The Slow Creep of Spring

Spring is steadily seeping onto our land. Yesterday morning after Mass, when I was in the midst of making brunch, I sighted a bluebird perched on a tree outside the window. When it flew, the brilliant streak of indigo glinting in the sun was so stunning that I froze in place transfixed by the that split-second splash of bedazzling color. 

Shortly thereafter, as we sat in the dining room, a flock of goldfinches, still cloaked in their winter plumage, arrived at the thistle feeder my mother-in-law gave us. Although their winter-wear could not compete with the bluebird's finery, their cheerful twittering made up for what they lacked in color. It added a sparkle of sound that punctuated the soundtrack to my work that day. 

Much of my work yesterday consisted of burning brush and clearing (again!) While doing so, I spied my third robin in the past week. I also stumbled upon two different flowers in bloom. On the left is a clump of snowdrops. Several clumps of them are in an area that is predominantly filled with naturalized daffodils.











And near the front walk, under some trees, I found some lovely, petite anemone pavonina blanda. They are only about 3 inches tall, and are easy to miss if you don't have an eye for the minute. 

They are quite lovely. 

When fully opened they look like this:

 But when they are just opening 

they look like this: 

Luckily it was peaceful when I was out yesterday. The occasional distant hum of my husband's small chainsaw drifted up from below the dam now and then,

but mostly it was birdsong,

the crackle of fire,

and the gentle whoosh 

of wind in the pines

that met my ears.

I reveled in a sliver of moon in a silver-blue sky,

the azure waters of the lake 

glimmering through the trees,

and the happy laughter 

and chatter 

of my three youngest 

as they clamored about 

the board fence near me.

The loggers rested on Sunday, but they were back at it today. They aren't clear-cutting, thankfully, just selective-logging. But they started at 7:30 this morning and didn't finish until 7 tonight.  Their chainsaws, grapple skidders, buck saws, and log trucks overwhelmed the usually peaceful sounds that prevail here. 

There was a disturbing, bone crunching din as the branches cracked and broke during the fall of each tree. Then there was the final whumping thud as it struck earth, the continuous whining saw, the steady roaring of the grapple skidder's engine, not to mention the resounding thunks when the finished logs where dropped onto the waiting truck.

But despite the bothersome logging,
I saw a robin again today,
the finches continued to adorn my feeder,
my children laughed just as much, 

and there's another flower
to add to my list of sightings: 

purple crocus.

There are many other crocus plants that I have spied out too. There are some hyacinths as well, I think. And soon the daffodils will be erupting in little fountains of color. Some of the early varieties are quite close to blooming already.

What treasure will tomorrow hold?

Partly Cloudy

The forecast for today reads, "partly cloudy." 

But the air is white with a "fog" of snow. 

Beautiful clumps of large, swirling flakes are falling heavily. 

The snow is just getting started in this picture.

Loggers are taking down trees on the plot of land next to us. 

Snow is slowly blotting out the scar that their white pick-ups make 

when parked on the winter-golden grass of the pasture.

It is muffling the strident sound of the ferocious feller buncher.

I took the short drive into town this morning
to pick up something from the store 

and overheard the bagger ask another employee, "How are ya, Bob?"

"Well..." the man drawled, "I'm not hungry... and I'm not dirty."

"So it's a good day, then!" She responded, laughingly.

"I reckon," he affirmed.

Our new phone book arrived today.

It's 4"x10" and includes every major town in our county. 

And it's not thick either.

The truck is a standard "hot wheels" size.

This is the sort of place I live.

Peepers and a 'Possum

a juvenile possum at our old homestead

When I opened the door tonight, heading to the barn to close the goat in, I was greeted with the cheery sound of spring peepers! For those of you who don't know, they're little frogs about an inch in size. The males make birdlike calls by expanding their throats like a balloon. They usually sing in a chirping chorus, competing for mates. They are the undisputed harbingers of spring. I would have preferred a real winter before spring arrived, but who can complain about spring, whenever it comes?

a full-sized peeper my oldest caught in a milk-jug scoop last summer

The gentle ring of spring peeper songs wafted sweetly up from the pond as I trudged toward the barn. My thoughts were caught up in the things that springtime conjures up. And then I crossed paths with a 'possum... Yug. Those things are like giant, wooly rats. They even have bare tails. Plus they are chicken killers and egg suckers. I am not a fan.

