Escape!

Last evening when I got home from work, I went out to greet the dogs as usual. They were enthusistic about my return as usual. Then I clipped Dog to the flexi-lead to take him for his walk, again as usual. While Dog gets his walk and his one-on-one time with me, Baby Dog remains on the deck. Then after Dog's walk is over, I come back and take Baby Dog for her walk. Except this day.

Dog and I were no further than the front deck, when suddenly Baby Dog comes crashing around the front of the cabin, joyfully joining Dog and me. She has escaped from the deck.

Since Baby Dog is now loose and thoroughly pleased with herself, I don't want to make a big deal about her being loose, which might entice her to run from me. I'm hoping that since Dog is with me she will stay with the both of us.

I keep a dog tie around one of the beech trees out front, so I calmly walk towards there, while Baby Dog is rushing around, ricocheting from from side to the next. Once there, I call the wild little puppy over, she comes, so I grab here and attach her collar to the lead. Drama ends.

Baby Dog has been an escape artist since the day I brought her home. As a tiny puppy, I kept her in the bathroom behind a kid gate. The bathroom faces the entry and living areas of the cabin so the puppy can see what's going on while I can do other things. Dog was content to stay behind the kid gate long after he'd grown large enough to jump out over it because he knew he was supposed to stay in there. Baby Dog climbed over it before she was 9 weeks old.

When I walk out back again I see that Baby Dog has actually broken through the kid gate to join Dog and I on our walk. Now I'm not about to buy a new kid gate this week, so I repaired it with a stick for a splint and that miracle of miracles--duct tape. But then I wasn't convinced this would hold my little escape artist, so I pushed the plastic Dogloo in front of it. Since neither dog will go into the Dogloo, this was a wasted expense but today it will finally be good for something.

Some how, in this last picture, Dog looks guiltier than Baby Dog.

Goldfinches

I have eastern goldfinches everywhere right now. I hear them first thing in the morning. I hear them just before dark. August is the time when goldfinch families take the kids on vacation. The kids complain they never go anyplace and the nest is boring, migration hasn't started, mom and dad goldfinch look at each other and say "road trip!" Just like every other goldfinch family in the world. So off they go, undulating and singing into the wide world around them. To a goldfinch, that's August.

I also saw chimney swifts this morning for the first time in a while. They may well be early migrants. Lots of Pa. birders have complained this year that chimney swifts are suddenly and unexpectedly uncommon. I never have many, though I usually have some, and I haven't seen them most of the summer either. Until this morning.

Walk in the Woods with Baby Dog, Part 2

After Baby Dog played along the edge of the pond and she wouldn't get her toes wet, we continued our walk along the old road. The mountain has plenty of deer trails and other paths, but it had been a while since I walked the road, so that was my planned route for this walk.

I am always surprised how quiet it is down here. I'm surprised because it's already much quieter at the cabin than it is almost everyplace else I go. And yet, I still hear noises there--planes overhead, distant road noises, the occasional barking dog or some far away lawn mower. And when I say far away, I'm talking about a mile distant, at least, for most of them and usually further. The sounds of modern life really carry, though the ones that reach my cabin are muffled by the forest and the distance.

Down here in the forest valley, which in some ways is even closer to civilization than is my cabin, those sounds are much further muffled. The mountains on either side of the valley really block the sounds of modern life. Any noise that I or Baby Dog makes sounds very loud, and the forest animals are aware, I'm sure, that we are coming long before we arrive.

The forest is thick and lush with the fullness of summer. I waited until nearly noon to start our walk, as I know it takes a while for even summer's sunlight to penetrate into the valley. Even so, for most of our walk it is dark enough down here to limit my photography. Where the sun does cut through, the brightness makes me squint.

My original reason for taking this route is that the old road follows the edge of a shallow stream that feeds into the pond. I was hoping that the stream and its shallower water might entice Baby Dog to enter it or at least cross it. The stream was still running strongly for August, but my plan was flawed. To Baby Dog, water is still water, and she was having none of it. Her toes are too precious to get wet.

So my plan didn't work, but that was the only low note of the walk.

