from the maiden voyage on Bristol Pond

Across the water a great blue heron hunted, apart from the four Sandhill cranes. They watched our paddle lift and fall still, lift and still. We drifted and the heron watched. The cranes returned to their own business. A kingfisher chattered. Our bellies grumbled quietly, as we too thought to seek our own dinners. A swallow caught its prey overhead.

Turning, we glimpsed an osprey bearing a fish, pursued by a young bald eagle—seeking to claim it for its own? The osprey dropped its catch—no fish for either bird tonight. At least not that one. Three ducks, fast and sleek, patterned browns with pale-edged wings, returned to where we'd seen only two earlier. A pair of white-rumped harriers rose and sailed easily from the marsh to drier upland, vanished from our view. Rounding the last turn, we took ourselves finally to shore to the last splashes of vanishing frogs. Packing up the new kayak in the joy of a daydream come true, with new birds for our life lists, the seven-year-old and his mama were off to find their own well-deserved pizza.

Seasonable

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.

ooh, ice!

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!

mildew

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.

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* 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.

wet...

Rainy.

High Pond, Low Pond

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.