This is the same juvenile 'possum as the one in the first pic. in this post.

I ran after it and chased it just for fun. A 'possum on the run is quite humorous. It undulates as it runs. If it hadn't run, by the way, I would have quickly gotten away from it. Opossums show an impudent lack of respect and take surprisingly bold risks. And there's something threatening about a fearless, climbing creature with a penchant for growling and hissing while baring its teeth, even if it is rather on the small side. Besides, it has a prehensile tail, is the only marsupial in North America, and is immune to the venom of rattlesnakes (and other pit vipers such as the dreaded copperhead!)  

I once did a pointillism of a 'possum. It was perched in a tree looking intently at the viewer. As I remember, it was sort of cute, too. But it was before I'd had enough encounters with the critters to understand their true nature. My husband has it in his office at work. I'll try to get him to take a photo of it. So if you are interested in seeing an old piece of my art, check back.

Sandhill Cranes

I heard sandhill cranes this past weekend when clearing the dam and when collecting and cutting up brush from around trees in our "yard" area. 

This pile near the house is "a drop in the bucket" compared to the one we just made near the lower barn.

Once you've identified their strange, trilling, and trumpeting call once, there is no mistaking sandhill cranes when you hear them again. I paused several times in my work, scanning the sky for their long necks and trailing legs, their wide, wide wings.

Sandhill cranes are large. They weigh about 10 pounds. Their wing span is about 6 feet across, and they stand at about 3 and a half feet tall. Their red eye "masks" and 5 inch bills make them look fairly formidable. They are impressive creatures.

Their footprints are nearly half as long as my husband's, who wears size 9.

Hearing them made me long to go to Ewing Bottoms (just west of Brownstown, Indiana) to see them again. Thousands stop there, and spread out here and there in the fields and ditches along the river to feed and rest during their migration.

  

We went every year for many in a row. Often snow was falling.
Frequently there was fog.

Groups of several hundred would be foraging in the fields, some of them "dancing" by bowing, throwing corn stalks in the air, jumping, and flinging their wings wide as part of their mating ritual. The shrill and trilling sounds of so many birds permeated the air. More could always be heard than seen. New groups of birds were always arriving. And if you stood very still and were silent, they would fly right over you when they did. It was lovely.

But it was time consuming. It was a long drive to get to the general area in which they convene. And often, once in the area, it took quite a bit of driving to find a flock near enough to observe well. My little ones have never liked being in the car. And now that we have moved here, we live another hour away...

Soon the many trees, shrubs, thorny thickets, etc. will leaf out here, and the much needed clearing around trees, along fence lines, and on the backside of the dam will be much harder, if not impossible. After the clearing, there's fencing that needs installed, and coop fortification on the list, among many other things. We need to spend most spare daylight minutes trying to get the place in shape, at least at first. So there was no luxury of an annual birding expedition this year. 

Yesterday my son heard them again, despite playing music in the stone room while working on his school work. They are that loud. He quickly came to find me, excited by the raucous bugling he heard, happy that he knew what the noise was. And I know that some day we will go back to see them.

"There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds... There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter..." 
- Rachel Carson (1907-1964) marine biologist, nature writer, environmentalist

Look at the deer, dear!

This morning, as I worked in the kitchen, I noticed deer in the back hay field.

That was nothing unusual. We've seen groups of white tailed deer so often in the past months that I refer to them affectionately as, "the royal herd," as if, like times of old, they are the harts and hinds of our own little kingdom.

Sometimes I'll be going about my business in the house and I'll notice a deer will be standing right outside the window munching contentedly.

Other times I'll startle some as I round the corner of the barn.

There have been occasions when they stop in front of or next to our car
as we are going down the drive.

I've seen an eight point buck hop the board fence next to our house.

I've seen 2 different young bucks with asymmetrical antlers.

I've seen does with spindly legged fawns trailing behind. 

I've seen does and yearlings bedded down in the field very near to the tree line.

And always, after they see me, they spring off after a bit of frozen indecision.

