Maggie's Farm

Tyto alba, the Barn Owl, has a huge geographical distribution:

I think of them as the nighttime version of the Marsh Hawk, because they like the wide open spaces, grasslands, fields, and marsh edges. They are not woodland birds.

I know we do not have them at the farm, because we have a hundred acres of meadow and a perfect barn loft open for them to use, and they have never used it. Plus there are hundreds more acres of horse field and cow pasture nearby. I think we're at the northern edge of their range. For owls, we have only Great Horned, Barred, and Screech as far as I know. Probably Saw-Whet in winter, but I haven't seen one there.

The last time I saw a Barn Owl was when one flew across the road in front of me at night in the headlights, between a marsh and some large estate fields in lovely Lloyd Harbor, Long Island. Lloyd Neck, actually.

The Eastern Bluebird is always a sight for sore eyes, and apparently their numbers are recovering from a decline. Their recovery is in part because of human assistance with Bluebird houses.

In New England, these weekends are a good time to put up new nest boxes, and to clean out the old ones.

You won't see Bluebirds often in denser suburbia because they are partial to good-sized fields, large lawns (ie over 4 acres), and edges. They like open country. At the farm, we have about 15 Bluebird houses up on snake-proof poles. Half the houses are usually taken over by Tree Swallows, some are filled with sticks by House Wrens, and our cheerful Bluebirds use the rest of them.

In New England, Bluebirds are semi-migratory, and can sometimes be seen in winter flocks, foraging widely for fruits and berries.

The CLO entry of the Eastern Bluebird here.

He is back to feeding on the sparrows at my bird feeder. Quite a sight to see him trying to swoop in low under the radar from his perch, then chasing a bird through the bushes with much thrashing around.

Most of his attacks fail, but clearly enough succeed to keep him around. I sometimes term my bird-feeder a Sharpie-feeding station. Somebody should call PETA, because if I did these sorts of things to little songbirds, I'd end up in jail.

Sharp-shinned Hawk.

They are accipters. "Hawks," in the US, is generally used to apply to Accipters, Buteos, and Falcons.

Each raptor genus is readily identifiable by profile, regardless of size, maturity, or species.

In Scientific American, The Wipeout Gene - A new breed of genetically modified mosquitoes carries a gene that cripples its own offspring. They could crush native mosquito populations and block the spread of disease. And they are already in the air—though that's been a secret.

Good, bad, or indifferent? It's a little creepy to me, like Ice-9.

Today it's a powerful and majestic predator, which comes to mind
because our friends who cover hawk migration in New Haven, CT, have seen a few of them passing through recently.

Lucky them. I have never seen a Golden Eagle in the Eastern US, but have seen them in the West, where they are not uncommon. Medium-sized mammals are their main prey, and the wide, open spaces are their dominion.

Read more about this handsome raptor here.

Picture by J. J. Audubon, as can be easily recognized by the awkward and un-lifelike pose of the animal. Audubon typically painted from dead specimens - he was a famous shot with a rifle, and he liked to get a good, close look at the animal he was painting.

Somewhere in either Tolstoy or Dostoevsky there is a comment about the remorse of the hunter when holding a Woodcock in hand. You have noticed that our head image on Maggie's now is Woodcock hunting.

John Stuart Skinner in his classic 1883 The Dog and the Sportsman put it this way:

I have frequently felt something like remorse, when, on picking up a wounded one, I have met the forgiving expression of its full and bright, yet soft hazel orb. How many of the beauties who dazzle and enslave us would be proud of such an eye.

Sow Bugs, Woodlice - they have lots of names, and there are over 3000 species of these little guys. I think I sacrifice a few of them to the gods every time I toss a log on the fire.

They are arthropods, in the subgroup of the usually-aquatic Crustaceans. They look like tiny Trilobites.

I am always happy to see these little bugs under logs and rocks. Arthropods own the world, even though we don't give them a vote.

I took a few photos at the farm in the Berkshires. Last year, a nor'easter took out our foot bridge over the stream. This week, the storm destroyed the big tractor bridge, steel I-beams, cement posts, and all. This is not good at all.

