Groundhogs Day Eve
This is worse than Christmas; how does one prepare for the night before Ground Hogs Day which also falls on a Full Moon?
Day of downloading!
Yesterday my virus checking software became outdated and so I needed to spend some time today shopping for a new package! I realized that the cost for the 3 computer update package (with more options that what I had before) is cheaper than just renewing the older 2 computer package which I previously owned. You guessed it; I spent all evening downloading the new package for 2 of my 3 computers and I should finish with the 3rd computer sometime tomorrow. I only wish that DSL was an option for me (I live in a town of 28 people which I guess isn’t big enough for the phone company to bring in DSL)!! The satellite internet has too much of a startup cost and I have seriously thought about giving the cellular broadband a try for the laptop and continuing using the dial-up for the desktop! Anyone use the cellular broadband before?? They say it is just as fast as DSL!! Anyways, I have dial-up and spend more hours uploading or downloading than I have time for comments on so many of my friends photostreams or blogs!!
I figured this would be a good day for a little computer house cleaning; so 20 gig’s of raw photos were transferred over to my external hard drive. After virus scans, data transfer and defragging of just 2 of my computers, I am computer screened out and going to make time for bed (after watching hero’s)! Night everyone and don’t let the bed bugs bite!
Kenn Kauffman Speaking at RTPI
Great news everyone! Kenn Kaufman has been finally schedule to speak for the Roger Tory Peterson Institute distinguished speaker series on the 28th of February 2007. The lecture will be held over at the Stanley Weeks Theater on the campus of Jamestown Community College (is located at 525 Falconer Street, Jamestown, NY for those doing map quest).
Kenn Kaufman will introduce his new book, “A Field Guide to the Insects” and I anticipate him doing a wonderful slide program related to insects. I just learned from his website that this new insect guide has been illustrated with over 2,350 digitally enhanced images and they are planning on setting a new standard with detailed coverage maps. I can’t wait to see this book because I absolutely love how the butterfly guide turned out.
I have had an opportunity to hear Kenn speak twice before and every time he did a amazing job! I can’t wait to hear what he has to tell us again next month regarding the insects in his new book. Price for this event is $5 for member and $7 for non members. For more info you can contact the Roger Tory Peterson Institute at 716-665-2473 or on the web at http://www.rtpi.org.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I hope 2007 brings many more lifers (didn’t get any in 2006) and great critter adventures your way with many photographing opportunities! Thanks again for such a wonderful group of people here which have made me smile and enjoy looking into your life through pictures and your blog. Be safe tonight!
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Dear Santa
It been a whole year since your last visit and I have tried to be very good this year. If possible could you be extra generous to all my flickr friends and blogging buddies? They have been so wonderful to me by visiting this blog and always finding ways to make me smile! I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to share my numerous nature experiences with and then the opportunity to learn from them.
If you have any extra time, I would love for you to drop off some lifer birds for me to view before the end of the year!! If you’re unable to do so, a trip to Costa Rica or even the Nikon D200 would be nice. I know that you will have a very busy Christmas night so please use the door this year. I never got around to cleaning the chimney like I had promised you last season. Have a safe trip across the world sharing joy and happiness.
Tom
PS: I hope the kitties didn’t drink any of the milk that I left out for you but you can be sure that they will leave the cookies alone!
Lycopodium
Lycopodium
by Maxwell C. Wheat, Jr.
They are the elves’ Christmas trees
Grandfather would say
of Ground Pine and Cedar
Once in the sun I laid on snow
eye level to see colored lights and bulbs
the size of frozen dew drops
They are lycopodiums, he’d say
teaching me again to pronounce the name
because scientific words have the sounds of poetry
Lie-ko-po-dee-um
You’ve got it, he’d laugh
his hearty red face broadening behind his white beard
his abundant frame rollicking
When I return home for the holidays
I always walk back to our woods
think of Grandfather assuring a small boy
Yes,I’ll see that the elves have a happy Christmas
I am glad lie-ko-po-dee-um is evergreen
Used by permission All rights reserved
Wheat, M.C. Jr. (2000) Following Their Star – Poems of Christmas and Nature. Cow Meadow Promotions. p.27
winter solstice triggers changes in the birds
In the Northern Hemisphere the Winter Solstice officially occurs on the 21 st of December at exactly 7:20pm EST. At this point the sun will reach the Tropic of Capricorn making this the shortest day of the year. Here in Allegany State Park, NY we will have just over 9 hours of sunlight which I plan on celebrating by catching up on my sleep. We will begin to increase daylight hours until the Summer Solstice on the 21 st of June when the sun reaches the Tropic of Cancer. That is when I will be celebrating with very little sleep due to looking for many birds and butterflies.
