Small Measures

Late snow, early geese

2011-03-29T10:29:00.004-04:00

Well, OK, the Canada geese might not be early.

I took the pup walking this morning near Horseshoe Bend of the Huntington River. A light snow was falling under an overcast sky. As we crossed the edge or the meadow, a pair of Canada geese flew across, dark against the sky then light against the evergreen-covered rise to the northeast. They honked as the flew, one deeper-voiced than the other. Maybe they were heading toward the pond off Mayo Road, unseen to the east, and above me.

The pup spared them a glance, but when back to snuffling old scents on the crusty settled snow. Me, I paused, watching.

View Larger Map

First Snow

2010-10-15T22:58:00.002-04:00

First snow tonight. Wet stuff, after another day of heavy rains and flood warnings. Not too much -- so far. I think of the first snow of the season being October 17th, plus or minus. I'd been guessing it would come on the 19th this year. So much for that.

Aside: we have enough wood. Not yet stacked though. Oh well.

Abigail's Addition

2010-09-08T20:58:00.000-04:00

Our not-so-small house is getting bigger...

Furry Neighbor

2010-06-12T11:23:00.003-04:00

Have I mentioned there's a groundhog living in the Big Pile Of Rocks? (Now I have.)

It's so far not eaten the been seedlings -- I have no faith that will last. It did investigate the future herb bed (which already has oregano and thyme, thanks to Mom's amazing gardens), and we've seen it doing so, as well as disappearing 'round the corners of the house. Its tail is noticeably short, which suggests something about both the pack-o-dogs that goes running by most days and about the groundhog.

About the pack-o-dogs: one of our nifty neighbors trains and boards dogs. She exercises them by running several miles UP the hills and then down to her home. About 4 are leashed and about 8 aren't, and they are generally excellent, civilized, normal dogs and she is very clearly Alpha Leader to them. So I have never had cause to worry about either my own dog or my children when they come by. The ground hog, of course, should worry.

I rather like having a groundhog neighbor, except I don't feel like sharing the garden. There's so much other grasses and plantains and such around for it... but I suspect it's tricky to train a groundhog.

I do have fencing, if I could find the time...

Seasonable

2010-04-12T13:35:00.004-04:00

Daffodils, up and in bloom. Scilla, also. Lilac buds are leafing out.

Wish I knew more about which trees were which. There's a project for this year... or next.

Seen (and sometimes heard): Dark-eyed Juncos, Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, White-breasted Nuthatches, Song Sparrows, American Robins, Mourning doves, Common Raven, Blue Jays, Eastern Phoebe (at our house, this one is known as "squeaky phoebe"). Possibly saw a Fox Sparrow.

Heard: My ear is woefully absent-minded. At my sister's, I heard (at least a month ago), someone saying "witter witter WET feet". At home, I'm hearing something like "maids maids kettle-ettle-ettle" (local dialect of song sparrow?).

Haven't been paying close attention, and we were away for a week.

Saw Eastern Newts and snails in High Pond. Three Gray squirrels this spring; two to four Red Squirrels (the end of the tail of one is patterned like a turkey feather!). Several Eastern Chipmunks.

My favorite spring observation so far: Kids playing in mud. (Me too.) We're building "gunk walls" to direct the water away from Pine Castle. The water comes from our spring, crosses under the road (in theory; there is a culvert again this year at least), seeps in more or less and eventually meets the creek. Pine Castle is a now topless white pine on a large mound, which makes for a good fort. Maybe photos sometime.

finding the borders after and under late winter detritus

2010-03-28T15:34:00.006-04:00

About 3 inches of daffodils are up. Most of the snow is gone. So I couldn't resist being outside a bit today; I know it's too early but... or maybe it isn't.

Anyway, I raked some, just dumping slightly-mulched the leaves into either one of the garden-beds-to-make* or under the white lilac and excessive roses**. They don't need the mulch at this time of year, but I figure those beds need more soil eventually and this should slow down some of the silly spread-themselves forbs. Wish I knew more about what's native or not.

I pulled old stems and leaves and bits of gravel and some persistent spreading ground cover off the rocks that edge the flower beds (the ones with shrubs and perennials along the road). I cut away old daffodil leaves, sedum plants, peony stems. I'm not much of one for annuals unless they self-seed. I have mixed feelings about sedum and some of the geraniums, 'cause they spread so. And the snow-on-the-mountain! If only it would be well-behaved ... but it tries to take over and isn't even as useful as mint. I planted bee balm with it last year, that should teach it . Let 'em duke it out. The bee balm (non-native varieties, though I tried to find those) is nice for the Ruby-throated hummingbird when the lavendar (er, lilac?) lilac isn't blooming.

The daffodils come up through years of gravel dumped via snow (carried in snow shoved onto these beds by the plow) mixed with whatever I toss in the previous fall (generally their own old stems and leaves). Once I tried to move them. I dug down at least six inches and never found the bulbs. I figured they must be alright enough then, and put the dirt back.

I am a very haphazard gardener. And lazy... no, no, I mean efficient. (Thus choosing perennials.) Well...

* We're gradually, year-by-year, adding beds for vegetables or herbs or whatever. Some are raised beds; this area will be more terraced with river rock "walls".

** Moved from my Mom's; some are transplants of her old roadside roses, which we "pruned by the plow" every year. Some are just random things she moved or divided. I do not pamper roses (indeed, I barely give them any attention), so mine are thorny, leggy, sometimes buggy, and smell wonderful.

ooh, that smell

2010-03-18T18:26:00.000-04:00

When we got home late this afternoon, the air was full of the taste of crisped maple sugar. I guess either Highland or Hillsboro (or both) were boiling off today.

Yum.

Yesterday through the window

2010-03-15T18:55:00.003-04:00

The lilacs have buds! Well, the white lilac anyway; it's the one with slightly better drainage and gets somewhat less snow plowed into it. The purple lilac is older, but has lost quite a bit to snowplowing (the shove of the snow more than the plowblade). (Oddly, the road and lilac have not moved in the over 13 years I've lived here. Go figure.)

I also saw a Dark-eyed Junco on the hydrangea. I haven't seen many of them this year. Was I not feeding enough, the right stuff? Was the snow just too deep for under-shrub feeding in the visible places?

The creek behind the house is running slightly high and cheerfully loud, and bit blueish with spring meltout. Oh, there's plenty of sagging snow and spots of ice over the mud still, and I'm sure we'll get some more before spring is solidly here, but this feels so welcome.

On my way to one of my clients' today, I saw a pair of Canada geese! They appeared to be playing the goose version of tag, as they swam in this semi-seasonal pond near a plowed field off Route 116. (This is the same field where I got my car stuck one day last year, because I'd turned off the road to look more closely at what turned out to be statues of swans. Ahem.) The Canada goose may be a year-rounder, maybe, out on Lake Champlain, but I don't see it up here in the winter, so that's a sign of spring for me. On the way home, I saw another waterfowl, possibly a Common Merganser, but I didn't have the chance to be sure. Either way, spring birds are a delight.

Oh, and in clicking through for the links (so you can see more about these birds), I found this painter, Catherine Hamilton. Love her touch with watercolors.