We saw this big male Eastern Box Turtle in the woods on the edge of the field, near the beaver marsh. My favorite reptile except for maybe the Black Snake, even though this was a cranky old guy:

Here's the old well:

And here's the old hitching post:

More photos on continuation page below -

The first Barn Owl I ever saw was in the headlights swooping low over a marshy field on the North Shore of Long Island. It did, indeed, look spooky in its whiteness.

Barn Owls have a worldwide distribution, but they stay away from the colder regions. In North America, they aren't found much north of southern New England.

Barn Owls are prodigious mouse and rat killers. As such, they are birds of farms and meadows, not of woodlands nor of suburbia. In the Northeast, their numbers were surely higher when the countryside was filled with small farms and cow pastures. Midwestern industrial-scale farming offers them little of interest. I suppose they are the night-time analogue of the Marsh Hawk. The rodents never get a break.

I have never seen or heard one at Maggie's Farm, which would seem to be perfect habitat for them, but which might be towards the northern edge of their range. We even have an open shed with a loft which would be perfect for them to raise a family in. (The Barn Swallows think they own it, though, so maybe they would pester the owls too much.)

The subject of Barn Owls came up because Samizata, of all places, posted a piece on Barn Owl nest boxes. Nobody is going to make a lot of money producing these, but it's a great idea as the wooden barns and silos of the past are falling down.

Here's the CLO bit on the Barn Owl. Wiki has a more extensive write-up.

Photo is a Barn Owl family in an old silo.

From our archives, because the sound of saws may be constant around here this weekend, if Irene hits us in Yankeeland:

Burning carbon to kill trees! Good work and good fun.

The gasoline-powered chainsaw is one of the finest inventions since the wheel and the plow. It's really just a mechanized stone axe like my Indian sncestors used, and I am eagerly awaiting the laser saw to bring wood cutting into the 21st Century.

While the engineering principles of the chainsaw may go back to surgical instruments of the 1800s, the modern concept dates to the 1920's with bulky and impractical designs until the German engineer Andreas Stihl developed his "tree-cutting machine" around 1929. The one-man saw dates to around 1950 and was perfected by Stihl and their main competitor, the weapons manufacturer Husqvarna. The Stihl family still owns their company. Check out their saws here. (No, this is not an advt.)

I have always enjoyed power saws: my godfather's father started the Wright Saw Company in CT, which produces a reciprocating power saw - an anomaly in the development of power saws which never really caught on except for special uses.

Of course, the famous and indispensible Sawzall is a reciprocating saw.

Here's the interesting weather we have to look forward to, up here. Think I'll go get some gas for my Stihl Farm Boss.

Here. In one of the scenes, he nails a fish which is almost too heavy for him to lift.

I have read that Ospreys sometimes drown by being overly-ambitious with big fish.

With advice for singles:

Fiddler crabs check out at least 100 potential mates before making a decision. While we acknowledge that figuring out how to get along with difficult people is a big part of marriage, how can it hurt to decide carefully - even though it's guaranteed that you will end up with a flawed human - or crab? (Hopefully, not with crabs.)

I didn't realize we have three species on the East coast. I guess I am mainly familiar with the ubiquitous and delightful Atlantic Marsh Fiddler of the Cape Cod salt marshes and tidal flats. It always cheers me up to see them.

These cute mud-eating crabs with their little holes all over the high tidal mudflats are all bark and no bite, have gills but breathe air, do not make good bait, and live in colonies in which they seem to spend most of their time threatening eachother. At high tide, they retreat into their burrows and shut the door. Up here, they hibernate down there all winter.

Egrets and herons will eat them. Raccoons, too.

Name the two species, and explain what is happening:

Ans: Yes, it is a King Snake constricting and preparing to devour a venomous Copperhead. It will take him quite a while to get that big Copperhead into himself, but he'll do it. Snakes stretch.

Tardigrades are the only cute little critters that I have not yet heard to be threatened by global warming, despite their cuteness and gentle natures. Perhaps they are neglected due to Sizeism.

These are tough little animals. More about them here. Good pets because they are almost impossible to kill no matter how much you might neglect them.

