natural and green architecture

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

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...

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

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

predation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

quickie garden catalog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.