Little Shaker

2010-02-25T08:00:00.002-05:00

This morning I chose to sip my coffee in the rocking chair by the living room windows, instead of my usual spot in the nook in the comfy chair. I don't know why, exactly. It was a good choice, though. A little shake of the apple tree branches, and I saw more wet snow fell down.

The snow from yesterday's 2-foot-ish snowfall was already off most branches: the warming temperature yesterday afternoon and occasional winds and the branches' own flexibility sloughing to the ground. And the apple was getting a little help from a ruffed grouse.

LittleBirder came over and I helped him see this little wild chicken-cousin: buffy and brown patterns against wet branch patterns the color charcoal on a overcast dawn gray background. Easier, of course, when it moved! I don't know what it was finding on the branch. All the apples have fallen from that tree. Maybe some small insects?

Not So Small Measure of Wood

2009-06-26T08:40:00.013-04:00

Big Truck, Small Road

This year, R took care of ordering wood and arranging for delivery. It all happened faster than in previous years, and more cheaply (although it will be more work on our end). Yay. R ordered logs, which turned out to be seasoned ones (a good thing), so we'll have to buck them up to stove length, and rent a splitter to make them small enough to stack.

Using a boom with claw to lay the log lengths on a pile

M was thrilled to watch the Murray, the wood tech, use the grabbing claw on the end of the boom to lift the wood off the truck and lay it in the cleared space near our shed. One at a time, carefully!

Five, maybe six, cord of wood

When you go by logs, it's a lot harder to estimate cordage. This is somewhere between 5 and 7 cord of wood (we stack pretty snugly, and a cord is a volume measurement, so I'm guessing not quite 6 cord.) Our woodshed holds just over 5 easily. We'll have to rent or borrow a longer chain saw (some of those logs are about 20"-24" in diameter!) maybe, as well as the splitter.

The photo suggests the wood is leaning on the apple tree; it's not, but it's close. Aside: that poor apple had its top lopped off by the power company, clearing branches off the lines. This was a good precaution against the storms—we've had fewer power outages since they really started keeping up with that—but I wish they'd told me they were going to do this to the poor tree!

And our winter's heat is mostly here!

some tweets from April

2009-04-30T09:55:00.000-04:00

I'm on twitter (as metasilk). Sometimes I manage a relevant-to-small-measures post there, and sometimes I run out of time to update this blog as much as I'd like. So.... this post.

April 9: To chirps of woodpeckers dueling over suet, I finished a tedious bit of a small project.

April 14: A little brown bat is flying around over the road, in the shadow of the hillside. Sweet to see, but I worry he's not catching much.

April 23: Cool: purple finch on the black oil sunflower seed feeder today. Two Broadwinged* Hawks over the yard yesterday!

April 26: LittleBirder is making a mud puddle. I keep hearing happy noises from the front yard!

April 28: There's a white-throated sparrow singing LOUDLY in our woods, near our yard. Almost louder than the road grader! The birds are really delighting me recently. Wish I had time to write down all the observations, audio and otherwises. Heck, I wish I knew them well enough to ID them from said audio and visual... oh well. That's in the "someday when I have more time" daydream-pile, I suppose.

*I had originally, and mistakenly, ID'd these as Cooper's Hawks.

feed the birds!

2009-03-26T10:36:00.000-04:00

Just added a membership/donation form (PDF) to Birds of Vermont Museum's site. If I can get them up w/ PayPal we can do online memberships as well!

Rodents Awake!

2009-03-12T12:16:00.003-04:00

Saw a lovely gray squirrel this morning, and for the last three days or so have been seeing at least two eastern chipmunks (their tail lengths are quite different). I'm surprised the squirrel is so plump-looking, but perhaps he or she has been awake a few times this winter and restocked on the black oil seeds we supply. Or possibly just fuzzy with a winter coat, still.

Yay for mammals wakening into spring!

overheard

2009-02-15T05:06:00.001-05:00

I am walking the dog, elderly, tottery. It's FAR too early in the morning -- perhaps 5 o'clock, more or less. It's dark.

Threading though the hemlocks, barely heard over the sound of the thawed snow splashing over ice in the stream, the thin faraway call of a coyote, perhaps too. A long howl dropping into a short yipping chatter. Again.

I'm relieved they're out past the ponds, far enough to hear, not too likely to come by right now. I know they have left tracks in the past days and weeks, not even 200 yards from where I stand now. I'm glad they're in the woods, but comforted at the distance. One fewer worry of things that bother my beloved old dog.

Great Backyard BirdCount 2009

2009-01-29T23:37:00.005-05:00

They also send out a newsletter as well. Click, click! Find out more!

Company Drops By

2009-01-21T21:17:00.000-05:00

As we were arriving home tonight I saw a white-tailed deer in my yard. I mean, in -- as in about 3 feet from the doorstep. I suspect she was eating birdseed; she was standing just under one of the feeders and we saw tracks later: both hoofprints and scrape marks. She was shaggy as all get-out, but I couldn't say how large, since she was partly hidden from me and I'm not very good at estimating that sort of thing. I'm sure I was taller than her back and her head might've topped mine, but this is hardly useful or precise.

I slowed and stopped in the road, I was so surprised, and of course because of the slope and snow, wound up revving the engine to make the turn into the parking space. And accidentally hit the windshield wipers, which squeaked terribly. All this startled the poor doe, and she leapt away in a heartbeat.

I am inordinately tickled. Yes, we see their tracks many mornings, but it's a delight to have caught this glimpse of her as well.

Hinesburg-Huntington Christmas Bird Count

2009-01-02T14:43:00.003-05:00

This Saturday Jan 3

from eBird Vermont:

The 109th Christmas Bird Count will run from December 14th through January 5th. Last year, thousands of volunteers counted nearly 60 million birds across the Americas and beyond. Each count occurs in a designated circle, 15 miles in diameter, and is led by an experienced birder, or designated “compiler”.... The longest running Citizen Science program in the world, the count originally began on Christmas Day in 1900 ...

The Hinesburg-Huntington Count will be January 3rd. Contact: Paul Wieczoreck mgcpw@gmavt.net

ooh, ice!

2009-01-01T09:02:00.002-05:00

The creek is half frozen, great swaths of chunky silver-blue ice punctuated by the occasional dark pool at the foot of a waterfall. (Exactly the colors that don't photograph well with my camera, especially when I'm looking through the window.) R says it did this last New Year's too.

Iit's between -7°F and 0, depending on which thermometer you look at. Bundle up!

Small Neighbors between snows

2008-12-29T20:24:00.006-05:00

Pine Siskin (Carduelis pinus)(female?) feeding under hydrangea bush

Pine Siskin (female?) on the black oil seed feeder

We had a good dozen or more Pine Siskins appear today, now that it's thawed (again). I understand we're supposed to get more snow, after the rain that wiped away much of the Christmas snowstorm. (There are still soggy piles, one of which you can see behind the feeder, but a good bit of wilted and chilled-crispy grass and mud is now visible all across to the yard.)

The photos were taken through the glass door, and on a fairly high zoom, so any blurriness is probably camera shake and vague dust. IF you click them, of course you get them larger... and there's the album as well.