The valley is just a few steps dry of a swamp. Even though it is dry everywhere else, so dry that I even slipped on the dust walking down the mountain, in here it is still quite damp. Springs pour out of the side of the mountain, cross the old road and then continue downhill to feed the stream. We had to detour our walk a time or two to avoid the mud caused by them.

It was a beautiful, cool day. Baby Dog enjoyed herself immensely, sniffing her way along the forest floor. We didn't scare up anything exotic enough to tempt her or scare her. I suppose that's a good thing and means that she has now seen enough in her short life to have grown blase about the typical encounters of the forest.

I suspect she is now as ready for the next step, which will be camping, as she will ever be. I'm thinking September. I'm not sure she will ever be able to go backpacking with Dog and me. She's pretty small, smaller than I expected she would be when I picked her out. And first, she has to learn how to camp. I need to buy her a dogpack, as Dog's is too big for her. After we got back from our walk, she pooped out and slept the rest of the afternoon. I think I've finally tuckered her out!

Walk in the Woods with Baby Dog Part 1

Friday night I went out onto the slopes at Roundtop to look for meteors from the Perseid meteor shower. The weather was beautiful and clear. I watched the sky as the stars came out. Just before the moon rose, I saw a few meteors, nothing spectacular, but the night was so pretty that I really didn't mind.

Saturday morning the day dawned perfectly clear, with low humidity. I quickly did some housecleaning and then decided it was far too beautiful a day to spend it inside. So I grabbed the camera and Baby Dog. My plan was to go down to the bottom of the mountain and walk through the valley between Roundtop and the next mountain over, which is called Neff's Hill. The photo shows Neff's Hill in the background. To save some time, I headed down the mountain along an abandoned ski slope, instead of trailing through the woods.

Down at the bottom is an old snow-making pond, shown here in the next picture. I don't know that they use this pond much anymore now that Roundtop has made the new pond. At any rate, the road that leads to it is in pretty bad shape for a vehicle, but it's still good as a path. I often seen a lot of waterfowl here later in the year. Wood ducks often nest in the dead trees at the far end, though I didn't see any on this hike. I did startle an immature red-tailed hawk that flew across the pond and through the valley.

Baby Dog was having a wonderful time, running all over the place. I was hoping she might get into the pond since it's shallow at the edges and not instantly deep the way the pond is that's nearest our cabin. But true to form, she wouldn't get into the water. I saw lots of deer tracks in the dried mud and raccoon tracks, though nothing more exotic than that.

In the third picture you can see, a little, how low the pond is, which surprised me. It's been so wet here most of the summer that I expected it would be bank full. Instead, the pond is about 3 feet lower than after average. Usually, I can't walk along the right edge at all the way I could on Saturday.

I took Baby Dog with me on the walk as she hasn't had much opportunity to go for a long hike down here in her short life. In the winter she was still too small. The spring was pretty wet, and much of the summer has been too hot for me, so she hasn't been on many full-fledged hikes. Dog is a veteran hiker and backpacker, so I left him at home on this walk, so I could bring the camera. If I take both dogs with me, I really can't operate the camera and deal with two very enthusiastic dogs who are typically enthusiastic about different things in two separate directions at the same time. So, I usually walk them separately. That way I also get to give them some individual attention. Dog got a nice ride in the car this weekend, which seems to be his favorite thing in the world, as best I can tell. Plus, he got to see some cows, which is his second most favorite thing. The photo is of Baby Dog not going into the water by the edge of the pond.

Tomorrow: More photos from our walk

Skywatch! Perseid Meteor Shower Alert!

The good news is the Perseid meteror shower is tonight and tomorrow night. The Perseid show is one of the best of the year and has the advantage over the winter shows of occurring when you don't have to freeze your butt off to watch them.

The bad news is that the moon is nearly full. So, plan to look for the meteors before the moon rises around 10:30 p.m. I'd suggest watching from around 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on both nights if it's clear and dark where you live.