An annual re-post:

We mentioned in our piece on cicadas that the Katydids would begin their singing in mid-late summer. They are beginning to go strong now here in New England.

Open that window, shut off the TV, and let those wonderful, soothing, romantic, sentimental, poignant, sleepy-time night sounds roll in to feed your soul. And engrave it in your heart - we only have so many Augusts in our lives. For the katydid, it's their one and only - no wonder they sing their hearts out, until a hard frost kills them all.

You hardly ever see a Katydid - they are well-camouflaged in the green leaves but they are all over. Early evening and nighttime are when they make their music - more like Kay-did than a three-syllable tune. It sounds as if they are singing to each other. With the crickets providing the chirping background theme, it's a fine choir out there right now, at night. The bugs own the night.

Here's more info about Katydids.

Since the 1978 Marine Mammal Protection Act, the seals of New England have been proliferating. Fishermen had been shooting them on sight. 

We have two species, the Harbor Seal and the Grey Seal.

The Grey Seals are not uncommon along the Cape Cod ocean beaches. Last summer, they were swimming around 15-20 feet from us, perhaps thinking we were some new sort of seal. They are big, curious, and harmless.

On a drizzly day last week, Mrs. BD and I hiked the beach from Newcomb's Hollow to Cahoon's Hollow (and back). We saw quite a few Greys in the water, looking almost like swimming black Labs.

Signs advise people that it is a crime to harass the seals, but there are no signs telling the seals not to harass the people.

One effect of the growing seal populations is that they attract the big sharks, Great Whites, Hammerheads, and others. Big sharks, of course, cannot distinguish a seal from a swimmer, but shark attacks are not really a problem, despite Jaws. When you see fins ("she's getting four stars from the road"), just get out of the water and read Moby Dick on the beach until they go away.

Photo above is a Grey Seal, resting on a beach.

Photo below is the crowded Cahoon's Hollow beach last week, in Wellfleet. Yes, we did have lunch at The Beachcomber. Duh. Sipp told me he used to pretend to play bass guitar in his band there. They specialize in blues and reggae, nightly during the summer. It feels like a Key West bar - quite cheerful and relaxed - and the seafood is pretty good. If you are under 50, be there or be square... but the music is too late at night for me.

A few pics of the Wellfleet Beachcomber below the fold, for Sipp's amusement -

AVI reminded us that the Cape Cod National Seashore turned 50 this week. That Sponge-headed Science Man loves the Cape as much as we do. The Farm is wonderful, but being inland has always made me feel a little claustrophobic. I like access to sea and sky.

Pic above of a stretch of South Beach, with our group of intrepid birders. We hopped down from Wellfleet to Chatham last week to catch a Mass. Audubon birding trip out to Monomoy Island (about which we posted recently). Monomoy is designated a National Wilderness. The size and shape of Monomoy is constantly in flux, as is its intermittent connection with Chatham's South Beach (which is an extension of Nauset Beach - the Cape's southern barrier island group which now reaches down towards Nantucket.

We ended up boating down to lower South Beach instead of Monomoy proper, due to tidal water depth. Our guide du jour, Ellison, an expert birder, led us on an arduous 4 mile barefoot (watch for sharp shells) hike through mud flats, soft sand, and sharp-edged marsh cordgrass - and non-stop biting marsh bugs - to check out the early migrants and the breeding shorebirds. Ya gotta be tough to be a birder.

Bird list and more pics below the fold -

Cape Cod may have had a little bit of topsoil long ago, but now the Outer Cape (aka the Lower Cape - north of Chatham) is pretty much all sand (which is why the Indians needed to throw a herring into each hill of corn), and the dominant tree is the Pitch Pine. Where it's subject to wind, it doesn't get much higher than a 6' scrub form.

Here's the path to our not-too-secret wild Blackberry patch, where it's not unusual to see a cheerful Eastern Box Turtle, to hear Bob Whites calling during the day, and Whip-Poor-Wills calling in the evening. Shrubs on front left, Beach Plum. Tree on right, Black Oak. Trees in background, Pitch Pine.