About 20 minutes after first taking note of the grazing deer, they caught my eye again, as I went about my tasks in the kitchen, because they had been startled. Their tails were up and they were bounding across the ground, zig zagging, with the occasional high leap for good measure. I didn't think much of it. It's a common sight in the early morning or late evening. I figured a dog had strayed over from a neighboring farm and was having some fun, but more deer emerged from the woods by the lake, so out of habit, I began to count them. After all, a royal inventory is always in order :)

I got to 6, was about to return to the task at hand, and then a small yearling streaked out of the woods as fast as it could go, and behind it came two coyotes. They soon stopped short, either afraid of the wide open space, or because they knew that their ambush had failed and there was little chance of catching the deer now.

At first I was mesmerized by the scene. I called out to my family that coyotes were in the field and had been chasing deer. We all gawked at them from various windows. They lingered a bit, pacing in frustrated circles, and then slunk back into the woods surrounding the lake.

Sorry, I didn't manage to take a picture of the coyotes, so you get a gratuitous picture of our lake. 

Later, after the morning was nearly over, I was remembering the sensational scene that had played out before me. Then I got to thinking that the coyotes came out of the "island" of woods around lake. The lake and surrounding woods are surrounded by hay fields. They hadn't even come out of the trees that are adjacent to hundreds of acres of woodland. They came from the small and seemingly innocuous woods in which we camped this fall (only to be waked several times in the night by a hair-raising scream that we thought was a bobcat or a mountain lion.)

The lake that we spent half of the day next to yesterday while we worked to clear the dam of trees and brush since it had been neglected for several years...

 while our children played near us in the brush and in the lower barn.

That got me to start thinking about the possible danger to my children that coyotes might pose. The coyotes had been, after all, on the hunt at eight o'clock in the morning. Already I fear daytime encounters with copperheads and timber rattlers.

My children go out in tall rubber boots with instructions to step onto logs and then down, instead of simply stepping over them, to never reach under a log or into a hole or cave without prodding it first with a good, long stick. They have been instructed about how to tell pit vipers from non-venomous snakes. This is because copperheads and rattlers live around here, and we've seen lots of snakes- even inside our garage on the steps up into the house! (They have all been harmless and relatively small so far.)

I have also been mildly leery of letting my children camp in their own tent, as they want to do, because of the very small danger of an encounter with a bobcat or mountain lion. (Both have been sighted and confirmed by authorities to be in our part of our state, although they are certainly rare.) Now I had the daylight sighting of the coyotes to grapple with too. "Probably the odds of danger from coyotes is lower than with the wildcats," I thought. I did a quick internet search on coyotes. My first "hit" said this:

“Coyote attacks on humans and pets have increased within the past 5 years in California. Forty-eight such attacks on children and adults were verified from 1998 through 2003, compared to 41 attacks during the period 1988 through 1997...” 

“Out of the 89 coyote attacks in California, 56 of the attacks caused injury to one or more people. Out of those that caused injury, 55% were attacks on adults. In 35 incidents, where coyotes stalked or attacked small children, the possibility of serous or fatal injury seemed likely if the child had not been rescued.” (Coyote Attacks: An Increasing Suburban Problem, Timm and Baker ’04)

In fact there have been 2 fatalities, a 3 year old who was playing untended in her front yard, and a 2 year old who was taken off of her front porch! But that was in California. Other than pets and livestock (a lot of livestock!) being killed by coyotes in my state, there have been no reports of coyotes attacking humans yet.

So I probably won't spend a lot of time worrying about a coyote encounter, especially since I already have so many other things to worry about. I console myself with the thought that more folks die from bee stings or lightning each year. (Although my closest neighbors DO keep bees...) But I probably will talk to my husband about fortifying the livestock fence, because I also read this:


"Coyotes use their front paws on the top of a fence and use their hind legs to propel themselves over a barrier. Your fence should be at least 5 to 6 feet tall and made of brick, cement blocks, wood or net -- wire is recommended. Add extenders to the top of the fence that extend outward 15 to 20” to prevent the coyote from climbing the fence. Or you can use coyote rollers along the top of the fence that keep coyotes and other wildlife from gripping the top of the fence to climb it."

"Coyotes are good diggers and often will dig under fences. To prevent digging, securely attach a 4 to 6 foot wire apron to the bottom of the fence. Electric fences can also be used to prevent coyote intrusion. Electric trip wires can be used at the base of the fence or a foot or two out to prevent digging as well." -http://www.desertusa.com/june96/cycot_qa.html

(And it's not like we have anything else to do... she types with heavy sarcasm.)