Month: March 2019

Great commotion of birds, there is a pair of red-tailed hawks hanging around, although today is the first time I was sure there were two when I could hear their voices together.  They were screeching like crazy, yelling back at the crows that were mobbing them.  The crows were shrieking back and circling around.  The whole tangle of birds moved from east to west, past my house.  The jays let loose with their alarm calls as did the small birds and with a woosh, the bird feeders was left empty, swinging in a silent yard.  I stepped out my door to search the skys and could see small birds sitting is the branches of trees all around me waiting for the big guys to finish the battle or at least move it farther away.  The hawks could only fly short distances and low and moved in short hops being inexorably herded east.  Long after they were out of view, I could hear the crows harassing and haranguing as they circled and kept pushing the hawks west. This is an audio clip I took.

This is from Cornell, a mobbing picture I like:

https://ww.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/media-browser/60384781

I took the opportunity while the crows were distracted, to throw out some peanuts for such stalwart defenders, my avian sheepdogs.  Another great reason for attracting crows.  My favorite reason though, is to listen to the summertime play of young crows, they are trying out their calls and playing, I’ve watched them have a tug of war over sticks and literally wrestle, with one on it’s back beneath the other, squawking and jostling. They arrive as a family, adults, year old juveniles and the rambunctious, shouting, playful, kids.

SUDDEN SWERVE: So there is this covenant on the cottage, that it can’t be used for commercial reasons.  What I don’t know is if that applies to an individual fisherman using his own boat at his own dock at his (OR her) own home should a fisherman want to buy my place. Anyway I asked Dean, my realtor, if the potential buyer was aware, and he said he’d sent the covenant to the guy’s realtor and assumed he told the fisherman. 

So I don’t know on that point.

I got the new septic design, it’s a water treatment plant really, no leach field needed, so it’s much smaller, hopefully cheaper and certainly less difficult to put in.  I took it to the code officer and he’s already said he likes these systems.  Apparently, the waste water they produce is actually potable.  I know, everybody but Anne winces at the idea!

Next is to get a couple of bids.  I had gotten an earlier septic plan but it called for a 4 ft. high mound right behind the cottage which is the only direction it could be expanded, it required cutting down the pines in back, the only 2 shade trees on the property, and would have meant I would need a new well.

So, we had an estimate of what all that would cost.  Not only will this be a much smaller installation, but it goes toward the front, no mound and all trees spared, as well as the well so the cost should be lower, hot diggity. 

The realtor said the main objection to the cottage that people have, other than the ones who want to build a big house there, is the missing septic and even with an allowance to replace it, they don’t want the bother of putting it in, can’t blame them, so looks like I do it.  The cost will be the kind of money I didn’t think I’d need until after the cottage was sold.  Doable but painful.  I figure the sooner I do it, the faster it might sell, so I’m hoping to get going on it soon.  I consolidated my mortgages a couple of years ago so once I sell the cottage, I’ll only have one mortgage payment since my house is paid off.

enough sewer talk.

Today is a woodpecker day, large and small.  The smallest ones I usually see are the downy woodpeckers and today I saw my first, since I put up the feeders last month.  That was about 15 min after I saw my first pileated woodpecker of the year.   The hairy one came a day later.
This has been a place the large pileated ones return to each year, mostly I see them in a small piece of wooded brush between the driveway and my northern boundary, where the woodcocks hang out, but I see them all over.  I’m including two pix I took of a courting couple of them from some years back.   Unlike the female turkeys who just graze as the males display, at least the female woodpecker seemed like she was aware of his efforts even if she refused to look at him.

Leaving out names, someone that Anne & Rob knows has put in a (low) offer on Coxcroft.  The attraction is it’s deep water access and these folk would give the meadow a working waterfront. 

Southern slops and flat fields are free of snow, giving plenty of ground for the robins to hunt without having to depend on sumac berries.  With only one around, it sounds like summer, a real treat.  I’ve had a Cooper’s Hawk hanging around my yard, screeching like crazy and often followed by a chorus of angry crows and dismayed smaller birds.    The feeder was running low so I went out to fill it today, trying not to think of the feeder full of seeds as bait.  The last time I filled it I had to climb a couple of steps up the hill of snow pushed there by the plow.  Today I stood on the ground.  There will be snow piles left in parts of Augusta that will still be there at the end of June.  