The basic outer Cape upland habitat is now Pitch Pine with an understory of Scrub Oak, with scatterings of Black Oak and feral Black Locust, with grasses below. In sunny spots, Bayberry, Blackberry, Poison Ivy, and Beach Plum. An occasional patch of wild blueberry filled with greedy Robins and Catbirds. This is officially known as Pitch Pine/Scrub Oak Barrens, but, for me, it's heaven. I hope that heaven, if I get there (doubtful) smells like hot sand, Pitch Pine, and Bayberry. The ground cover in the photo below is the dwarf shrub Common Bearberry with its small red berries in August. This was a foggy early morning:

It's the time of year when the Box Turtles have emerged from hibernation and begin to roam, like singles on the East Side of Manhattan, looking for food, drink, and one-night stands.

There are several versions of this charming turtle - the Florida, the Eastern, the Ornate, Western, and the Gulf. Within each type, the coloration is highly variable. The above male Eastern happens to be highly colored.

The Eastern is under a good deal of pressure, especially in the Northeast, where development, "progress," dopey humans, pet collectors, dogs, and lawn-mowers impinge on its ancient habitat, or just plain kill them. In much of their range, especially in the Northeast, they are either endangered or "of special concern."

Land-dwelling, but not true tortoises, Boxies like to have water nearby, enjoy shady woodlands, and can swim a little bit if they have to but never live in water. They can live over 60 years in an area smaller than a football field, and they learn their way around it very well. Since they rarely encounter one-another, the females are able to store live sperm for up to 6-10 years, it is thought, using it as needed. Very feminist and modern. Still, they tend to live in "colonies," more or less.

If you see one on the road, please stop and help it across so it doesn't get squashed. I have been known to barely avoid multi-car pile-ups to help a Boxie across the road. If your dog gets one, punish the dog harshly so that it will never want to bother a turtle again, and let the thing go free. They are wonderful and lovely critters, and endangered in New England. Very few of their young survive to adulthood, so a wild adult is a rare and precious thing that has survived many obstacles, but it was not designed to cope with roads and cars. Don't take them home - they are wild animals and not pets, and where they are is where they belong, unless you are working on a population transplant project.

If you are lucky enough to have Box Turtles living near you, learn more about them, also here.

Just south of Chatham on the elbow of the Cape, reaching south towards Nantucket, the Monomoy islands are a National Wildlife Refuge. They are full of seals, nesting shorebirds, and are a busy migration resting place. Also, the fishing there is wonderful. You can even do flats-style fishing for Stripers.

You can visit these (relatively) new islands by boat from Chatham. Nice little trip. You can stay at the Chatham Bars Inn which, I admit, has gotten fancier over the years.

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Feral pigs and wild boar are difficult to differentiate. The US now has both (but had neither, historically) - and they interbreed. Both are considered invasive pests, but I have to point out that the Italians know how to cook them. Cinghiale. They make good salumi out of them too. (Salami is a subcategory of salumi.)

If wild pig and boar were legal to market in the US as they are in Europe, our pest issue with them would be solved. More wolves would help, also.

A reader sent me these pics:

I fought with these darn things all weekend (with the help of a BD daughter). I think the trick is either to yank them out when young, or clip them low and spray the stump with poison.

If you live in the Northeast, your gardens and plantings are, right now, being attacked by the unwanted and unwelcome alien Porcelainberry.

This aggressive Asian weed vine was introduced as a decorative ground cover, but it is a cancer with the ability to grow 15' or more per year, and to smother anything you have planted. If you pull it up, get the entire root - or poison it.

The birds poop the seeds everywhere, so they come up everywhere around here. Especially in gardens. Their roots are tenacious.

As its leaves demonstrate, it is a member of the grape family and it can be confused with the native wild grape, which is a much less aggressive plant. You can read all about Porcelainberry here, and about how to try to get rid of it.

It's been Babyland here this Spring at ye olde New England homestead. Lots of nests, lots of baby birds fledging right now.

