Almost winter

Snowmaking on Roundtop

Winter is almost here.  Roundtop is making snow and will soon open.  I’ve already had the first ice storm of the year, a dusting of snow, gusty winds and now a cold, raw rain. See what happens when I go away for a few days?  Season-changing weather and multiple types of precipitation.

Around my cabin, I’m still getting used to the idea that I should dig out my Yak-trax to traverse the front deck and steps.  I’m not ready for that. I’m just not ready.  And it’s not just that, either.  Suddenly, the birds appear at my feeders in droves, or at least almost-droves.  They are emptying the feeders daily instead of weekly now. Autumn’s slow emptying of the feeders is over with, and I’ll have to add winter’s daily filling to my daily morning chores again.

The chickens are on their winter egg break with a vengeance.  Unlike other years, when I would get a few eggs during this time, production has shut down entirely.  Usually, I get enough eggs during the break to keep myself in eggs, if not to sell, but this year I’m down to my last few of them.
T
he deer are already chomping on my juniper bush.  Not a single fawn remains in spots, and their coats are that winter-brown again.  The good news is that I haven’t seen the raccoons for a while. I think it is too early for them to be hibernating, but they are apparently staying closer to the den, and for now that is good enough for me.

Pre-winter

The forest around me is preparing for winter.  The life of the forest and the surrounding landscape is sinking into the ground, safe below the surface, to hibernate there until spring. What’s seen above the ground is almost uniformly brown, with the shades varying from pale beige to the deepest color of espresso.

The dying of summer’s greenery puts the land in sharper relief.  What was hidden by a shield of foliage is visible again.  Only the skeletons of summer remain.  The earth seems to be taking a breath or perhaps holdings its breath.  Pre-winter is quiet, a respite between the glory of autumn and the stresses of winter.

I like this time of year, this pre-winter of November, when I can actually feel the landscape slow down and prepare for slumber.  Nothing is hidden during this time—not by snow or leaves. Everything stands in stark relief.  Even the rolling of the hills stands out more.  It’s a pretty time of year, I think, though not showy like October (well, most Octobers).

All the leaves were brown and the sky was gray

The weekend was so gray that noon looked the same as dawn. I couldn’t even find a bright spot in the overcast where the sun was supposed to be.  The chickens went to roost around 3 p.m.—they thought evening was approaching.  Photography was not an option.

By this point in the late fall, the only leaves left are brown. The forest is completely bare, though these apple trees are still holding onto their leaves, but as brown as the leaves are, it’s hard to see how. This morning around 1:30 a.m. a fierce gust of wind blow through, clocked at 46 mph on Roundtop. None of the forest leaves made it through that gust.  It blew hard enough to wake me up. I held my breath hoping it wouldn’t get any worse and just that quickly the wind died as fast as it appeared.

Even before the wind, the trees were largely displaying their winter skeletons.  With the help of the weekend’s full moon, I could walk without a headlamp and still usually manage not to trip over my own feet, though I know the ground well and that helps. Overall, the forest is brighter at night now than it was a month ago, and that means my nighttime forays with Baby Dog are possible again.

an impromptu shooting party (with dogs)

  Over the weekend family and friends got together at my family’s farm to enjoy the chilly sunshine and test our shooting skills, which were largely negligible.  We got some of my father’s lesser used guns and decided to use up some ammunition.  We took the dogs along and some thermos’s of hot chocolate. Brother set up the targets against the dam of the pond and we set to work.

I hadn’t done much shooting for some years.  Others had never shot a gun, so with one exception it was a pretty lame group.  The cute little six-shooter pistol didn’t help as something was wrong with its sights, and they couldn’t be adjusted.  My father tended to be attracted to unusual guns, so we also got to shoot a .22 rifle with what dad called a “carnival” loading system, similar to what is found on guns at carnival shooting booths. I have no idea if that’s what’s it’s really called or not.

Fortunately, my brother is an avid hunter and was there to teach and help with the particulars.  He also did all the loading of guns and cleaned them afterwards. The dogs enjoyed being out in the woods with their people.   They ran around like crazy at first but soon settled down patiently.  The bank of the pond protected us from the wind, but the hot chocolate still didn’t last long.  It was a fun way to learn a bit and get rid of some ammunition at the same time.  We all said we’d like to do it again, but now that there’s been some snow and it’s gotten quite chilly, we may not want to stand around in the woods for two hours for a while.

Snow!

Snow this morning!  A dusting of snow fell on Roundtop, starting just before dawn.  It started shortly before Baby Dog and I started our early morning walk and continued past sunrise.  I was expecting snow flurries, but an actual dusting, even a light one, was an added treat.

Snow at the cabin!

In this area of the U.S. November is a month that can be wintry or warm and is frequently both at some point during the month.  This year, or at least this week, the weather is falling on the wintry side.  It’s unlikely the snow will last beyond noon, and snow in mid-November doesn’t predict anything about the rest of the winter. Still, I was thrilled by the season’s first appearance of snow.