A good Perseid meteor shower is an amazing thing. Years ago, I used to hold an annual all-night Perseid meteor shower party. My friends would come over, and we would eat and drink, lay out in lawn chairs and truck beds and ooh and aah and just watch the show. Then I hit a couple of years when the sky was cloudy, or it rained or the shower was on Wednesday and we all had to work the next day, etc. So I stopped holding the parties, but I still love watching a good meteor shower.

Because we'll have to watch early in the evening, instead of after midnight, the show probably won't be a great one. But, here in Pa. the morning is clear, visibility is excellent, and the weekend is here. So I'll be out tonight looking at one of nature's best free shows.

Shorter Days, Longer Nights

The shortening of the day’s light is really becoming noticeable here at Roundtop. When I walk Dog in the morning, it is almost dark. Last night it was dead dark by 8:45 p.m. I think I’m noticing it so much because in Ann Arbor this past weekend the sky still held some light until almost 10 p.m. It was very nice to have that extra time in the evenings, and I’m missing the idea of that, a bit.

Here at the cabin, the result of the shortened daylight is that my morning birding with Dog and/or Baby Dog is a lot less productive than it was just a week or so ago. I still see and hear morning’s earliest birds, like crows and eastern pewees, but the birds that don’t become active until the sun breaks the horizon are now missing.

Still, I have some compensations. I’ve started hearing the great horned owl again. This morning Dog and I saw a red fox that bolted in the direction of where the three kits hung out earlier this spring. Perhaps it was one of them, now on his or her own. We also saw three deer, a doe and two growing fawns, cropping grass in the near gloom.

The natural world always brings change of one kind or another—changes in weather, changes in seasons, changes in the patterns of life. What surprises me, in a way, is that the changes, the shifts from one season to the next are so visible on a daily basis. Summer isn’t just an unbroken spate of hot weather and greenery. The seasons are a continuum, an inexorable march of one tiny change to the next. Yesterday the change was a noticeably duller green to the vegetation, a yellowing of the grass on the slopes. Today the change is a darker morning walk, a fox and three deer. Tomorrow will be another change.

Today's picture is the setting full moon that I took this morning shortly after 6 a.m. when Baby Dog and I were on our morning walk.

Matthaei Botanical Gardens

Before the HMANA board meeting began, three of us had a little time to visit the Matthaei Botanical Gardens on the eastern side of Ann Arbor. We walked on the trails there, listening and watching the birds and enjoying a beautiful early morning in the outdoors. This shot is taken looking towards the headquarters for the gardens. The swimmers in the middle of the picture are just mallards.

I kept a list of the birds I saw in Michigan. I didn't have anything too exotic, but I ended up with 37 species for the morning walk, which was pretty good. Unfortunately, our little morning walk was the only time any of us had for birding on the trip itself. Most of the time we were "locked" in a room. My seat did face the Huron River, so at least I had something pretty to look at through the window.

The photo on the right is thistle in bloom. It's blooming here in Pennsylvania as well as in Michigan. The plant is a common one, but it's still pretty. Most people just think of it as a weed, but anything with purple flowers this showy should at least have a single moment of fame during their bloom.

Matthaei Botanical Gardens has both wetland and upland trails around it. We walked mostly along the wetland habitat. We saw common yellowthroat, black-capped chickadees, lots and lots of American goldfinch, eastern pewees, rough-winged swallows and other common bird species.

The trails I enjoyed the most were the ones that traveled through areas that looked the most different from Pennsylvania and the forest around Roundtop. This open field, with both conifers and deciduous trees along the edge is a lot different from the type of thing I find in southern Pennsylvania. It's probably not a lot different from areas of nothern Pennsylvania, though I suspect the soil here is sandier. It also looks more lush to me than the more hardscrabble forest edges I'm most familiar with in northern Pa. The puddle in the middle was filled with robins getting their morning baths.

Much of our walk followed along the bank of a little creek. We were hoping to see a missasaugua rattlesnake, as we were told they are common here. Later, at the visitor's center, we were told they'd had five sightings so far this year, which doesn't seem all that common to me. At least that's not common the way, say, robins, are common. We didn't find sighting #6. The missasaugua is a darker rattler, the better to blend in with the dark woods and dark, still streams of the region. The snakes are present but rare in Pennsylvania. I've never seen one here, either.