The ice breakers came up the Kennebec early this year and it’s now running clear.  That’s an annual spectator sport around here, I’m sorry I missed it.  Everyone knows the names of the ice breaker who visits each year, the Thunder Bay.   Maple Syrup Sunday was last weekend.  Always a tempting celebration.  I don’t know why no one serves maple syrup on yogurt!  Or just plain maple syrup yogurt.  

Bella, my new house sitter will start her visits tomorrow and will stop by to check inside and out every Fri Sun and Tues.  And I can watch her through my doorbell!  Actually, it calls me as soon as someone comes through the gate even if they don’t ring the bell.  Apparently, something of a privacy concern for many, it can easily patrol the comings and goings across a street.  In my case it looks at the side of the driveway and the huge laurel hedge so my neighbors can rest easy.  I already “caught” one intruder, some woman who walked the length of the drive out of my vision (I didn’t see that part) and a short time later returned carrying a large paper shopping bag that she probably had with her when she came in.  I could hear very clearly, I didn’t think to shout to her, but I never heard a car door close or a vehicle drive away.  Anyway, Bella is on the case now!

3/14
We had about an inch of snow, but it’s melting today as temps climb up above freezing.  I’ve been listening to the red-breasted nuthatch this morning.  I’ve seen them this year for the first time and it’s always a treat to be able to identify birds I can’t see by their song.  A red-tailed hawk flew over earlier today, I never saw either bird but their aural presence makes me glad.

The peanuts are working on the crows, who stop by a few times a day, and the squirrels are taking advantage, of course.  So far I only have the pacific (read silent) gray squirrels around, but I’m sure if I keep putting out food, those vociferous red ones will find their way back. 

And another treat in the back yard is the blue jay.  I’ve just started seeing one around but one is near and calling out pairs of liquid bell tones.  While looking up the ways to describe the blue jay’s more melodic tones, I was reminded that they are also mimics and, I learned, one of their favorite birds to mimic? You guessed it, the red-tailed hawk. Just making sure I don’t get smug. Like the chickadees making their fee-bee calls which are usually more melodious than the Phoebes’.  And speaking of bird calls, the rooster living next door has been singing for weeks. 

He reminds me of my own year of the Roosta.  Someone dumped 3 roosters on the road by my house, they didn’t bother to get chicks that were sexed and people don’t generally like having them around, they are loud, they are aggressive and fight.  So many people, when they buy their chicks, pay extra for “sexed” eggs but it’s cheaper to get unsexed ones and dump extra roosters once they announce themselves. Those roosters sat in those trees every night for the rest of their lives.  Which were, alas, all too short.  We did catch one, me, Dan and Sandra Tibbetts and animal control officers from 2 towns armed with 2 big nets chased them all over my pasture one April afternoon, picking up lots of ticks and only one rooster.  Another was gone after a couple of days but one spent his days up at my house where I fed him.  He would eat corn near my feet, but I only had to stretch down my arm and he was off.  We were together for a few weeks and I think we enjoyed each other’s company.

Spring seems to be here, although the next few days will decide.  Today the rain is melting the snow, the day is dim with fluid that used to be frozen

And yet another welcome returnee, last evening was my first hearing the Woodcocks.  It was very foggy and even on clear nights I’ve never been able to see them during their courtship flights, but I love to listen. Of course, it’s a special bird for me, with my grandfather’s name Harold Woodcock.  Before I even bought this house, I came by one spring morning on my way to work to see how the sun hit it and as I pulled up, a Woodcock walked a few feet alongside the car in it’s hear bobbing way, seemingly uncaring about my presence.  It was the first Woodcock I’d ever seen, and still is.  It seemed a sign.  That and the Baltimore oriole I saw the first day I walked the property.  That was my first oriole.

19/3/17 St Patrick’s day 

It snowed last night, a dusting only.  It covered the porch roof as I walked down to go to the bathroom and when I came upstairs to get dressed 10 min later, the sun had melted it.