Oddly, Baby Dog, who usually loves the snow, seemed less than thrilled. Perhaps that is because the snow melted on her fur, leaving her slightly damp after our walk.  She was a lot more interested in getting back to the cabin and curling up in a warm spot than she was in the snow.  Maybe it just wasn’t deep enough for her to play in, but in any event this little dusting wasn’t good enough for her.

On the doorstep of winter

November is often a gray and windy month, so the past few days were completely normal ones for this time of year.  The raw wind brought down most of the leaves that remained on the trees.  Even the old oaks around my cabin are looking pretty bare today.

The sky is now open enough that I shortly after midnight I saw a fireball out the window to the north.  It wasn’t the biggest or the brightest fireball I’ve ever seen, but it was still exciting. I believe it made a sound, which is why think I woke up just in time to see it.

The colder weather brought changes around my cabin this weekend. I’ve added extra straw to the chicken pen.  The girls are molting this week, so they aren’t laying any eggs.  I’m hoping they will finish their molt before I run out of eggs.  When they do start laying again, they will do so at their winter level, which means I will only get perhaps half the number of eggs they laid during spring and summer.

Young animals will soon be experiencing their first winter. These summer calves will likely spend much of the winter in their barn.  They are still pretty small, and the cold weather will likely be a bit hard on them.  The spring calves are larger and at this point every month they are older than the summer calves will make the winter easier on them.  A feral cat at Roundtop had a litter of kittens just a week or so ago.  It’s hard to imagine any of those will survive the coming cold.  It’s not a good time of year for them to be born.

The smaller forest birds are beginning to use my feeders in earnest now.  For the past month, I’ve only had to fill the feeders once a week. Now, I have to fill them at least every other day.  Come winter, I’ll have to fill the feeders probably twice a day.  Now, the titmice, downy woodpecker, nuthatch and chickadees are emptying them pretty fast.  The juncos, which are suddenly common around the mountain, haven’t yet visited, nor have the larger residents like the cardinals, the red-bellied woodpecker and blue jays.  They are likely to arrive with the first snow or ice storm.  And that’s probably not far off, either.  Winter is coming, and for the first time, it’s starting to look as though it isn’t far away.

Falling, falling...

About three-quarters of the leaves around my cabin have fallen now.  My guess is totally unscientific, by the way.  It’s breezy today too, so perhaps even more of them will have fallen by evening. My views have opened up quite a bit, if not yet fully.  I can see the mountain to my west. I can see over towards the new pond.  I can see past my property line and over to the abandoned ski slope.   It’s great to have more open views again and to be able to see into the forest.

The old oaks are still holding on to their leaves; they are notorious for that.  The oaks, however, are also the tallest trees in my forest, so their leaves don’t much impede my view at eye level.    

The closed in leafiness of summer is one of the reasons why that’s not my favorite season. True, the leaves can help keep the cabin from getting baked by the sun, but all those leaves don’t help even a tad when the humidity is high, which it often is here.  I’d much rather have cooler weather and a view.  The only real downside to the newly visible view is that the hours of daylight are so short I don’t get to enjoy it for very long.

My animals seem to enjoy the cooler weather, too.  The chickens race from one end of the driveway to the other, flying and hopping and flapping like crazy whenever I left them out.  In summer, I am likely to find them clearing a spot for a dust bath or lounging under the cabin.  Racing around isn’t on their agenda then.  Baby Dog is much the same, racing from one end of the lead to the other, pretending not to hear me when I tell her to do something and always angling to stay outside a little while longer.  In summer, she’s always angling to return to the sofa.

The downed leaves also mean I must get serious about my outside projects before winter.  I have the old chicken coop to take down and remove.  It is falling apart, but for some reason that seems to make disassembly harder, not easier.  The current chicken pen will be placed mostly under the cabin for winter.  That certainly helps protect my girls from the worst of winter weather, and I like to think it gives them some warmth from the cabin, as well.

The gutters need emptied of leaves, as do the decks.  Summer’s hot weather gives me an excuse not to do much, but I sure have to make up for that once fall appears in earnest.

Chickens are birds too...

A rainy, early November day is certainly a cliché in this area.  Today is living up to the cliché. The sky is dark and gloomy, bringing down many fall leaves.  In this weather no photos were possible, which goes to explain why I’m posting a photo of several of my chickens.

The chickens had just discovered my bird feeders, no small feat in itself, as my back deck is well above head high and only accessed from the ground by 8 steps.  They apparently wandered up the steps and so found themselves at the bird feeders.  They soon began to clean the deck of seed tossed out by the wild birds. I have yet to see the chickens up on the table where several of the feeders are located. However, I am thinking that won’t be far away.

Once up on the back the deck the chickens discovered I was inside, with cats and Baby Dog. They thought that was pretty interesting, too, and probably wondered why they couldn’t come in as well. One or the other of them has tried to follow me in the front door more than once but end up being deterred by said cats and dog.