Within 15 yards of our cabin, this year we have successfully harbored nests or homes of:

2 pairs of Robins
1 House Wren family
1 Mourning Dove family (in our Wisteria, pooping on our porch chairs)
1 Catbird family
1  Cardinal family
1 Ruby-Throated Hummingbird family - a male and female are around all day, so I assume a tiny nest very close by
2 Cottontail bunny families - 2 litters each, I think
and, just a bit further away, a Red Tailed Hawk family which feeds on the baby bunnies and baby squirrels
1 (at least) Chipmunk family
Several Grey Squirrel families
1 Red Squirrel family

What's the secret? No cats and plenty of dense shrubberies, gardens, and evergreens. A big brush pile and some weed patches too. When the leaves fall, I will find other nests I didn't realize were there. Usually, a Song Sparrow, Goldfinch, or a nifty little Warbler nest.

I did not have the chance to do a breeding list for the entire Farm this year. It's easily done: You go out at 5 AM in early June and cover all of your land, listening for territorial songs while keeping your eyes open. At night, the owls. Next year...

Pic: The House Wren family is raising their babies in there. Every once in a while, one peeks out. 

The Eastern and Central US has the Rough Green Snake (New Jersey and south) and the Smooth Green Snake, in the Northeast. These skinny bug-eaters are often referred to as "Grass Snakes," although both will climb in vegetation.

They are so well-camouflaged that they are rarely seen, and they tend to freeze when disturbed. I think I once saw a Rough in a bush in southern CT, but I can't swear it was a Rough because it moved too quickly for me to grab it to check it's ID.

I love seeing snakes in New England. We don't have enough of them except for the regular Garter Snakes that always startle you when they are curled up in a Zucchini plant. Did I ever mention the time my Mom killed a Milk Snake with a hoe (mistaking it for a Copperhead) while we batch of kids were playing in the grass? A mythical moment.

Rough Green Snake hunting in a Blackberry patch:

When you drive around the northeastern US in late May-early June, the blooming Black Locust trees are everywhere. Their white flower bunches put on a good show and stand out strongly from the green background - the locust trees are a big puff of white.

As a tree which is not native to the northeast, it is often considered a weed tree. An illegal alien, as it were. The are fast-growing, and tend to form stands which crowd out native trees. Pleasant glades, however.

Black Locust was transplanted to the north because locust makes the best, longest-lasting fence posts and fence rails. 50 years. It still does.

I was surprised to stumble upon the fact that the common earthworm, the gardener's friend, is not native to the US and Canada: most worm species are "invasive" introductions from Europe, and have been spread across the country in plant material.

A few more interesting facts:

- The earthworm has been very destructive to several types of forest habitat by consuming deep forest litter (leaves). Ecologists consider them invasive pests in some habitats.

- Earthworms are killed by most pesticides. Fertilizer doesn't seem to bother them.

- Darwin calculated that earthworms can recycle and refresh the surface soil to the tune of 10 tons of soil per acre per year. Count me as a skeptic on that number, but they do churn the soil.

- Yes, some species of earthworm can regenerate lost body segments. No need for tears when you chop one with the shovel.

- Worms need food. For a wormy lawn or garden, it needs to be top-dressed or mulched with organic material. I do a generous top-dressing of peat moss or well-rotted cow manure once or twice twice a year, and after the heavy spring lawn growth, I leave the grass clippings where they fall. I like to mulch up the early autumn fallen leaves with the mowers, too.

A green lawn treated with pesticides, nurtured solely with inorganic fertilizers, and with automatic irrigation, is little more than a corpse with make-up.

More here and here.

Re-posted -

No man loves marshes and bogs more than I do. The variety of life they contain, protect, and support, from protozoans to minnowsto bass to amphibians to snakes to deer to woodpeckers to geese and ducks to eagles to bears is astonishing, and feels primeval.

Except for river-fed or run-off-fed marshes, though, most sizeable fresh-water marshes are ephemeral geographical features. In the northern US, most are the remnants of post-glacial ponds and lakes, gradually filled in with plant detritus and, just before they become the damp meadows that the Moose enjoy so much, the sphagnum bogs which, in Canada, are the source of most of our soil-enhancing peat moss.