I think I've seen this species before, but haven't had a chance yet to root through the older photos and journals to be sure. Ah well, some other organized version of me in some other alternate universe is keeping a detailed, accurate, citizen-science-y life list... With any luck though, I'll remember to post this at least in eBird!

Three of a kind

2008-12-10T22:56:00.001-05:00

Driving home, we reached our mailbox around 6 p.m., full dark. The mailbox is at the junction of a side road; opposite is the old farmhouse (the reason our road is here at all), and on the far corner is an apple tree (same variety as ours?) and a low cement-block dairy barn, used now for storage and the occasional pigs.

Between the apple tree and the barn were three white-tailed deer, eyes gleaming in our headlights, bodies deep bark-colored shadows.

A pause, a neighbor pulled around us and two sets of headlights illumined them briefly. The neighbor passed up the side road and then, easily, they leaped down the slight slope under the spreading bare branches, over the road, and into the old meadow and a different neighbor's leftover gardens.

Clearing lines, clearing apples?

2008-11-12T07:48:00.004-05:00

So the electric company clears branches from the power lines, in their ongoing maintenance to avoid a repeat of the extended outages we had in the Ice Storm of '98. They hire a pretty decent tree-cutting company to do so. Vaillancourt (if I spelled it right) tends to cut very tidily, stacking the branches and logs away from lawns and traveled ways. On the other hand, they mostly cut as to what's needed for the lines, over what might be best for the tree (in my very limited clue about trees) (although I suspect they'll do both when they can). This is all well and good, and in fact is why there's habitat for Indigo Buntings near our otherwise fully wooded second-growth land.

On the other hand, they don't come knocking on your door to say, "Hey, we'll be cutting off another 5 branches from your maple that we could've done last year" or "Hey, just want to let you know that we're taking the entire top third of your apple tree." I wish they had! I walked out in the front yard the other morning, and thought "that's odd, it seems lighter than it should be." And yup, looking around, exactly those branches/tops were gone.

The maple was (is?) a very lovely open-grown sugar maple. (Maple identification: Forestry at About.com or Mass Maple ) Now, it's about half the tree it was... The raspberry brambles will probably be thrilled next spring. (And I'm going to pull those branches -- some of them) back over for my next year's firewood-seasoning pile.)

The apple is one of about a half-dozen still surviving (there are some dead ones) from the time when this was half-pasture/half-orchard. The state actually has a program for saving and releasing old apples like this; I'd've liked to take out 2 of the 4 maples crowding it (except they also guard it from the depredations of the snow plow). It's by far the largest (trunk diameter at least 12 inches) and probably the healthiest of the lot (or was? Spring will tell).

Windfalls, been on the ground for weeks

I wish I knew what kind of apple it is! My best guesses are something crossed with Lodi or Yellow Transparent (clues from Vermont Apples). The fruit ripens more latish summer/early fall -- why didn't I take better notes at the time? Argh -- which is a bit late for both those varieties, though. Except that we're up the mountains, so maybe not.

The fruit is about 3 inches in diameter, and yellow-gold with some red streaking. It's tart and fairly crisp at first, and then the windfalls are very mushy. The flesh browns quickly. I saw a great apple poster somewhere not too long ago and thought I knew our apple from it, but I can't remember where I saw it! I went googling for apple varieties, but none of these (otherwise fairly nifty) sites had enough for me to tell. (Enjoy the links, though!)

Grandpap's Apple Orchard

Vermont Apples

Golden Russets and Cake

Heirloom Apples at Scott Farm

Vaerity list from Big Horse Creek Farm

Apple Varieties: more web sites

soft light

2008-11-04T11:27:00.006-05:00

Of course, now it's up to 60°F. Heh.

This is good, for me personally. What with one thing and another, I'm afraid I'll worry about "enough wood" all winter, so every warm day comforts. It's slightly hazy now, but the early morning sun slanting up the slope and through the trees, splashing across the mossy stream rocks, was stunning. I think of Fall, like Spring, as two seasons almost: Foliage and Quiet. I love the light in November, slantwise at the turns of the day, whether on ice or warmed over leaf litter.

Blue jays, juncos, chickadees here at home, but last week I saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk at the Birds of Vermont Museum!

second snow

2008-10-29T08:12:00.002-04:00

It snowed again last night; thicker, wetter, heavier. It bowed the lilacs, the roses, the crabapple.

The chickadees seem to enjoy the resulting arches. All I have at the moment is mixed seed and two small feeders half-full, but there are about 5 chickadees and 3 juncos visible right now.

first snow

2008-10-22T08:05:00.006-04:00

looking southeast from the French door

There's a light wet snow falling this morning. I'm dreading winter this year for some reason, but the loveliness of this still touches me. Orca, the twelve-year old Bernese Mountain Dog, loves it; I didn't nickname her Icebiter for nothing!

It's still really dim out, and hard for me to take photos.

2008-09-30T13:30:00.001-04:00

Hydrangea in bloom, cream and marroon. Sedum in bloom, magenta. Various small wildflowers, more lovely, nameless (to me).

wood of one kind and another - #2

2008-09-13T15:34:00.002-04:00

Cord #2 (of 5) delivered today by our neighbors. Price: Highish. Quality: Excellent. Well-split, well-seasoned.

The hillsides are starting that color shift, where it's still green...ish. Lots of deeper tones coming forth each day, and a few early shifters in bright yellows and some reds.

Wood.

Wood of one kind and another

2008-09-09T21:15:00.003-04:00

Pressure treated (bleah) is a third the cost of cedar. Guess which one we went with? Right. Oh well! Over the weekend we made two runs for materials, attempted to put poor K-dear to work (thwarted in some sense by me thinking we knew what kind of railing design we were doing, and then discovering R didn't think we knew yet), and generally made about an average-for-us amount of progress. Thus:

R and LittleBirder carry decking

So far, so good!

R spent this evening getting the back deck prepped (ripping off fungus-ridden plywood, bleaching, and cutting the first couple of decking boards). Might get as far as posts tomorrow!

Today I stacked what wood we do have as well, which is something. And paid our neighbors for it. I'm a pretty good stacker, if I say so myself, and this is nice wood, all one cord or so of it (might be a tad less; our neighbors asked us to stack it and check because they weren't sure how much this truck held). I didn't feel up to decking with just me and LittleBirder, so we didn't.

WIE touches WorldChanging

2008-09-05T12:33:00.001-04:00

Picked up in the Midd Co-op a magazine called What is Enlightenment?, last October's issue. A bit heavy in the "we're so enlightenedly cool we can hardly stand ourselves; Let Us Show You the WAY" in a NeoBuddhist kind of way, but cheerful and some interesting ideas.

One article with interesting places to poke and jump from is
"A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century" by Ross Robertson [HTML]

The PDF version has the sidebars and the advertisements. I recommend the sidebars, actually if you feel like downloading about 10 pages of colorful stuff.

Share and enjoy...

mildew

2008-07-27T16:31:00.003-04:00

I foolishly left the stroller on the front porch. It's a tiny porch. Probably smaller than what you're thinking. That's not that relevant, except all of the porch can get wet from rain, despite having a roof.