Along the stream, the habitat was moist. We found large snails that settled on the undersides of leaves or pieces of bark. Loosestrife was blooming. One section of the gardens had a woodland garden of native wildflowers that must have been spectacular in the spring when it was blooming.

Our little mini-expedition was a fun interlude before the work begain. I wish we'd had more time to spend exploring the gardens and the region as a whole. But at least we had this time.

Summer Days

I was on a short road trip this weekend. I went to Ann Arbor MI for a strategy planning session with the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA). It was mostly work, but I had time for a little play.

Ann Arbor is a town with a lot of parks and green spaces, so birding was good almost everywhere, even downtown. The Huron River is higher than it usually is in August, so shorebirding wasn't as good as it normally is, or so I was told.

One of the places I stopped was Barton Pond along the Huron River, where I snapped this great blue heron. We heard a warbling vireo right near this spot, but never got a close or clear view of it.

Both dogs and cats were glad to see me when I got home, none the worse for the wear, though Sunday was a long day for me. The HMANA group met until noon, and the drive home was lengthened by a 1.5 hour wait on the Pa. Turnpike until an accident could be cleared.

Back at home I'm already noticing that the woods have that August look. The trees are no longer the bright green of spring or even the rich green of July's mid-summer. They are beginning to take on the dull green of late summer.

On the Road

This beautiful farm is near my cabin. It's one of those places that always invokes an imagination riff whenever I pass it, which is at least once a week.

To me it looks like a picture perfect, almost idealized kind of farm. What would it be like to live here? What does the view look like from farm and looking out? What's in the forest behind the farm? Anyway, to me the farm seems to have everything--a beautiful setting well back from a public road, the forest starting at the edge of the back field. What more could you ask?

Summer woods

Dog and I headed into the woods last evening, down this old two-track road that winds through the forest. The air was thick with humidity, hazy even up close.

We didn't go far--it was too hot and Dog wanted his swim. Sun was long set as we headed back, and now light was fading too.

We saw a coyote run in front of us, perhaps 50 feet ahead. Dog stood up on his hind legs, using the leash for balance to see better. The coyote ran for the first few steps, sort of skulking as it did, then settled into the ground-eating trot of theirs to put more distance between us and it. Dog put his nose to the ground and sniffed excitedly, trying to trail the coyote into the woods, but I wasn't about to let him do that.

We retired to the old pond, where he swam and chased bluegills, until the stars came out.

Swimming in the pond

Blogger hasn't let me upload pictures for 2 days now, so this is a picture-less post. The heat and humidity are mind-numbing. It's too hot to do anything, and this most profoundly includes house cleaning. If the heat last much longer I'll have a fur carpet in the cabin, but I'm learning to ignore it.

Last evening I took Dog and Baby Dog down to the old pond for a swim. As usual, Dog plunged in, grateful for the respite after the heat of the day. Baby Dog has not yet swum a single stroke in her entire life, though last night she took a step closer towards that. While Dog happily swims in the pond, Baby Dog runs along its bank. When she is feeling very adventurous, she deigns to wet her toes and take 2 wet steps to a rock that juts out into the pond. From the rock she can bark at Dog who swims by right beside the rock. At this point, you've correctly guessed that the water is deep right next to the rock.

So Baby Dog is barking at Dog, who happily ignores her while he's chasing fish--bluegills and a few bass that populate the pond. And then she she gets brave and decides to join Dog. However, she is unsure how to enter the water. She decides that entering the water must be like going down stairs so she starts to go into the water head down, head first, until her entire head is underwater and her two back feet are still firmly attached to the rock. At this point, she understands that this is not the way to approach the situation, but she has no futher ideas about how best to accomplish the task so she backs up and retreats onto her rock with all four feet.

She is thrilled with herself and shakes her entire body as though she has been swimming for an hour. I swear that she even struts around afterwards. I tell her how wonderful she is, in between rounds of laughter. Another failed swimming attempt, but I have hope....

