'll bet they have.

Anyhow, we go that way often so it will be easy to keep an eye on the nest to see what we may see. I think, by the manner in which the adult was tending the nest, that there may even be babies.

Meanwhile our county is getting hit with an uptick in Covid cases, which is of no small concern. I can't lie. We have been getting a little lax in our vigilance. Back to the drawing board on that. Ugh.

And just to add to the 2020 fun, as I was walking across the living room this morning there was a big bang down by the road that sounded like a truck tire on the Thruway. Except that the power went out instantly. Thankfully Nat Grid came in and fixed what turned out to be a thrown fuse on the pole, but we were plenty worried about the freezers wherein there are months worth of food for both families. We do have a generator, but it isn't exactly handy to hook up.

Just another day in paradise. 

Heat Wave

Sunset over our favorite orchard..unedited

This weather is not kind to people like me. My paternal grandmother suffered horribly from it, my dad does, and the older I get the worse it gets me.

Thus not much posting. 

Older doe or nursing big fawns? Or both? She is awfully thin for high summer

However, we have stolen some time from a broken baler, babysitting, housework, and gardening to sit in front of our fans ramble around watching the corn fields burgeon and the brilliant sunsets fling their bling.

Summer snow storm...Cottonwood seeds

Of course there have been birds involved but this is not exactly the birding festival season. High points in general include atlasing all the nests and fledglings and shrieking babies in the bushes and trying for photos and audio of as many county species as we can get.

No comment, other than that she is sure a worker

So far this season in my primary "patch", which I have named Northview Farm House Yard, we have had successful nests of Cedar Waxwings, Purple and House Finches, American Robins, European Starlings (not much of an accomplishment that) Black-capped Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, Baltimore Orioles, Common Grackles (another dubious delight), Eastern Phoebes, and Mourning Doves that I can think of offhand. 

Grey Catbird

We have counted 85 species in the area that includes the house, driveway, the walk over to the barn, and the yards around the house. This is actually somewhat low, because this year I split observations on the farm into two "yards" to be more accurate for the atlas. Thus the back of the farm birds are on another list.

I think this guy may do custom work. We see him and his mules all over

Last night we took a little ramble and saw interesting things including most of the White-tailed Deer population of the entire county attempting to end it all on the hood of our car. I was actually really glad to get home alive.

Lyker's Pond

Anyhow, here are a few of the things we have seen when out and about.

And baby makes three....see him back there following the rake that his mama is pulling?

Stay cool!

Happy Father's Day

To my dad, my dear husband, my brothers, uncles, friends, and family men, and all the men who were there for their kids and raised them. 

Well done, guys, kids need daddies.

And especially thanks to my father for giving me a lifelong love of learning, books, the outdoors, music, and especially birds. 

Love you dad!