Then it rained. And rained some more. It got warm one day... but rained some more again. Nice warm July thunderstorm weather!

It's not like mildew is news; I just wasn't paying attention.

I've disassembled it now. LittleBirder hung the fabric bits on the clothesline in the little direct sun we'll get for the rest of the day, and we've wiped the frame down with vinegar.

I'll wash that fabric in our breaking-down and leaking machine*, and probably machine dry it somehow. Not the small measure I would wish, but I need to keep the mildew out of the house as much as possible, or my sweetie's allergies will force us to finish/quit trying and move. And drying on the line is just not the ticket this summer.

* Apparently front-loaders are designed to last about 7 years, while the less-efficient waterwise (and electric?) top-loaders last longer. A bearing goes, and they leak, and Sears will only replace the whole drum for 2/3 the cost of the machine, instead of just replacing bearing and seal.

our very own lettuce for dinner tonight

2008-06-11T19:27:00.001-04:00

I mentioned R had built us garden beds. At the end of May we filled them with dirt (topsoil/horse manure mix -- I think 75/25), some old seeds (varying ages) and new seedlings.

As luck and remembering my mother's garden and his grandfather's, we managed accidentally do some good companion planting! Carrots (ours are wee tiny things right now) & Tomatoes (very healthy seedling), Marigolds and Melons, Nasturtiums and Cucumbers! Yay us! (Our cucumbers really came up... whew! thinning 'em now, I feel so heartless...) Have seen only a few possible spinach, beets, and beans (old, old and very old seeds); wish us luck for those. We also have peppers (hot and sweet; the driving rain took care of most of the aphids, wow); swiss chard (mmmmm); lettuce; 1 zucchini (who needs more?). I think that's all ... it's a wee tiny garden.

Companion plant links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=howTo&p=LawnGarden/GardenResults
http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-10-697,00.html

Happenin' In the Dooryard

2008-05-13T14:42:00.001-04:00

A Boy
A Hose
A Mud Puddle

Sunlight

Orca (the dog)

Brand-new (mother's day) boxes for raised bed garden! (Made of old lumber and nails we had leftover around. No money spent for the exactly-what-I-wanted present!)

Chickadees
Titmice
Dark-Eyed Juncos
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (a pair)
Nuthatch
Goldfinches (a pair)
Chipping sparrows
White-throated sparrows

Eastern Chipmunks (at least 4)
Red Squirrel
Bumblebee
White Butterfly
Dark brown teeny butterfly with white stripes

Blooming, or nearly:
Bluebells
Lilacs (white and purple buds)
Tulips (from [info]lepi's drive-by crocussing)
little purple-and-white ground cover
White Violets
Ruby and Yellow Pansies (from last year!)
Red and Yellow Primroses
Dandelions

Recently Planted:
Bee Balm (to compete with the Snow-on-the-Mountain)

A Slide and Large Rocks to climb on

Heard recently:
Black-throated Green Warbler
Oven Bird
Robin
Hairy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe ("SqueeKee Phoe-Bee!")
Wood Thrush

Spring Means New Clothes!

2008-05-09T11:47:00.001-04:00

Or something like that.

The red squirrels are shedding their winter coats and look especially silly today.

idly noticing birds again

2008-04-26T19:31:00.001-04:00

A Robin was singing in a tree this morning around 9.30 when it was still sunny. I saw a White-throated Sparrow on the big rocks around 11 a.m.

I like birds.

You probably guessed this.

more idle observations

2008-04-25T11:26:00.001-04:00

Saw and heard the Eastern Phoebe today. He was out back, briefly on the beams of the back balcony and more usually on the second-largest yellow birch that leans up toward the house from the creek bank.

Also saw 2 Chipping Sparrows on the mixed seed feeder. We probably need more bird seed again.

Must note them on ebird.

idly noticing birds

2008-04-24T11:23:00.000-04:00

Seen this morning: 2 Tufted Titmice; 1 Chipping Sparrow in Breeding Colors.

Heard: More than 3 chickadees. No phoebe this morning. Don't know what these are:

(warbly whistle) puwé puwé puwé
(squelchy) squué!

International Migratory Bird Day

2008-04-17T11:59:00.001-04:00

Saturday, May 17th, will be International Migratory Bird Day.

Come celebrate at the Birds of Vermont Museum, if you are near Huntington, Vermont, that day!

Compact Flourescents and other links

2008-03-26T01:02:00.000-04:00

From a friend's suggestion about the Compact Flourescent/Incandescent comparison paper (it's a PDF listed at the link), I wound up thinking about Wal-mart and Phillips, which reminded me I am reading (slowly) The Ecology of Commerce, so of course I googled it, and found more about Paul Hawken on wikipedia as well as a useful summary and application of the book at a Masonry heater trade journal site, and then the organization Wiser Earth, which

is a community directory and networking forum that maps and connects non-governmental organizations and individuals addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more

.

Now I'm poking around my utilities site, seeing how maybe I can pay them less money...

Oh look, here's what I should've done when I broke the two CFLs I broke (in the decade-plus of using them, I've broken two, one was still in the package). Hm. Me and LittleBirder are probably doomed now. Or not, given the limited exposure and that I did some of the clean up correctly and we show none of the symptoms associated. But we knew that.

Channeling a Beaver Spirit?

2008-03-13T12:45:00.001-04:00

Tried intalling some extension jambs this morning into our office/library casement window. Perhaps because ours have been sitting around for Far Too Long™, I couldn't (by myself) get the top one in. It's a bit bowed and I'm having trouble. Hopefully R and I together can finish it when he comes home ... but that would require not reassembling the office library from it's current interestingly disheveled state. And I want to finish cleaning it up. Hm.

I think I was inspired by Bruno the Carpenter -- LittleBirder and I read it at daycare the other day...

I did kinda go crazy in here. I put together an old oak table that (without the leaves) is 4' x 4' -- which is really darn large for a space only 8' (maybe) wide. Except it would just look wrong in the corner, and finally I have a surface deep enough to be a useful (and beautiful! Though old) desk. (Plus I have a sentimental attachment to it, mostly 'cause I like it better than any other desk or table in the house). Now if I can just figure out where to put the telescope, and swap the metal (skinny) table for the (silly prefab) computer desk, and put the table in the big basement (and more not-useful-right-now computer and telephony equipment on it in case we ever really finish the hardwire networking), and get the old blond veneer bookshelves from the other basement (not so sentimental, despite having been were my grandmother's), then I could put these other papers and crates and boxes away, or sort of...

Hairy Woodpecker

2008-03-08T19:22:00.005-05:00

Over the last couple of days, I've taken some short videos of the male and female Hairy Woodpeckers (Picoides villosus) that have been coming to our suet feeder. The camera work and lighting leaves a lot to be desired (as does the background noise -- you can hear in this one a train video LittleBirder is watching on YouTube*). Nevertheless! It's delightful to have the pair visiting us.

* By the way, it's kind of a neat little train video, with a troll. I am not this skilled in my vids!