The New Pond

I took this picture a day or two ago before the rise in humidity turned everything hazy. This is a 14 acre snow-making pond that Roundtop built a year or so ago. Over on the far bank you can just make out some of Roundtop's ropes course.

Dog and/or Baby Dog and I like to walk around the pond when it's not too hot. Dog likes to swim. I like to look for birds. Baby Dog just likes to run around, with her nose on the ground.

With the weather so hot right now, and the forecast for it to get even hotter, my entire household, including myself, is pretty lazy. I got up at 4:30 this morning to do some ironing, figuring that for the next week it will never be any cooler than in was at 4:30 a.m. Afterwards, I took both dogs for long walks in the near-darkness.

Although it was just 72 degrees, the humidity is so high that by the time I returned to the cabin I was soaked in sweat. Tonight, I think we're all going to climb into that pond and try to cool off. I'll have wet dogs in the house, but if we feel better, it'll be worth it.

Summer Haze

It's hot. It's hazy. And it's humid. I get up before sunrise so I can give the dogs a decent walk before the heat gets to be too much for all of us. But even that's not early enough.

Even at 6 a.m. the air is so thick, I need gills to breathe.

And now, at 6 a.m. the morning is an eerie twilight. The year is already turning towards the dark half of the year, but the heat doesn't know it yet. Soon it will be too dark to take pictures in the morning. I have to wait until I get out of the cover of the woods and am at the end of my walk before the light is strong enough to take a picture. If only the heat would break. Or the humidity.

Red Morning

You probably know that old weather adage, "red sky at morning, sailor's warning..." It's usually right. This is the sunrise that greeted me this morning as soon as I left the cover of the forest, and emerged onto a slope at Roundtop. Needless to say, I'm expecting storms this afternoon.

As a result, I kept the dogs inside today instead of letting them run on the fenced back deck, much to their displeasure. Baby Dog barked at being confined to her crate, but she still gets into too much trouble if she's left loose in the house for 10 hours.

The heat and humidity have returned again, to my displeasure. I can so quickly get used to low temperatures and low humidity. I keep telling myself this is a normal August, which goes a long way to explain why I don't care for August.

Evening Walk with Baby Dog

Now that the evenings are about 15 degrees cooler than they were a few days ago, Baby Dog and I are taking longer walks in the evening. The other day we went over to the new pond. She still won't swim but at least she is occasionally getting her precious little paws wet, or maybe just damp.

Anyway, it was a nice evening, and she had a great time. I think she made every frog around the half mile circumference of the pond jump in. It was like one of those human waves at sporting events, only this was frogs. One after another they launched themselves into the pond just ahead of Baby Dog as she followed the edge of the pond. Most of the them were smaller frogs, this year's tadpoles. She didn't pay much attention to them.

As you can see, Baby Dog is no longer a true baby. She is now 11 months old, and still in that puppy adolescent stage where she is testing her limits (and pretending she doesn't hear me when she's looking right at me). Teenagers!

On this walk she was better behaved than average, though I know that won't last. Yet. That's what so frustrating about puppy adolescence. One time she's a little angel, listening to every word, obeying every command. The next time I walk her, she doesn't remember her name or hear my voice. To her it's all the same. She's a happy little thing, about 45 pounds or so, not as big as I thought she would get when she was just 8 weeks old. I cal her "little" because her back doesn't come to my knee. Dog is not only older but bigger at 65 lbs.


You can sort of tell in this last picture that her tongue is mostly black, well, blue really. I call her my border chow, since I think chow is her most dominant breed of the other 56 varieties that she probably has in her. The hair on her withers is long and when she's scared or angry it stands straight up and makes her look pretty fierce, which she isn't. She doesn't look much like a border collie, but that's about the size she is, and border collie is as good a guess as any, so that's what I call her, at least when I'm not calling her a goofball.

Night Mystery

Night in the forest is a time of strangeness and mystery. After my years of living in the forest, I have learned many of the night sounds—tree frogs and bull frogs, great-horned owls and screech owls, the snort and stamp of a deer, crickets and cicadas. And yet sometimes, still, I hear sounds I can’t identify. Those mysterious sounds stay with me, as I tumble them around in my brain, trying to put animal with sound. When I am able to identify the sound-maker, the night becomes less mysterious, less frightening and also less wondrous.

