A Superbowl Snack Fit For a King

Mouth watering lard & peanut butter suet

Yes, nothing like a heaping portion of lard and peanut butter suet while you watch the big game! The birds (woodpeckers primarily) have finished off my monster cube of homemade suet, and I whipped up a new one for them yesterday. For those of you who missed the recipe in an earlier blog, here it is. Heat 1 lb of lard and 1 lb of cheap peanut butter together in a sauce pan. When mixture becomes liquid, pour it into an 8x8 in foil pan. Stir in about a cup of mixed bird seed (I use one with peanuts and sunflower hearts). Let congeal at room temperature and then leave it outside overnight so it freezes. Remove the suet from its foil mold and place it in your suet holder. If you plan on eating this with chips during the game, don't place it outside to freeze; just let it congeal to the consistency of a cheese dip and dig in! Yummy!

Coming Home to Roost

Barry's newest favorite branch

Waiting for mice.

Chowing down after a successful grab.

Camouflage works! Where'd he go?

I guess Barry the barred owl always was home here in the woods around the house, but now he has started to choose trees right off of the deck as a preferred roost. And for good reason. After he showed up late this morning, we watched him pounce on and eat two mice. My speculation in an earlier blog appears to be accurate. The mice have tunnels and nests on the steep slope in front of the house so they can benefit from the uneaten bird seed that falls off the deck. Barry just hangs out on a branch about even with the deck, watches the ground below and then swoops down for a meal once he spots a mouse. He has been perched in the birch tree or one of the other trees just a few meters from the deck all day today. Barred owls have several other names of which the most common is "hoot owl". It was in fact a barred owl that started up the Hooters restaurant chain back in the 70s. Their only natural enemy is the Great Horned Owl which preys on barred owls. Talk about irony. We're wondering if Barry didn't polish off Rocky the flying squirrel for dinner one night since we haven't seen Rocky for several weeks. Our five red squirrels were no where to be seen today. Whether Barry got Rocky or not, the red squirrels seem to have a healthy respect for owls as a predators. We're also wondering if Barry isn't really Brenda. The female barred owl is bigger than the male and our bird seems to be a pretty good size. To be continued...we hope.

Moose Tracks!

That's right, Bullwinkle the moose is still in the area. The dogs and I ran onto his tracks this morning way up in the woods on the neighbors property. I'm guessing this is the same moose whose tracks we saw this Summer in the wild flower patch. Then this Fall I saw similarly sized tracks on one of the gravel bars along the river. Now, I'm assuming "our" moose is a bull because we have only seen one set of tracks and they are from a pretty good sized animal. If the tracks were from a cow moose, I think we would have seen a calf's tracks at some point. Tomorrow I'll try and remember to take a ruler and measure the tracks as well as a camera for some pictures. The pictures I've included aren't mine of course, but they show moose in a setting very similar to where I saw the tracks. Bull moose shed their antlers each year after the mating season so Bullwinkle is most likely bald at this time of the year. I just threw in the picture of the moose with his rack because a moose's antlers are so impressive. Who knows, maybe we'll find the discarded antlers on one of our walks. Wouldn't that make a great decoration for the house?

Existentialist Ennui a.k.a. Cabin Fever

Waiting for Spring

An earlier photo of Molly captures the mid-Winter mood

After the tease of 50 degree weather over several days during the "January thaw", Winter is back. It was -5 F this morning and will be pretty cold for the next few days. The landscape is re-frozen and it's back to layer upon layer of clothing for the morning walk. Weather this cold puts the dogs at risk for frostbite which means dog boots which are a real ordeal to put on the dogs prior to venturing out. Bottom line? Abbreviated walks for the last couple of days which means bored dogs and owners. At least the snow is really crusty, so you can get by without snowshoes most of the time. The up side is that I've been getting lots of work done in the shop and should have photos of our new entertainment center within the next couple of weeks. I know everyone is just breathless waiting for that, but you'll just have to be patient.

Barry the Barred Owl & Snowshoe Hares

Barry the Barred Owl looking for a morning snack.

Winter coat of the snowshoe hare.

Our barred owl showed up this morning at around 8 o'clock for a surprise visit. He apparently likes the birch tree just off the deck for some reason. I'm not sure whether he is hoping to snag a red squirrel before going to bed for the day or whether he is interested in mice that feed on the bird seed litter down in the yard. Whatever the attraction of the birch tree, he doesn't seem to be a particularly shy or skittish bird. He hung around even after I let the dogs out on the deck before flying away in a leisurely manner. In other news, I definitely identified the tracks of a snowshoe hare during my morning walk. Snowshoe hares are the only rabbits in this area, and you don't see them very often. This was the first time I'd seen any sign of one. It's a rough life up here for rabbits what with the long winters and the many predators. The predators are why the snowshoe hare's fur changes from brown to white in the Winter and then back to brown in the Spring. Makes it hard for the owls and foxes to see them.

A Dark Veil Descends over Vermont...

A world lit only by candles.

No new posts for "Four Seasons in Vermont" during the last couple of days? I have an excuse. It's hard to post anything on the internet with no electricity for 36 hours. Oddly enough when the power goes out the computer doesn't work. Nor does our DSL hookup not to mention the heat or the water pump. In short we returned to the mid-19th century here for a couple of days without really being prepared for it. A bad wind storm brought trees down on power lines all over the state. The one that took out our power fell only about 200 yards from the house on the other side of the road. We did discover why people seemed to bathe much less back in the "old days". Hauling water by hand and heating it a couple of gallons at a time on the stove so you can take a bath seems like a complete waste of time when you could be huddled around the fire, your only source of warmth on a cruel winter's night. We also discovered that in the Winter with the sun down by 5 o'clock and without electricity you go to bed really early. Around 8 o'clock for us as it turned out, and between 7 and 8 all we did was sit in the living room and stare at the candles. Still, it wasn't that bad. It was even a little romantic as the photo above attests. You just had to make a conscious effort not to let the swarms of flies attracted by your body odor ruin the romantic moment.