It shouldn’t be too long before the birds start courting each other and being their nesting. Yep, I said that the birds will begin nesting here soon! By mid to late January there will be Great Horned Owls sitting low in an old hawk nest or they could even be in a squirrel nest. Mid February you can expect our Bald Eagles to be busy adding sticks to their nest and then sitting low through numerous snowstorms that will hit us. Ravens will disappear in the top of a hemlock tree deep in the forest with only a few occurrences of that bone-stuck-in-their-throat sound. Once groundhogs day arrives many of our songbirds will show changes in their behaviors with their songs being a common occurrence. Red-shouldered Hawks will be displaying high in the sky and Bluejays will be tricking me with their mimicking of numerous hawk species. Once warblers arrive, most male birds will have their testosterone at their highest levels and territory lines will be laid out. O, how spring is my favorite time of the year!!
Summer Solstice will be here in no time and I will then be discussing their fledging of nestlings and preparation of migrating south for the winter. How time flies when having fun with the birds.
White-Blue Peacock
White-Blue Peacock, originally uploaded by chi liu.
Isn’t this an amazing photo of this half white and half blue peacock? Saw this today on flickr and thought this would be perfect to add to the blog! No photoshop was used on this bird, it is the real thing! Would love to hear what you think about it!
Sorry that I haven’t posted anything recently, I have been quite busy doing the holiday thing and currently my truck is being inspected, ect… gives me little time to travel around the park.
Regarding nature related things going on; Sunday December 17th, 2006 we had both Big Brown Bats and what looked like Northern Long-eared Bats still out and about. It was fun watching them flying up and down the road in search of insects. I would have expected them to be in hibernation already but with this mild winter…… I guess anything is possible! For sure this has been the latest in the year that I have seen any bats species flying around.
Last nights walk around the lake brought some fun activity with a Northern Cardinal. I took my Audubon squeakier with me and they came right up to me! Of course, too dark to try to take any pictures, so I just enjoyed the moment! Besides that, everything has been very quite outside.
Along the Allegheny River during the CBC
After working in section 3 during our Christmas Bird Count last Saturday, I ran into Tim starting the second part of his section along the Allegheny River. I was excited to join him and I just knew that being down along the river that I would be doubling my species (as I did).
We hiked through the riparian old field with hopes of waterfowl or anything else unusual!! Of course it was unusually quite with no birds!! Then, as we were getting closer to our vehicle we heard a flurry of birds! Hard to decide which way to look first – over there it’s a woodpecker! Quickly we identified it as a male Red-bellied Woodpecker – cool!! We were able to check off; 5 Black-capped Chickadee – 2 Blue Jay – White-breasted Nuthatch – Downy Woodpecker – 2 Hairy Woodpeckers!! Wonderful – there is not just one but a pair of Cardinals! It is about time that the birds started getting good!! Then, we come across another woodpecker! Isn’t that the Red-bellied?? We discuss how we saw it fly away – could it be the same bird?? Nope, female – red only on back side of its head! Another check – 2 Red-bellied Woodpeckers!
It is funny how within a matter of seconds we are finding all these birds together where we were hiking in very suitable habitat for an hour without a single peep. During the winter months, there are many birds that almost seem to follow the chickadees around as if they were the pied piper. Why might you ask? Hard to tell but these birds are working together as a team with each bird filling a different ecological nitch. As the nuthatch is looking under the bark, the chickadee is at the end of the branches and cardinals are feeding on the seeds on the ground – ect… It is easier to work together as a team than when by yourself! This can also be true as humans who have different skills. Next time you’re out birdwatching this winter, just check out the chickadees and I bet there will be other birds flying around with them.