Last night I heard a sound, close behind the cabin that I couldn’t identify. It was loud enough to make Baby Dog bark once in warning. To me, it sounded as though something large produced the sound. It struck me as birdlike, an owl, perhaps. Not a screech owl or a great-horned owl or even the less common barred owl If I’d heard that sound 6 weeks from now, I would have dubbed it a saw-whet owl, called myself fortunate to hear it and continued my walk.

But it isn’t September, and so saw-whet owls, who don’t live in my forest, shouldn’t be here now. What else could it be? Perhaps a turkey, startled into making an odd noise? Or could it be something else? Foxes, especially gray foxes, make a variety of strange sounds. Could it be that?

The choices gnaw at me, as I look at each, discard it and move on to the next. I’m not afraid, but not knowing what I heard makes the night feel stranger and somehow more dangerous than I’ve gotten used to it feeling. Identifying and understanding the forest’s night sounds de-mystifies them, almost without me realizing it.

Imagine how strange the night must have felt to our distant ancestors, huddled around a few campfires. Learning to identify the sounds of the night must have made them feel safer, in a world that offered them little safety. Learning to live with the unknown that swirled all around was part of their daily existence.

For us, in today’s times, there are fewer mysteries, fewer things that can’t be learned with a quick search. The night, the world, is less mysterious.

Finally, I let it go. The forest held onto its mystery, this time. I will never know what I heard last night. I am content with that. Indeed, I’m even relishing it. The night should keep some of its mystery, if only to remind us of deeper mysteries and other things we will never know or understand.

Eastern Kingbird

Once I'm out of the woods and over on the slopes at Roundtop, the summer habitat is like a grassland. The slopes are covered with Queen Anne's lace, brown-eyed susan's, Dutchman's breeches, etc. The birds that hang out there tend to be grassland species as well, like this Eastern Kingbird that I snapped yesterday sitting on a chairlift cable. Roundtop doesn't usually have many of this species but there's always one family group and sometimes two. I love the woodland birds but I also enjoy seeing something different every now and again.

The oppressive weather has broken, at least for the moment, leaving the sky crystal clear and the animals more active. Last night as I drove back to the cabin after dark, I saw a doe by the side of the road. Fortunately she didn't try to cross as I passed, A fox flirted with the far edge of my headlights, too far to even tell if it was a red or a gray, though more likely a red. This morning, the vultures were up with the dawn, as was a red-tailed hawk and 11 Canada geese. The animals appreciate the cooler weather at least as much as I do.

Summer Evening

I took this picture earlier this week, on one of the few pretty summer evenings I've seen in a while. Actually, it was one of the few pretty summer evenings all summer.

This summer has been grey, stormy, very rainy, and of course, hot, humid and hazy. This weekend is no exception. I see enough grey and rainy every day so I'm not inclined to post pictures that remind me how overcast it is. I like the pictures to show the pretty days of summer, when the light is interesting.

And the bad news is, I've now posted all the pretty summer pictures I have, so unless it clears today, I don't know what picture I'll post next.

I am already looking forward to fall hawk migration. It will start, though only just, in another 2 weeks or so. Mostly, August hawkwatching is an excuse to take the binoculars to the top of a mountain and sit for a few hours. Hawkwatchers say they're gettig their eyes dialed in for the big migration in September, but that only really takes about one trip to the hawkwatch and so can't really account for the days and weekends spent sitting on a mountain in August.

August is also good for shorebird migration, which I like simply because migration of *any* kind means fall is nearing and with it comes cooler temperatures (and better hawkwatching). So anything that just might possibly suggest fall is approaching is cause for my celebration. But in the meantime, I'll settle for a pretty summer evening.

Woodsline (and Baby Dog's Big Step)

When Roundtop built their new snowmaking pond, they had to clear some forest. That has created an artificial edge to where the woods begin again. And now, this area is the most open sky I can see in summer, so I go over there frequently just to see that much open sky. Near sunset a day or so ago, the line of trees made for an interesting picture.