Owl House

2008-02-23T19:00:00.006-05:00

Two or three Christmases ago, Grandpére built lots of bird houses in lots of sizes, and we each chose one. For ridiculously long time, our barred owl house has been sitting either on our front stoop or in our entry area.

Then, we added white cedar shakes over the pine.

Today, we—mostly my sweetie-pie—put it up on a old maple by the creek.

Aside from being perhaps too close to the road, the location is probably pretty good: right by the creek, a mix of dense hemlocks and deciduous, easy flight path down the dirt road to the old meadows...

We may have put it up too late, in that I read in one place that barred owls pick their nesting sites as early as September. Still, we hope! We know they're around...

Tinted

2008-01-29T07:44:00.000-05:00

7 a.m. Dawn. One of those lovely ones of sky shading into gray and lavender, and where the clouds are roses and creams and pearls and golds. All colors marked and framed by the traceries of winter twigs, punctuated by the silhouettes of whine pine branches, thick among the thin.

Out and about with Orca

2008-01-26T19:26:00.002-05:00

Tracks! Identifiable: running neighbor with border collie, us. Others might've been fox (red or grey). bobcat, mink, squirrel. Those are pretty likely. Oh, also more dogs, natch. Shrew? And other small rodent -- vole/mouse type (holes in the snow).

Maybe a bit far for Orca -- I was only going to go to the dead end sign and back, but went around the back of the house and along our forest path by the creek -- too tempting not too! Then Orca wanted to go down toward the mailbox so we did but she was shaky and tired on the way back. Her knee is so stiff and what with widespread mild arthritis....

(see also LittleBirder for this day)

looking forward, looking up

2008-01-21T20:16:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the wood pile.

Well, of course, one does, each time we look out the back door. It's just there.

But I've been counting the rows ... I think we're going to run out of wood this year.

.
.
.

I love the hazy clouds over the full moon.

icy snow is good for...

2008-01-12T18:55:00.000-05:00

It's thawed and snowed and refroze ... strange weather. But the crusty, icy snow, not too deep, turns out to be nice for teaching LittleBirder to ski a bit.

He loves it.

spider prints

2008-01-11T10:15:00.001-05:00

LittleBirder: "Mama, can you put the spider outside so it can make footyprints?"

Mama: "Do you think spiders can make footyprints?"

LittleBirder: "Yup, with their legs."

Christmas Project

2007-12-25T18:49:00.001-05:00

On Christmas Day, Grandpére and LittleBirder put together a bird feeder. This is a very cool Christmas present.

The hammer is a present for LittleBirder as well; it came with the kit that Grandpére made.

Beloved Orca

2007-12-18T18:43:00.001-05:00

Orca, my Berner, is 11½ years old. She loves the snow as much as ever. In the winter, we call her "Orca Icebiter"

Kingfisher!

2007-12-09T21:45:00.002-05:00

I spotted a kingfisher midafternoon today, on our way to get a Christmas tree. It was perched on the branch of a young tree on the shore of the Huntington River, just where Main Road crosses the River, north of Jubilee Farm.

Seemed late in the year for it? But my sister (the Director of the Birds of Vermont Museum) says no, not necessarily. So cool.

snow for skis

2007-12-03T19:39:00.000-05:00

LittleBirder has a snow day today. This rather threw my plans of working off, but we played outside in the snow instead. OK, I did chores: shovelling, bringing in wood. Then he got to try his skiis for the first time!

Things to do on the land...

warm sweet home

2007-12-01T22:35:00.001-05:00

The fire is going in the woodstove -- messages are checked -- the cat is cuddled -- pick up Orca tomrrow or so -- there have been baths -- LittleBirder is tucked into bed -- we've started the propane fireplace (just for extra) -- people have been called so they know we're home safe.

All is snug.

going traveling; the jays will watch the house no doubt

2007-11-26T23:01:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow we leave, we TRAVEL. I love this. The act of the motion the changes the journays the process. Sometimes more in the abstract than the actual.

Back in a week or so

first snow...man

2007-11-20T23:25:00.006-05:00

LittleBirder and his Dadda built this fellow to watch over our woodpile.

I'm not sure whether I love the carrot nose or the hemlock beard more. Just wonderful.

This pic is a little blurry at this auto-resize; you might want to click to see the larger one.

first snow

2007-11-16T09:30:00.000-05:00

First real snowfall... New warm winter boots (yesterday) and new snow as of this morning is irresistible. LittleBirder proceeds to attempt to dress himself in yesterday's clothes: sweatpants over jammies so he "can have long johns". Pulls on socks and boots mostly without help. Is sure he doesn't want breakfast first. He just wants to make "footyprints"!

Alright then, why not? I put on outdoor things and make sure he's got water resistant shells on top of sweats and sweater. We bring in wood -- mostly me of course though he helps -- I bring his toast with nut butter and cinnamon sugar out to him, one piece at a time. He eats snow too (just like the dog!).

I string up a tarp at the end of the woodshed -- it's blue, I wish it were green. Oh well; it works to protect the ends of the wood from most weather, I guess.

After finishing wood and tarps and toast we take Orca for a walk to LittleBirder can have her on a leash for a while. Pretty darn silly, as she could knock him over without thinking about it.

Not bad for it only being 9:30a.m.!

wet...

2007-11-15T14:52:00.000-05:00

Rainy.

warm...

2007-11-14T14:51:00.000-05:00

Strangely warm out today.

wood for the winter

2007-11-11T20:49:00.000-05:00

We finished stacking this year's today. I estimate: 4½ - 5 cord. Two rows is just under a cord; the shed holds 10 rows or nearly. Hope it's dry enough.

Saw a dozen or so chickadees, a titmouse, two or more blue jays.

migrate or not?

2007-11-09T16:46:00.000-05:00

I saw a Mourning Dove on a Maple Tree today -- on a branch -- thought they migrated? Just a territory shift?

whoosh

2007-11-02T22:44:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder and I saw a shooting star tonight in the high NorthWest.

reassurance of warmth

2007-10-27T22:40:00.000-04:00

It's always amusing when you describe your old wood stove to someone who knows stoves, and he says, with respect, that you've got a work horse and it'll probably put out as much heat or more than the other one(s) you've been talking about.

Our stove is old. I've had it since I bought the deep camp this place used to be, and always assumed it was at least 5 if not 40 years old. I wonder if it is older than me. That'd be amusing too.

a toddler's approach to squirrels

2007-10-27T22:33:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder went outside today with a bird book, notebook, and crayon. Came in to tell me of a "chipmunk" eating seed in the green feeder that is (in his mind) for chickadees. We talked about how he could scare away a red squirrel by going out and talking to it. In the back of my mind is the idea the squirrel might become habituated to him and he could eventually feed it. I wonder how likely that is? And I wonder if the uneven bit of fur on a red squirrel (the same one? A different one?) is a scar (thus earning it the name "Nibbles") or just a rain-soaked and temporary look.

I wonder where Stubbs is, and how -- whether he survived the summer.

Handy-Dandy Notebook

2007-10-22T08:19:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder went outside with his notebook and crayon. I asked, "Is that your 'handy-dandy notebook?"