The only sources of new marshes in the US are man (who is more inclined to fill them for building lots than to create them or rehabilitate them - except for Ducks Unlimited), and the Beaver:

And that is one reason we appreciate the remarkable beaver so much. He not only creates marshes, but he recycles them. I doubt that there is a single beaver marsh in the US which has not been used, on and off (until they have eaten or cut down everything they can find) over the several thousands of years since our last Ice Age buried Manhattan under a mile of ice.

Here are some of the critters I see (or hear) most often in the immediate vicinity of our small (8 acre) beaver marsh in western MA over the past few years - off the top of my head and probably omitting some:

Beavers (of course)
Otter
Black Bear
Raccoon
White-tailed Deer
Red Fox
Coyote (alas)

Wood Duck (nesting)
Black Duck (nesting)
Mallard (nesting)
Canada Goose (nesting)
Pileated Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Wodpecker
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Veery
Wood thrush
E. Phoebe
Wood Pewee
Great Blue Heron
Green Heron
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
Kingfisher
Swamp Sparrow
Grasshopper Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Barred Owl
Screech Owl
Great Horned Owl
Baltimore Oriole (Northern Oriole)
Marsh Wren
Turkey
Goldfinch (nesting)
Warblers of all sorts (during migration)
Turkey Vulture
Red-Tailed Hawk
Sharp-Shinned hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel)
E. Bluebird
E. Kingbird
Ruffed Grouse
Cedar Waxwing
Catbird

Wood Turtle
Eastern Painted Turtle
Snapping Turtle
Garter Snake
Eastern Water Snake
Black Snake

Bullfrog
Eastern Newt (and their Red Efts by the trillions in the adjacent woods)
Leopard Frog
Green Frog
American Toad
Wood Frog
Spring Peeper
E. Gray Tree Frog

I like to keep track of our wildlife. It is one way of loving and embracing this world.

Read about the good old eastern US Red-Shouldered Hawk, the lover of wetlands and swamps, at Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Like the Barred Owl who keeps the little wetland critters on their toes at night, this bird likes the kinds of places I like. Wild, wooly, and wet.

Photo and link via Vanderleun. Article here.

Photo is from the growing underwater rift area between the Eurasian and the North American plates.

Is the entire crust of the earth expanding, or is all of the plate separation compensated by subduction elsewhere?

Theories abound, but plate theory was considered crackpot just a few decades ago.

It is ramping up right now.

I can hear, out my window this morning, the songs and calls of Pine Warbler, Black and White Warbler, Redstart, Red-eyed Vireo (not exactly a warbler), Magnolia Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Black-Throated Blue, Parula, Prairie Warbler, and a few more that I am not sure about.

My idea of watching the spring warblers is a chaise lounge lawn chair flat, under a big old oak tree with binocs. Preferably, a big oak near some juniper trees - which is why I planted my junipers and Japanese willows: to watch the warbler migration with minimal exertion. Let them come to you. Just wait for them to pass through the trees. Otherwise, it's a day of neck pain. Knowing their calls simplifies it: you don't have to try to see them. But plenty of them forage silently in the treetops. Especially the odd vireos.

Get out there and see these little jewels of Creation, and listen to their morning calls, as they pass by on their trip north.

Image: A Peterson pic of a few Spring Warblers

Saturday morning, a stroll around the shrubby areas of the Olde Farm revealed a big movement of migrants overnight.

Towhees, calling and scratching in the ground cover:

Flocks of noisy Blue Jays - who do move south in the fall, leaving us in New England with the Canadian birds during the winter. You know what they look like.

Veeries low in the shrubs:

Flock of around 40 Robins, including a bunch without full adult plumage.

An Ovenbird (heard), and a couple of Kinglets:

Two flocks of about 20 White-throated Sparrows, scratching for bugs under the rose bushes and in the overgrown dead vegetable garden, singing their Spring song:

And a Sharpie buzzed past, doubtless following, and feeding upon, the tasty, tender little migrants:

Good morning, World!

Most images and links from/to the fine CLO bird info website.

In four days, this post is almost outdated. I heard Parula and Palm Warblers singing this morning -

Country folk call them "Fisher cats," and blame them for the decline of Ruffed Grouse populations in the Northeast (about which they are wrong. Grouse and Fishers coexisted for millennia. I blame the grouse population drops on fire suppression, habitat loss - and the dang Coyotes who would not be here had we not killed all of the wolves).

