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.