Talkin bout a Heat Wave

Pine Tree freshly worked over by a pileated woodpecker.

The garden fence reappears and water shimmers on the surface of the pond.

The deck, strangely almost free of snow.

Only 4 days ago the garden fence was completely covered with snow. A week ago the high temperature for the day didn't get into the double digits. Today on the other hand we are in the midst of what we affectionately call up here in Vermont "the January thaw". And quit a thaw it has been. It was 59 F at noon today (a record) and I ate out on the deck on an adirondack chair that was free of snow for the first time in two months. We didn't start a fire today for the first time in 3 months. The snow has the consistency of a snow cone and the ice on the pond, which I was nonchalantly walking across a week ago, seems ready to disappear. Tomorrow it's supposed to be even warmer before temperatures slowly become more seasonable over the weekend. Perhaps I should have called the blog "6 Seasons in Vermont". After all, there is Mud Season here in the early Spring and this mini-season of the January thaw.

P.S. I stumbled on the pine tree that had been chewed up by the woodpecker during the walk this morning.

Red in Tooth and Claw

Blood in the water (or on the ice).

Where the carcass was drug up on the bank.

Leftovers.

Nella looks over the evidence.

Many of you will recognize Darwin's comment about the nature of Nature. This morning we got a first hand look at what he was talking about when we stumbled on a deer kill down near the river. We theorize that a couple of coyotes were able to take down a small deer and devour it. There's not much left of the deer, just some skin and entrails. What's left of the carcass has to be somewhere close by, but we couldn't really look for it since the dogs were going crazy trying to gobble up whatever frozen leftovers were laying around. The predator or predators appear to have caught the deer on a long sand bar on the near side of the river. The struggle took them upstream where the deer was finally killed on the ice. You can see the copious amounts of blood on the ice along the shore in two of the pictures above. After that the deer was drug up on the bank and ripped apart. The only substantial piece of the deer that we found was a big chunk of skin. You can see that in the other two photos. Although this wasn't a big deer from what we could see, there aren't many predators around here that can kill a deer at all. There aren't any wolves or mountain lions. A bobcat could kill a very small deer but anything bigger than a fawn could only be killed by coyotes. Unfortunately, we couldn't really analyze any tracks what with the dogs running around. I'll look for the carcass tomorrow and see if there aren't some definitive signs of coyotes.

"A River Runs Through It....Kinda"

Last night was the coldest night of the year so far, -12 F. That's cold enough to freeze the river up. It's still running of course, but the surface is frozen except where the river flows the fastest. I haven't been to the other side of the river in weeks. With my boots and gaiters, I can still wade across without getting my feet wet, but once on the other side, my wet snowshoes attract snow like magnets and really clog up. With all of the snow on the ground, it may be Spring before I can cross the river again. Of course, I'm not missing much. It's not like it's El Dorado on the other side. Still, the moose that regularly circulates in the area generally stays along the river and I would hate to miss out on seeing its tracks if they only passed on the other side.

Things are Squirrely Here!

File photo of a flying squirrel carrier landing.

"Rocky" our Flying Squirrel at the Feeder

As mentioned in a previous post, one night not too long ago Catherine spotted a flying squirrel on one of our bird feeders . We only got a glimpse before the squirrel "flew" off. That's a fib because flying squirrels don't actually fly. They can, however, glide from tree to tree because a flap of skin stretches between each of their front and back legs. (See the photo above that I stole from another web site.) Even our regular red squirrels can glide to some extent. They regularly jump off the deck to a tree or onto the ground dozens of feet below. Last night our flying squirrel showed up again and he was much less skittish this time around. Although Catherine was in bed, I was able to get right up to the window and get a good look as well as taking several professional quality pictures (see above). Rocky, as I've named him (some of you will get the reference), didn't seem to mind the attention at all. Rocky only seems interested in the feeders hanging under the eaves of the house. That may be because under the eaves he feels protected from Barry the Barred Owl. Apparently owls are flying squirrels greatest enemies. So we've got at least one resident flying squirrel living near the house. Now if Bullwinkle will just show up.
In other squirrel news, Nella our dog caught and killed one of our numerous red squirrels just yesterday. This is the second time she has managed to snag a squirrel as it tried to escape off the deck after gorging at one of the bird feeders. The first time the squirrel was caught but escaped when Nella was distracted for a moment. No such luck for the squirrel this time. Catherine gave it a proper burial by throwing it over the fence into the woods.

Did I mention it was cold?

Dunce Caps on the Garden Fence

A Curtain of Icicles on a Log Across the Brook

The Latest Thing in Dog Footwear

Today dawned sunny and cold. How cold? So cold the squirrels knocked on the door and begged the dogs for hot coffee. Well, maybe not that cold, but it was close to zero this morning. It got up to a balmy 18 F when we went for our walk. Tonight is supposed to be really cold though. 10 below or something like that. We've been promised that the high for the day will be at least 5 degrees above zero. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to the morning walk. We got 15 or 16 inches of snow over the last two days, and you can see from the photo that the garden fence has almost disappeared. The fence posts look like they're wearing dunce caps. Still, it was a light fluffy snow, easily shoveled and it worked its beautiful magic on the landscape. We've gotten a total of about 48 inches of snow so far this year. As you can see from the pictures, we're even to the point where the dogs are wearing snowshoes.