Chickens, I have learned, are much smarter than they are usually given credit for. They are not dumbbells.  And, they have a wide variety of sounds, each with meaning.  Doodle, my rooster, always alerts the girls to airborne danger—two days ago it was a Cooper’s hawk—and how close the danger is. When something is very close, the sound is more insistent and the girls (and often the cats, too) run for cover.  Other times, he warns that danger is near but not immediately overhead and that’s enough to stop the hens in their tracks to eyeball the potential intruder until they decide if hiding will be needed. The chickens are nearly as much fun to watch as the wild birds.  

A rainy, early November day is certainly a cliché in this area.  Today is living up to the cliché. The sky is dark and gloomy, bringing down many fall leaves.  In this weather no photos were possible, which goes to explain why I’m posting a photo of several of my chickens.

The chickens had just discovered my bird feeders, no small feat in itself, as my back deck is well above head high and only accessed from the ground by 8 steps.  They apparently wandered up the steps and so found themselves at the bird feeders.  They soon began to clean the deck of seed tossed out by the wild birds. I have yet to see the chickens up on the table where several of the feeders are located. However, I am thinking that won’t be far away.

Once up on the back the deck the chickens discovered I was inside, with cats and Baby Dog. They thought that was pretty interesting, too, and probably wondered why they couldn’t come in as well. One or the other of them has tried to follow me in the front door more than once but end up being deterred by said cats and dog.

Chickens, I have learned, are much smarter than they are usually given credit for. They are not dumbbells.  And, they have a wide variety of sounds, each with meaning.  Doodle, my rooster, always alerts the girls to airborne danger—two days ago it was a Cooper’s hawk—and how close the danger is. When something is very close, the sound is more insistent and the girls (and often the cats, too) run for cover.  Other times, he warns that danger is near but not immediately overhead and that’s enough to stop the hens in their tracks to eyeball the potential intruder until they decide if hiding will be needed. The chickens are nearly as much fun to watch as the wild birds.  

Recording my bird sightings

I’ve been meaning to blog about something I more or less fell into some months ago, but now I’m continuing to do it deliberately.  Every Saturday morning I spend the first half an hour or so of the day birding around Roundtop and recording my sightings in e-Bird.  My Saturdays are terribly busy, and sometimes the only free time I have is early in the morning before stores open or most people are awake.  The time I take my mini-birding run varies somewhat.  I start whenever the first birds are starting to move around in the new day.

I count every bird I see and can identify and log it in BirdLog, an app for my phone that automatically submits whatever I record to Cornell’s e-Bird.  The advantage is that I don’t need to be near a computer or WiFi to record my sightings.  Sometimes I drive slowly around Roundtop, counting bluebirds and starlings. Occasionally I’ll see something more interesting, like the first juncos or a vireo. Sometimes I walk around the cabin.  With BirdLog I can add to the checklist as I go along, save it, and then submit it whenever I’m done. I don’t have to write down my sightings, juggling binoculars and notepad.  I don’t have to worry about not having a notepad. I don’t have to worry about losing my handwritten list, translating my abysmal handwriting or even finding the time to sit down and enter data in e-Bird. When I hit Submit on my phone, it’s done.

Over the space of the months, I’m actually recording more birds than I did before.  Before I started using BirdLog, I tended to ignore the common birds around Roundtop, perhaps adding them to a list only when I also found something less common. I also tended not to enter birds I saw every day at Roundtop, mostly because I didn’t consider my daily sightings as birding in the strictest sense.  The way I’m entering sightings now gives a much better picture of the resident birds and their seasonal fluctuations.  If I don’t see anything unusual, so be it, at least I got out and got in half an hour of birding, even if I didn’t go on an official birding trip to someplace.

Then, if I do have time to drive to the river or the nearby state park, that’s great!  If not, at least I got to see something, even if I didn’t have time to go on an “official” birding run somewhere.

A forest walk

I’ve noted several times that the autumn colors this fall aren’t very exciting.  This weekend saw many more leaves fall, though the ones that are left put on a bit of a show, a last gasp if you will.  The sky was a mix of clouds and sun, which didn’t help bring out the colors, but I’m grateful that it wasn’t raining, so I did get to enjoy what colors there were.

I walked down through the woods along Beaver Creek, passing the spot were I worked with the kids at adventure camp. Then instead of following the woods road, I detoured into the woods and walked where no path or road exists. I enjoy wandering this way, though it’s only just now possible again.  In summer, the undergrowth makes such wanderings difficult.  When I can’t see my feet, tripping is inevitable and sometimes dangerous.  Now that the area has had a good freeze or two, the undergrowth has disappeared, and wandering holds fewer dangers.  Leaves covering holes or depressions can still be an issue, but I can find those most of the time.

This time I wandered along the banks of the creek for half a mile or more, finding a deep hole that I’d never noticed before—deep enough for native brook trout or at least a fish larger than a minnow.  I didn’t see any, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

Up at my cabin, the forest is again pretty open, not the way it will be in another week or two, but open enough that I no longer am living inside a green bubble, open enough that I can see the sky and open enough that if I stand in the exact right spot, I can see the porch light of my “neighbor” at the base of the mountain to the west of me, a good mile away.

I’ll be posting more photos from this walk throughout the week. Now that we’ve changed the clocks, photos are limited to those taken on the weekends only.