Talkin' Turkey

Tom struts his stuff.

Tom and a friend,

Tom the turkey and his small flock have been making themselves much more visible in the last few days. Tom is a big tom (pun intended) who I presume is the leader of the flock. First Catherine saw a turkey hen two days in a row pecking at the bird seed that has fallen off our deck. Then around noon today Tom and two other turkeys sauntered across the lawn just below the house. Later this evening the whole flock of 8 turkeys crossed in the opposite direction before strolling into the woods to roost. Despite being Ben Franklin's favorite bird, turkeys are pretty darn ugly, a cross between a vulture and a big chicken. Ben, as you remember, wanted the turkey and not the bald eagle to be our national bird. I can't remember why. Less war-like? Skittish and wary? Easier to hunt and better to eat? In any case, the turkey has become our national bird in a sense. It is after all the traditional meat for both Thanksgiving and Xmas. In a certain sense I guess Ben got his way after all.

Eastern Phoebe's Return

An Eastern Phoebe

The nest under the eaves, soon filled with chicks we hope.

Last year we had a pair of Eastern Phoebe's raise a brood in a nest that is just under the eaves of our roof as you leave our front door. Phoebes are migratory birds, so we were anxious to see if our couple would be back this year. And good news, they've arrived and have started fixing up their nest! We're looking forward to watching them raise another family this year. Phoebes don't come to feeders, but since ours have set up house at our house, so to speak, we get to see a lot of them. They perch in the pine trees just off our deck, swooping down on insects that have the misfortune of passing too close. We're seeing a lot of our migratory bird friends now. The red-winged blackbirds, grackles and sparrows are all starting to show up in force. A Canadian goose was grazing on the lawn the other day and a pair of mallards have been on the pond or the river for the last three days. The ducks and the geese will move on, but many of the others are back for the Summer.

Spring....At Last!

Just a little snow left on the wildflower patch.

The snow-free garden...Ready for our blood, sweat and tears.

Common mergansers. Male in front, female in the back.

Yes, it is really Spring up here in the North Country. The wait seemed interminable and was agonizing, but now it's over. Just a week ago I was still walking the dogs in snowshoes. Today I started working in the garden and the yard, and the snow is quickly fading from memory. (See photos above.) We had our second set of ducks on the pond, three common mergansers. There were two females and a male. (Must be members of that polygamous sect down in Texas.) Male and female mergansers look very different, like different species really which is rather surprising. They dive and catch small fish and this group of three cruised our pond for a good 45 minutes, scarfing down minnows and newts. I've come to the conclusion that what with the otters, the minks, the snapping turtle, and the predatory birds all looking for something to eat, it's tough living in our pond. But of course the predators have problems and predators of their own, so we shouldn't be too hard on them.

Otto the Otter cleans up the Pond

A river otter fresh from a swim.

Very cute...unless you're a fish or an amphibian.

Looking out from our deck at about 3 this afternoon, Catherine noticed something on the pond. At first we both thought it must be a duck. After all it's time for the ducks migrating into the region to start making pit stops on the pond and river, and we saw plenty of them last year. A glance in the binos quickly disabused us of that idea however. What was frolicking and diving in the pond was a good sized river otter. It dove and swam for some time, coming up every once and a while with something in its mouth. We can't say whether Otto had caught the last of our poor trout, a big minnow or some unsuspecting frog just emerging from hibernation. He even got up on the bank at one point before swimming off towards the river via the pond's drainage culvert. I'm guessing Otto is one of our permanent residents; there are some den holes along the far river bank that may well be where he lives. It was an exciting animal to watch for 20 minutes or so, and I'm sure he'll be back. Particularly after we restock the pond with trout. As is often the case, I gleaned the photos from the internet.

Mud Season

The yard as seen from the shed. Hard to tell where the pond starts.

Typical mud season road.

Why we're buying a 4WD car this year.

The river has gotten over its banks.

The yard flowing into the pond.

A tough Winter for the canoe.

Unfortunately to get from Winter to Spring up here in the North country, you have to go through Mud Season. Mud Season is that quirky time of year when all of the snow pack is melting, but the ground has only thawed down about 6 to 12 inches. What's that mean practically speaking? All of those thawed 6 to 12 inches turn to mud. This is a particularly quaint phenomenon on any of Vermont's 12,000 miles of dirt roads (see photos above). We're fortunate because we live off of a paved road although it reverts back to dirt about 100 yards past our house. I did however have an exciting first hand encounter with muddy back roads on Wednesday when I took the car to have the snow tires taken off (always a big moment of renewed hope around here). Needless to say, without 4 wheel drive it was exhilarating (and terrifying). Our yard seems to be turning into one big mud patch as well. As you can see from the pictures, the yard has become one big sheet of flowing water.

Maple Syrup Creemees!

Boiling the Sap.

Nectar of the Gods and Vermonters

The sap is running these days up in our neck of the woods and the syrup is boiling in hundreds of sugar shacks big and small. It's "Sugarin' Season" and a sweet season it is indeed after the Winter we've just been through. Sure, there's still 2 feet of snow pack on the ground over most of our yard, but it was over 50 today and the sun was out, so we decided to head to Bragg Family Farm for the first maple creemee of the season. The local "delicacy" up here this time of year is syrup on snow, but quite frankly I am sick of snow, with or without maple syrup. An ice cream cone on the other hand sounded just right. How right it was is hard to explain but just let me say that my creemee was extraordinarily delicious. They weren't boiling sap at Bragg farm today. They still use buckets to collect sap and were out getting another load collected from their 50 acre "sugarbush". (Why a sugar maple forest is called a sugarbush is unknown to me.) Our neighbor down the road was boiling however, and you can just see the steam escaping from the top of his shack in the photo above. He uses plastic piping to collect his sap which is the most common system these days. With the plastic piping you don't have to trudge through the woods with a collecting tank on a wagon emptying buckets. Gravity brings the sap right to your sugar house.

The Flu Comes to Paradise

We thought we had escaped this year's cold and flu season intact, but first Catherine and then I came down with a pretty vicious case of the flu. Obviously the picture above is not me, but it does give a pretty good idea of how I feel. Catherine has pretty much recovered, and at this point it appears that I may survive as well.

Garden Fence Appears, Spring is Near!

The newly visible garden fence with the "rainbow of hope" visible just above to the left.

For the first time in months we are able to see the top of our garden fence. Despite a disheartening "1 step forward, 1 step back" dance with Mother Nature, I think this time we may have really turned the corner. Yes I know, we've had 6 inches of snow in the past five days, but over 10 inches of snow has melted in that same time period. It was over 50 degrees today, and incredibly there are no freezing temperatures forecast for the next few days (although it won't be in the 50s). Let the melting begin!