Fishers are large members of the weasel family (the Mustelidae - stoats, badgers, otters, martens, mink, weasels, wolverines) - kinda like mini-Wolverines.

With the return of woodlands and the decline of fur trapping, Fisher populations are rebounding in the northern US, especially in New England (same as with the Black Bear). They are one of the few animals that kills Porcupines.

I've never seen one in the wild, but I'd like to.

Do they scream? It seems to be an Old Wives' Tale. Info about Fishers here and here.

Have any of our readers seen one?

Diligent students of Maggie's Farm have had the chance, over the years, to become familiar with many of the common birds of North America - or at least of the Eastern US. The common winter sparrows around my parts (not including Junco, which is a sparrow):

In winter at my feeder, I mainly see Song Sparrow

and White Throated Sparrow:

In some winters, we get a surge of Fox Sparrows, but not this year. This year, though, I have seen more Tree Sparrows than ever (that's the American Tree Sparrow, not the Eurasian):

The Chipping Sparrow is common here in the summer, but migrates south. I rarely see a Field Sparrow anymore these days. No idea why. Never see White Crowned Sparrow at my feeder either.

This is the common urban pest, once called the English Sparrow (they were a nasty import from Old Blighty):

A seasonal re-post -

Interesting bird, the Snow Goose. For one thing, it comes in a blue
and white form, and all sorts of intermediate forms, so was long thought to be two species. For another, its population has boomed in recent years such that it is destroying its tundra nesting areas, and so the wildlife managers are essentially begging people to shoot them. They were scarce in the 1970s.

There is almost no real limit on these birds, and it is now legal to use electronic calls to try to bring them into your field decoy spread during the spring Snow Goose season in the midwest. However, as it turns out, hunting makes no dent in their numbers.

When a flock of 100 or 1000 of them descend over your blind into your field decoys on a frigid dawn, it's one hell of an adrenaline rush and one hell of a shooting experience. A literal "blast," and you cannot reload your auto fast enough to keep up with the action of these determined birds who can, at times, seem quite undeterred by the sound of shotgun fire. They go down very easily, compared to Canadas which can sometimes coast or flap for a quarter mile with a fatal wound, which gives a retriever - or a fellow - a good work out.

 We say "They go down like a prom dress."

Our Brit cousins would love this shooting - they have, alas, nothing comparable for fun. Neither prom dresses nor Snow Geese. Our good pal Mr. Free Market would have the time of his life.

When 5000 of them decide to chose the seemingly identical barley field adjacent to the one you happen to be in for brainless goose reasons, it is a deeply frustrating experience and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

A northern Canadian nester, this medium-sized honker is highly migratory across the US, especially in the Central Flyway. It is not unusual, these days, to see them flying over Vermont ski slopes in winter, or on Long Island potato fields.

The causes of the potentially self-destructive population boom are unclear, but may have to do with changes in the agricultural lands on which they winter. I wish I had a decent digital image of the size of the flocks of these birds, capable of truly blocking out the sun, but my best shots are from my pre-digital era, a few years ago. Beautiful, and awe-inspiring but, according to the biologists, a big problem too. They could be wrong; it might just be a natural boom and bust cycle like the housing market.

Being game birds, a word is always in order on cooking, since you must eat what you kill. These geese do not hold a candle to the delectable Canada Goose. The tough breast is best stewed, or crock-potted, and can be quite fine in a cassoulet.  But anything is good in a cassoulet on a cold snowy, blowy winter evening, with crunchy garlic toast and a few bottles of Cote Roti and a mountain of powerful stinky French cheeses on the side.

More about Snow Goose at CLO, whence the photo, here.

Our old post on Cassoulet is lost for the moment. Good hearty peasant food, best made with game sausage and game meat of any sort. We once made one with venison sausage, wild boar, and Snow Goose breast.

The American Robin is semi-migratory, and can be found almost anywhere in the US in wintertime. In the northern US, they live on old berries and fruits in the winter, foraging in flocks. Sometimes they get drunk on fermented rotten fruit.