He replied quite solemnly, "No, Mama. A 'handy-dandy notebook' is for Blue's Clues. I have another one."

scrap of journal, quick rough sketch of chickadee nape

One of the 7" chickadees has a little pale patch at the nape of its neck, in the black hood. Some other one has an irregular hood instead of a smooth.

I love seeing little differences like this.

Same ol'

2007-10-21T15:15:00.000-04:00

Same birds as yesterday except no hairy woodpecker, and six or more chickadees.

Sometime earlier this week, we managed to clean out the woodshed of stored cedar shakes and siding (on the new shelves in the tools shed and in the wood shed "ceiling" -- now that we put in braces to make such ceiling, respectively). And the ladder is now up under the woodshed roof, not under a leaky tarp, and not going to get thick with ice and snow. We even stacked some wood. I should do more of that today; it's great weather for it.

Birdly birds

2007-10-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder and I started feeding the birds again last week, although he did it with Granddad a while back before that too (funny how right now I can't even remember when Granddad came up to visit... oh yeah, mid-September. I've not journaled much the past couple of months).

Today is very busy out there: between 8 and 9 a.m. we've seen a hairy woodpecker (possibly a female), a red squirrel who isn't Stubbs, a pair (or more) of juncos, two blue jays chasing each other, three or more chickadees, a titmouse, a white-breasted nuthatch. Nothing unusual, but pleasant.

We still have LittleBirder's pansies -- just 1 -- after 2 or 3 frosts. And sedum. And a few roses! The roses didn't do so well this year.

bed building

2007-10-19T22:26:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder and I finally laid leaves, straw, and dirt in the shade perennial bed I'm trying to build around the well. I'm trying to create this bed as a buffer, for when I eventually start parking in the shade. My long term goal is to park farther from the house, in the shade of the woods, in a half-circle, and use the current parking area, which gets full sun, for garden. Raised beds, with some sealer layer underneath, because we've been parking cars there, but still, why waste full sun on the cars? This is still at least another year away (not counting that we don't have the money for a driveway surface, not even gravel).

colors of fall

2007-10-16T20:43:00.000-04:00

Decorative crabapple, I'm told .... they look a lot like cherries to me.

Maple leaf in our driveway... sugar maple? Red maple? I've got to learn these one of these days.

Rounds Road, up towards the dead ends we go...

Thinking Autumn Thoughts under the sedum

chickadee vids

2007-10-16T07:10:00.001-04:00

In which a chickadee proves its preference for black oil seeds.

I love my camera.

natural and green architecture

2007-09-26T22:18:00.000-04:00

Really want to browse through this Natural Architecture by Alessandro Ross (heard of through worldchanging). Maybe you do too? Not to mention maybe folks who are interested in green architecture and/or Andy Goldsworthy's art...

garden decoration

2007-09-25T13:13:00.000-04:00

Among other busy small happy things today, LittleBirder and I attached a trellis to the house. It was given to me as a Mother's Day present, and I love it. That's one of those things that's been waiting to be done for ages -- you know the sort. so nice to have it up! And just where I wanted a trellis too: in front of the propane tanks as you look at them from the drive and stairs.

Storage...

2007-09-08T20:56:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder, R, and I added some crossbars (perhaps better-termed collar tie or rafter?) to the shed. We've now moved those planks and the ladder up onto them, tucked under the metal roof of the woodshed. Very nice. Pallettes are in. Gotta get the wood stacked!

Now if only I could get a side extension onto the garden shed for the bikes...

predation, round 2

2007-08-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

Bug cat and Probable Fox had another growlfest tonight. Something's hungry for my white beast of doom, apparently.

predation?

2007-08-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

So there's this strange noise coming from... somewhere. Outside? Er.. yeah. Yeah! Is that the cat?

We scamper to the doors, R to the kitchen door, me to the living room door, a guest to the front door.

R and I see nothing, but we hear our guest shouting, and run back through. So does the cat.

Our guest tells us that the cat was on this old chunk of sauna tube footer concrete, which pins the edge of the flower garden (more or less, until someday I move it), grumbling and yowling. When he came out, he saw and shouted at a fox in the wood pile, which apparently had also been growling at the cat.

For the record, this cat is about 17 years old, all white (except for spots on her nose), has caught approximately 4 mice he entire life, and perhaps all of those were by accident. (I base this on the evidence of observing her and chipmunks and her and birds and her and the mice in the kitchen.) And yet, here she is, defending our home from the Forces of Foxery.

Well, no. I think she was just utterly terrfied. But I like the first version better!

bat rescue

2007-07-27T23:31:00.000-04:00

We rescued five bats from our woodstove and its chimney tonight. Two we brought out by hand (in gloves, of course), and three by opening doors and shooing them. I think they were Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus)—using Stokes Beginner's Guide to Bats for identification after the fact. Even after all that time in Carlsbad and with DR in Montana, I'd forgotten what to look for.

Big Brown Bat Eptesicus fuscus	Length: 3.4 -5.4" Wingspan: 13-16" Weight: 0.4 - 0.8 oz No fur on wings, tail, ears, nose, which are dark brown/black
Little Brown Bat Myotis lucifugus	Length: 2.4 - 4.0" Wingspan: 9-11"" Weight: 0.2 - 0.3 oz Long hair on toes, small black ears

What we saw: medium brown fur, slightly ashy. Slighter darker ears, wings. Didn't look closely at their feet. Hairless wing membranes, naturally. They looked more like the little brown bat pictures, what with the proportion of eye size to head, nose not noticeably black.

We took some photos, but they were hopelessly inadequate. Oh well. Luckily, there's google.

Turns out the Montshire Museum did a week of "Montshire Minutes" on bats. And here's s brief natural history summary from Mass Audubon as well.

Two Two-Lined

2007-07-27T18:15:00.000-04:00

Two-lined Salamander
(Eurycea bislineata)
Starksboro, July 2007

We were moving some old tarps covering up some aging lumber and our extendable ladder, so we could put the boards and the ladder up on the rafters in the woodshed. This stuff was up on some sawhorses about 3 feet off the ground. Over the last couple of years (have I mentioned we move slowly on our projects?), leaves and moisture had collected along the tops of these things. And certain small critters were attracted to such habitat...

There were two salamanders, but only one got photographed. That ruler is awfully bright, isn't it?

Cooper's Hawks

2007-07-13T21:26:00.000-04:00

We saw a whole family of Cooper's Hawks over our house today. I think there were four: 2 adults, 2 young. Very talkative, lots of cheeking sorts of sounds.

Woodshed

2007-07-01T19:31:00.000-04:00

Up here in dem boonies, we heats with wood.

Ok, enough of that dialect.

But yes, we heat with wood. We don't have enough land and time to harvest and split our own (although we do a little culling here and there, and will more next year). We buy it. Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at stacking it and covering it with tarps. On the other hand, over the years, the tarps have developed holes. In my wanna-be-irregular thriftiness, I don't replace the tarps perhaps as often as we'd find useful.

Woodshed, about 6' x 14'. Using 4"x4" pressure-treated posts (would recommend cedar, however) and standing seam metal roofing, precast concrete footers, and 1"x4" pine for rafters and roof slats

So this year, we (by which I mostly mean my husband and brother-in-law) built a woodshed. This is a little taller than we'd intended (thanks to my brother-in-law's powers of persuasion). It is in fact (despite the picture) plumb, but as I'm often not, neither is the image... It'll hold about 5 cords, which is about what we burn in a winter, give or take.