As we changed directions along the Allegheny, we come across many other wonderful birds like the White-throated Sparrows, Tree Sparrows, Red-tailed Hawk, and even a Great Blue Heron! But, what I truly enjoyed was exploring this section of the river without 2 feet of snow on the ground. We saw many mussels on the river bottom and could have almost picked up this Bald Eagle bait (I think it’s a sucker) along the rivers edge. It was reinsuring this river system is doing so well after seeing all this out in the field after discussing the Upper Allegheny River Basin at the Nature Conservancy meeting last week.
While avoiding stepping on the numerous Skunk Cabbage plants poking out of the ground, we had a wonderful afternoon. Although the birds didn’t appear as we had anticipated but we saw a wonderful diversity of wildlife along the Allegheny River. I would love to see this area during the summer months.
Buffalo Flickr Meet at Spot Coffee
Today I took a trip up to Buffalo for the Flickr Meetup at Spot Coffee. This group gets together about once a month and you can be sure there is great networking going on. I was glad to have had the opportunity to meet everyone that was able to arrive and maybe next time I can meet those who couldn’t attend.
For more info on this group you can visit them on flickr at buffalo group or visit one of their two blogs at Buffalo Flickr or Buffalo Flickr Blogspot.
Its your right to vote!
I can’t believe its election day and I am doing a political blog. Don’t forget to get out and vote!
I located this Bald Eagle on the eastern side of Red House Lake here in Allegany State Park. I figured this was a very appropriate bird on a day like today.
poetry
I asked my friend poetdiva if she could use a photo for her poetry. Very quickly she put her mind to work and came out with this distance poem. I am honored to have been involved with this wonderful collaboration together.
I strongly suggest visiting her blog at http://peripherypoem.com to see more of her work.
Weekend with little time for wildlife!
I had a fun and interesting weekend but the only wildlife I encountered was a Deer Mouse left by my cats in the middle of the living room floor. I will expect Lazy (the hunter cat) to continue her fun while these little fuzzy moving toys of hers try to make their home in this house (due to the weather getting colder). Phoebe (my overweight cat) might miss 90% of the visits of these mice due to sleeping upstairs in “her” chair. You can be sure that Lazy will try to change the mice’s minds that outside might be a better place to live! Meanwhile, I will try to continue to live trap them in the basement and take them a distance away to avoid my cats. I found this to be a better way to observe these mice up close.
I had expected last Friday to be an excellent owl night but we had unexpected mixed snow (which made it impossible for me to open nets). Last night I didn’t open the nets due to attended my cousins wedding (which was wonderful seeing family and some old friends). I can now focus my evenings on owls till mid November but that’s only if the weather could be equally cooperative! Of course tonight has scattered showers that has appeared to only been scattered only over the park with every cloud that passes. I guess that is what I get living in the snow belt. Going to bed early tonight with hope that a rainless nights might happen in the very near future!
the grapes
Tuesday and Wednesday I spend some time at Lake Erie State Park which is in the heart of the Wine Country. I wooed and awed over the many photographic opportunities of these vineyards reaching as far as the eye can see. The windy weather didn’t allow me to get any shots on Tuesday but on Wednesday I became obsessed with how these vineyards operated and so I took as many photos as my time would allowed. The grape smell in the air was just wonderful!!
I have never had an opportunity to do any birding in these vineyards. I would have to assume that this area would be an excellent place to locate unique nesting and migrant birds. These sturdy vines can provide wonderful shelter (with leaves and snow cover) and some of the fallen fruit would then be eaten by numerous birds. I would also be curious on what other critters would live in these vineyards.
While driving around, I happen to notice it was harvest time for these grapes and they had numerous (strange) machines parked near their barns. After long discussions, we concluded that these machines must shake the vines and the grapes fall into something (or on the ground, that part we were not sure about). The grapes would then get packaged into these huge wooden cartons and loaded onto flatbeds. From there they get shipped to wineries to be turned into award winning wine!
It wasn’t until we headed home that I noticed the sign for the Chautauqua and Lake Erie Wine Trail. After quickly googling the trail; I found this website www.chautauquawinetrail.org . It appears that this trail is almost 40 miles long and follows the Lake Erie shoreline. Many activities are scheduled throughout the season including a large festival. Check out the website if you’re interested in learning more about the area.
Mon@rch's Nature Blog 