This pic was from Retriever a while back, taken, as I recall, in Lenox, MA:

At the feeders today:

(Note Cottontail Rabbit gnawing on my roses. He's my official rose-pruner.) Tree Sparrow, Carolina Wren, Dark Eyed Junco, Cardinal, WT Sparrow, Red Bellied Woodpecker, BC Chickadee, Song Sparrow, Downy Woodpecker, Grey Squirrel (of course), Mourning Dove, Blue Jay.

Notable for absence: Goldfinch, Tufted Titmouse.

There are a handful of species of Juncos in North America. Most familiar is the Dark-Eyed Junco, formerly known as the Slate-Colored Junco. Why they changed that name is totally beyond me. Who can see their eye color?

Flocks of these sparrows - yes, they are in the sparrow family - are common around the US during migration and in winter, generally feeding on or near the ground, in fields, edges, and brush. The dual flash of white in their tail is an easy field mark in flight. They enjoy our bird feeders, and they do not mind snow at all.

They breed pretty much throughout Canada. Their arrival in the US in November, along with the White-Throated Sparrows, is a sign that winter is coming. They will begin to push north in March.

You can read more about these cheerful critters here.

Photo courtesy of R. Hays Cummins

A pal just bought this rugged machine for his hunting and getaway place in upstate New York. He's been fixing up the old leaky farmhouse for a couple of years. Nice to see a Maggie's Farm logo on it - naw, too bad - it's just a wide-assed Massey-Ferguson:

Here. h/t, Anchoress

Saw a Hermit Thrush hopping around my shrubs yesterday. Unmistakable with his chestnut tail and spotted breast. A few years ago I had one over-winter here. He would roost each night under a bush next to my chimney.

They are the only Thrush which winters in North America (unless you count Robins, which are in the Thrush family).

I am not being an internet hermit this season. We hit two very nice Christmas parties last night, another one tonight, and tomorrow we are taking my in-laws to a nice lunch and a show down in NYC. (Gwynnie always tells me I need to get out more, so I do.)

A quote from the good piece I linked this morning, Can environmentalism be saved from itself?

Before they were sucked into the giant vortex of global warming, environmentalists did useful things. They protested against massive Third World dams that would ruin both natural and human habitats. They warned about invasive species and diseases that could tear through our forests and wreck our water systems. They fought for national parks and greenbelts and protected areas. They talked about the big things too – such as how the world could feed another three billion people without destroying all the rain forests and running out of water. They believed in conservation – conserving this beautiful planet of ours from the worst of human despoliation – rather than false claims to scientific certainty about the future, unenforceable treaties and radical utopian social reform.

I agree with all that. Furthermore, we non-politically-driven conservation types usually did the work ourselves - without asking governments and powers to do it. We even bought machines to restore filled-in and drained marshes (and even helped to undo Saddam Hussein's destruction of Iraq's vast marshes, which he did to eliminate those too-independent Marsh Arabs who wanted to be left alone).

For one example, Ducks Unlimited. Something like 12 million acres of wildlife habitat under protection now in the US, Canada (and some in Mexico), done with private donations. (59 million acres "influenced and conserved" - that includes things like farmlands operated in habitat-compatible ways supervised and assisted by DU).  While warmist bureaucrats party in Cancun and try to figure out how to control the world, DU works to raise money and protect habitat from development and degradation every day.

Maggie's Farm supports DU.

Since you are so interested, here are the species we shot last week in Manitoba, and which now reside in the freezer: Shoveler ("Smilin' Mallard"), Bluebill, lots of Redheads, Canvasback, Mallard, Gadwall, Wigeon, Pintail, and Canada Goose.

The limit in Manitoba is 8/day, any species of duck.

We also had some luck with Ruffed and Sharptail Grouse. I do love huntin' the grousies because you get to walk all day in beautiful places.

Photo of a few handsome Redheads - they taste as good as Canvasback. Tip for fellow duck hunters: forget steel shot. It often cripples and does not kill cleanly. Use heavy-shot or bismuth or anything else -our wonderful ducks deserve the best, despite the expense. I am through with steel shot for ducks and goose forever, as of now.