It will have some pallets for flooring, presently, and eventually (this year?) we'll add slatted sides for better weather protection.

more blue

2007-06-12T19:12:00.000-04:00

I noticed two pairs of Indigo Buntings were at the feeder today. What a fantastically intense color. How lucky we are!

quickie garden catalog

2007-06-05T18:50:00.000-04:00

Not to post twice in the same day, but at home, there are some lovely colors...

Dragonfly spp.

Blooming right now: yellow buttercups, pale pink geranium, purple columbine, red bleeding heart, purple lilac (but fading), white lilac.

Male Indigo Bunting on feeder with thistle seed

More color flutters about: several species of moths in various leafy browns, tiger swallowtails, more. One of these days I'll try to learn butterflies too. Not to mention this glorious dragonfly in gold and black, and the handsome Indigo Bunting.

High Pond, Low Pond

2007-06-05T17:14:00.000-04:00

We took ourselves out for a walk today, LittleBirder and I. Near our home is a pair of ponds. In a fit of practicality, I dubbed them "High Pond" and "Low Pond", referring to their elevations with respect to dirt road that runs between them. (In the google map behind the link, High Pond is on the upper left; it is the larger of the two.) There's easy access to the ponds, even with the raspberries nearby (these are blooming white today).

Green Frog (Rana clamitans) - Starksboro, Vermont, June 2007

In High Pond, we saw an Eastern Newt. In both ponds, we saw fish—two species, although I don't know fish and can't tell you which ones. In Low Pond, we saw a frog with a brilliant yellow throat—a Green Frog (Rana clamitans). (I really should know my frogs, since I've worked for the Vermont Atlas of Reptiles and Amphibians as a field worker, and currently they are one of my clients. However, I had to look this up.)

Overhead, we saw at least two male Red-winged blackbirds and just down the road over the meadow, an American Robin—on a different wire this time, although for all I know it was the same bird as we saw last week. I spotted an Eastern Phoebe on a dead branch dropping low across the stream (there's a stream just to the north of the ponds, running roughly east; we saw the Phoebe from the bridge).

And for the first time in my life, I found a four-leafed clover.

white-spotted sable, pansies, sedum

2007-05-30T11:28:00.000-04:00

Blooming pansies and sedum
in a little bed on top of stone wall

I mentioned the other day that LittleBirder's pansies were blooming. Grandma gave us a sedum as well (and in an unexpected move, I planted it promptly). I understand this will bloom in the fall.

White-spotted Sable
Starksboro, May 2007

I also was able to identify this little wee butterfly: a White-spotted Sable (I think). (Thanks to Google's image search that got me to the BugGuide.)

butterflies fly, lilacs don't move, and chickadees bite

2007-05-29T22:22:00.000-04:00

Saw a Tiger Swallowtail at the white and purple lilacs, bumblebees on the ajuga, and the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird on the tall ash by the power lines.

Bumblebee at ajuga
Starksboro, Vermont, May 2007

We saw the road commissioner, and it may be possibly to straighten the road, giving the lilacs a little more verge from the plow. The verge has been steadily decreasing the whole time I've lived here, and I'm quite sure the lilacs haven't moved.

I was bitten by a chickadee, too. How silly!

tricksy pix

2007-05-27T21:37:00.000-04:00

How to make taking photos trickier:

have a moving subject
have a toddler play with an umbrella about 2 feet from you
let the target subject eat all the seed or bait the day before you try, and have no more to put out
take it through the glass window in the door, because you're trying not to scare the little critter

With that in mind, some neighbors of the day:

Stubbs, the red squirrel
Gray Squirrrel (inverted)
Chipping Sparrow
Eastern Chipmunk (through glass)

Heard the ovenbird today; I don't think I've ever seen one. We've been hearing him daily, and well into the evening.

There are at least 5 chipmunks around and about, living in the stone wall or in tunnels out back under the hemlock roots.

By the way, we also saw an Indigo Bunting today. This was a male, on our mixed seed feeder. My sister tells me that this bird requires early successional habitat; we have that more or less because the power company has been clearing extensively under the power lines in the past few years.

May is SUCH a happenin' month

2007-05-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder and I put out more seed this evening. We watch. A chipmunk arrived. LittleBirder walks over slowly, carefully ... and 4 or 5 feet away, the chipmunk stops stuffing his face ... at 2 feet, the chipmunk leaves.

Bumblebees are happy in the purple-blooming ajuga under the lilacs, just loving it there.

I saw an American Robin up on the wires. I'd thought I'd heard it, but I'm still learning the differences between that and the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.

We thought we'd heard a Ruby-throated hummingbird yesterday or the day before. Today we saw it on the bleeding-heart flowers and the first blooms of the crabapple.

The violets are fully in bloom now. And dandelions. And bluebells! Both the white and lavender lilacs have started this week. There's wild(ish) strawberry in bloom and I'm seeing birds on one of the geranium-type plants. LittleBirder's pansies that we bought are still blooming. Bedstraw (That's what I call it, anyway) is blooming white. Some weedy to-be-yellow things is coming into bloom.

not for grilling

2007-05-25T13:44:00.000-04:00

Deer Mouse Mama (Peromyscus maniculatus) in grill, Starksboro, Vermont, May 2007

We knew there was a mouse nest in the grill; R found it a couple of weeks ago, before it was really warm enough to grill.

It was warm enough today...but when we opened it, it was not just a mouse nest, but mice! R called LittleBirder and me over to see them, and after a few minutes of mice peeking out at us and us talking quietly about them, we figured 4 (maybe 5) young ones and 1 mama. Mama was quite a bit larger and brown--a fawn color--with scars on her tail. The babies were about half her size and mole-grey.

My Audubon's Guide to Eastern Forest tells me they were either Deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) or White-footed (P. leucopus). Mama was about 5 inches long, with a bi-colored tail the whole length of it. Later I looked them up on Animal Diversity web, and now I'm pretty sure they are Deer mice.

Fabulous whiskers on the babies.

not a bear

2007-05-18T22:25:00.000-04:00

I know I'm not supposed to feed the birds right now: the bears are waking up. And I know there are a goodly number of bears around. I "compromise" by not putting out suet and by having a 75-lb. dog. On the other hand, these are probably of no concern to a bear. On the third hand, I'm surrounded by steepness with trees, including beech; perhaps there is enough other food between us and the bear denning sites.

Well, I haven't seen one here myself.

Perhaps, like seeing the moose a few years back, and the deer this spring, it's only a matter of time...

early and on the porch

2007-05-18T06:45:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned I love sitting on the porch early in the morning with my coffee? I'm seeing 2 Mourning doves (I"d heard them before but not seen them yet), a Blue Jay, a Goldfinch or several, some chickadees. I can hear the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak again.