And now red joins blue, 2 days after my first blue jay, my first cardinal.  I saw her, but no him yet.

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”― Rumi

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in~Leonard Cohen

One warm day and night, the warm air kissing the snow, seducing it and through the night more and more crystals silently succumbed to spring’s enticements and as some of them trickled away, and others drew the curtain of fog as the earth begins to denude herself.

Our days are beginning to massage the sap into buckets, nights below freezing and days peeking above.  Maine celebrates Maine Maple Sunday next weekend, I wish I could find a place that offers it on waffles!  Lots of places offer it on ice cream, not too many mention it on or in yogurt.

Turns out that squirrels also tap maples buy biting the sugar maple bark and then turning later to lap up the sweet.

3/18
I’m grateful to see a cardinal and blue jay because I’ve missed them but one of my favorites, the dark eyed junco with their little pink bills, have returned. I think of them as demure little nuns, they never fly up to the feeder, but only pick up the leavings of others, always on the ground, dark gray hoods over plain neat white breasts. but always wearing their bright pink lipstick, er, well, beaks.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Dark-eyed_Junco/overview

3/21/19
I’ve pulled up the snow gauge, there are only a few inches left on the ground and I don’t expect much more. After looking it up on the internet I decided to wrap it in paper towels wet with vinegar.  It’s not going to come out gleaming, but after 12 hours, it certainly started the cleaning process.

It’s hungry out there in birdland, I’ve had a flock of robins eating the sumac berries and hopping hopefully about the mostly still frozen yard.  The berries are very sour, you can use them like lemons to make “sumac”ade.  This morning there was a blue jay eating there too.  

We’re getting about 1.5” of rain over the next 24 hours, they say it’s a classical Northeaster with rain.. There is lots of snow from the roof on the ground near the house.  This is a bit anxiety provoking since the ground is still frozen and there may be water in the basement.  

(Tangent, here Down East, they call it a Northeaster, we pronounce the th)

The pile of snow that slid off the garage roof is still half way up the windows.

Our sap producing cold nights have been without a cloud blanket and the moon is waning gibbous, bright light reflecting off the snow at night.

I’m grateful to have noticed some of the forsythia branches sticking above the melting snow.  Now they are displayed in a vase in elegant (read elegant simplicity with the emphasis on simply sticks) arcs which will flower in a week or so.  

I’m putting pix in my blog, my current sprigs and some blooming ones of yesteryear.  

I’m hearing the voices of summer, the blue jays and robins with their so familiar songs.  I expect to hear the lawn mowers of yesteryear that used to join with them in similar choruses in my suburban evenings when I was expected to be asleep before full night had fallen.  The robins have such a varied repertoire that it was only much later I realized that most of the background song in summer was mostly all robins’.

Another spectacularly bright day with the blue I tried to replicate for my bedroom.  

I have to buy some 7Up! I found some “spiral cut ham” on sale in the “ends” section of the meat counter at the local general store.  It’s beautifully low fat, but oh boy, salty?  So, I Googled it and the current general thinking is to boil it in soda or vinegar and sugar. Supposedly it won’t add a sweet flavor but the sugar “draws out” the salt.  They said I could use water too, which was my original plan, but I’m intrigued with the raves for the soda solution.  

I’m grateful for my meal yesterday.  I wanted to use up some salsa, I adore Mrs. Renfro’s (mild, low cal) peach salsa, a delight on salmon, and I have several jars I stocked up on that I now need to eat before my move, so I microwaved diced onion, sweet peppers and mushrooms, with chicken pieces in a sauce of salsa with yogurt added that was mmmmm, luscious.  Not French country cooking and certainly not a lamb feast, but not bad.  

I use yogurt for a sauce frequently.  If with a meat dish I’ll add a splash of wine a la stroganough.  I call it stroganough because I add things into it (garlic and onion powder, maybe cumin or basil or Chinnese 5 spice) until I have enough.

I’m grateful I have plenty of wood to last me through the chilly spring time as well as winter.  I’m using this very real gratitude to also include a couple pix of my wood handling past.