Stubbs and another Red Squirrel are hanging around, as is one of the Chipmunks. There's a Gray Squirrel as well. They all want to eat seeds on the big rocks, but if the Gray Squirrel wants 'em, he gets 'em, and the others duck out of the way. *chuckle*

quick notes with LittleBirder

2007-05-13T20:38:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder and I cleaned the windows and fed the birds. (More in his blog...)

Much later that day, we saw 2 Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. And still later, we strolled down to 'High Pond' and saw 2 Red-Winged Blackbirds. All males.

migrants in a very small space

2007-05-12T21:51:00.000-04:00

We saw a Baltimore oriole and a White-crowned sparrow today! Very cool. The oriole is a summer resident, and we saw it fly across our lawn and then up in some tall maples. The white-crowned sparrow is just passing through; it stopped on our feeders for at least one meal. Very pleased to think that our small space is big enough to see birds like this...

early flowers

2007-05-11T21:12:00.000-04:00

Toddler investigating pansy-like blooms on a spreading groundcover, May 2007

LittleBirder had a lovely time running about the yard this morning. Daffodils are blooming; leaves are budding; weather is warming...

This ground cover has a light purple and white pansy-like bloom, but it's only a centimeter or so across. I'd like to know what it is.

Both yellow and orange-centered daffodils are blooming. Some of these are old, old bulbs, so deeply buried under years and layers of adding to the garden bed that I cannot find the bulbs to move them. Some are much newer, thanks to a friends' "Drive-by crocussing" a few years ago.

The bluebells have their buds that are just about to open fully. These are leftovers from the previous owner, although I have moved them around the yard a bit as I slowly reshape the garden landscape. The violets are the same, except they're spreading under the crabapple on their own.

Spring is always a burst of journaling time, isn't it. My sister reports the same thing...

daybreak

2007-05-11T09:11:00.000-04:00

LittleBirder and I went outside around 6:30 this morning, letting the Dadda sleep a bit. We sat on the front stoop in our jammies, wrapped up in a fleece-lined workshirt. We opened our eyes, opened our ears, and kept company with our old cat.

From our house, the sun wasn't up yet; we are ringed by mountaintops. Doesn't that sound circular; that's not how it is; we live on one side of a skinny sloping, turning valley. At any rate, the clouds overhead were pale grey; the ones glimpsable to the east between new leaves were beginning to have the shallow gold tints of dawn. Water drops glimmered on the crabapple from last night's rain.

Our presence (mostly the cat's, who went out a bit before us) convinced a red squirrel to depart hastily. She'd been sitting on the exposed framing of the stoop, tucked up under the roof, thinking about raiding the bird feeder. We have at least 3 red squirrels on the property. One is clearly identifiable; it has a shortened tail. I'm trying to learn the slight distinguishing features of the others.

We watched a chipmunk climb up the smooth square post that holds the thistle feeder and green feed, over by the hydrangea. It had to make a leap to reach the green feeder (which has black oil sunflower seeds). The first time it tried, it missed, and tumbled to the ground about 3 feet below. Undaunted--those were black oil sunflower seeds, by golly!--it scrambled up again and succeeded.

There was lull in birdsong for a bit, as if the earliest birds had called off for the day, and the second shift hadn't quite begun. When it did, we hear "weecher weecher weecher!" from the trees across the road, and a few "ee-oh-lay"s from up to our left. A single male goldfinch laid claim to the thistle seed in the feeder, once the chipmunk had headed off towards storage. Three or so chickadees scuffled and chuckled over the various shrubs and feeders, and more sang "fee-bay!" from the forest.. One titmouse scolded the red squirrel. An unidentified sparrow poked about the rock border by the lilacs and the daffodils. Everyone fell silent when the blue jay hollered "jay! jay! jay!" ... and resumed when it stopped. Far above us, we saw a raven, or possibly a two. We quorked back to them.

Chipping Sparrow

2007-05-09T09:39:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning, LittleBirder and I saw a small sparrow poking around the violets (which are just up this week, I think). We watched it and I asked him questions: "Is it bigger than your hand?" "Yes!" "What color is the top of its head?" Red!"

I noted: russet crown, black eyeline, dark beak, two shades of brown on its back, two pale wing bars. LittleBirder wasn't too interested in looking it up in the book (hardly surprising!). After some flipping back and forth in the pages, I figured it was a chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina). I don't know that I've ever seen one before.

I recorded it in eBird. Turns out I have 20 birds on my lifelist there; who knew?

It's a crabapple, not a cherry!

2007-05-08T22:41:00.000-04:00

Pink-flowering crabapple, just coming into bloom, May 2005.

So there's this tree that the previous owner planted. It's right off the front step, and lovely. I always thought that was a cherry, but nope. Our neighbor, who is an arborist, explained that it was likely a decorative variety of crabapple grafted onto the root stock of a hardier one. The stem that has grown swiftly in the last few years, overtaking the pink-flowering older one has grown off this stock. So we have a pink-flowering and white-flowering tree -- one tree, two varieties, two heights, different sizes and shapes of fruit.

Edge marks

2007-01-09T19:30:00.000-05:00

Finally, some snow. MonkeyChild and I took two walks today to enjoy it properly.

Our afternoon walk took us up the road to the first old stone bridge. On the way, we passed the triangle point of the property. I pointed out the marble post and the Three Watchers. The 4" x 4" post has probably sunk into the soil and humus generated by the Three over time; we can see now only about 6 inches of slightly greyed and apparently evenly-textured marble. The edges don't seem all that worn, though. How fast does marble erode, even in a region with acid rain?

The Three themselves are hemlocks of different ages, yet each bears two blaze-scars, almost overgrown in back. There are still faint traces of the white paint used to mark them. For the ten years I've lived here (even the bit when I didn't), I've meant to re-cut those marks, to freshen them. I've never gotten around to it.

Birdfeeding

2006-11-19T20:58:00.000-05:00

Filled the feeders yesterday with black oil sunflower and mixed seeds. Tossed older seed on the ground. Old apples from the tree outside our door are still on the ground, too.

Seen today so far: at least 2 bluejays, at least 2 titmice, 3 or more juncos, more than 7 chickadees,. Yesterday we had a mourning dove.

Everyone seems to prefer the feeders in the cherry tree -- a greater pecentage of black oil seed? Better eating perches? The juncos also poked about the stone wall.

Saw a kingfisher -- possibly 2 -- at the pond yesterday. Seems late for them; don't they migrate? I suppose I really don't know.

I suppose I should post this on eBird, too.

small beginnings

2006-04-18T23:53:00.000-04:00

The property--an acre or so--is roughly triangular, skinny on the upstream end, wider where it goes along an old fenceline. There's still some barbed wire. The dirt road is the second side, the nameless stream the third. It's overgrown ex-grazing and forested stream bank--which means mostly maples and yellow birch--with a couple of somewhat decrepit apple trees, a fabulous white pine that lost its top last fall, and hemlocks along the creek.

And I'm here because my heart is, all involuntarily-like. It's certainly not a useful piece of property, in most senses of the word. But I can sit stone or wander small, and I've got good neighbors, two-, four-, and no-legged ones. It's to talk about them that I'm making this blog. A record, a witness, a celebration.

Well, and maybe the development of ritual for me, too.

Welcome.