I took Dog and Baby Dog for a swim last night.

Don't expect pictures.

It was the first time I walked both dogs at the same time without becoming a human maypole. So I'm not yet ready to handle both dogs and a camera. Perhaps we'll get there one of these years, perhaps not. Until last night I haven't been able to entice Baby Dog to go swimming. She won't even get her precious little toes wet. So I thought that if she saw Dog swimming, it might help. Dog loves to swim. Baby Dog loves Dog. It seemed like a good idea.

So down to the pond we went. Dog jumped in instantly, chasing fish and swimming along the edge of the pond. Baby Dog was flabbergasted and ran beside him on the shore, barking all the time. Eventually she took one step into the pond and then took a second step over to stand on a rock in the pond from where she could bark at Dog while he swam by. For her, that one step was progress.

Eventually, she either fell in from the shoreline or went in voluntarily and got wet up to her belly. I told her how brave she was and made a big fuss over her. I didn't press her any further last night. But it was progress!

Sunset

Sunset over Roundtop's new snowmaking pond. Dog and I were out for a walk near sunset on Monday, and the sky was nice and clear, so I took a photo. Last night it was stormy--very. Limbs down, reports near me of trees and wires down (though not around the cabin).

I got home 3 minutes before the storm hit, managing only to close the windows. The poor dogs had to wait an extra hour to go out as the lightning strikes were too close to go outside. Baby Dog howled at the delay, acting the whole time as though she couldn't wait another second, as though she needed to go NOW!. When the storm finally eased enough that I'm pretty sure I won't be struck by lightning or hit by a falling tree as soon as I step outside,I take her out. And what does she do? She wanders around sniffing the ground, tries to chase an outdoor cat, grabs a stick. The desperation was all an act.

Now the terrible heat has broken, and the humidity is lower. It feels normal again.

Visitors

Baby Dog kicked up an especially loud fuss the other night to announce the arrival of the daily raccoon. Since she refused to quiet down, I was forced to do my alpha dog job and go to the door to investigate. Out on the deck, just before dusk, I saw one of the regular cats to the cat feeder and the raccoon. The cat sat safely atop the feeder. The raccoon was chowing down.

After a few seconds of calm, the cat decided it would be safe to come down and resume its own meal. But one down on the deck on the same level as the raccoon, the cat chickened out. The raccoon didn’t act aggressively towards the cat, but the cat decided eating from the same dish at the same time as the raccoon was probably not as safe as it looked and vacated the premises, leaving the raccoon to enjoy its evening snack.

As it has been virtually eveywhere, it is unbearably hot here. When I left work at 5 p.m. yesterday, it was 98 degrees. By the time I got to the cabin, protected somewhat by the canopy of trees instead of heat-gathering macadam, it was 90 degrees. That's a big improvement and the main reason why I don't have air conditioning. Most of the summer I don't need it. When it's 90 degrees in the city, it's only 80-82 at the cabin, a comfortable temperature. But then we always get some days when it's in the upper 90's and the temperature at the cabin is pretty hot too. I keep trying to tell myself that an air conditioner is a pretty expensive thing to buy when it's only going to be used 5-7 or maybe 10 days a year, but on days like yesterday and days like today will be, it keeps getting harder to say no. But since my windows are all the crank-out kind, and I'd have to cut a hole in the cabin wall to install it, sanity usually returns and I just wait out the heat. Winter is coming (I hope!).

Not Yet Normal

I'm still feeling as though I'm in catch-up mode after last week's hectic pace. Like nearly every place else in the country, it's been hot here. I was up at 5:30 this weekend, so I could take both dogs for good walks before it got too hot. The poor animals had the short end of my attention this past week, and I wanted to make up for it, as best I could.

So both dogs got long walks, after which we didn't do anything but loll around and hope the weather would break. The woods animals weren't very active either. I heard a few birds in the morning and late evening, but about the only birds I saw during the day were the turkey vultures.

I took this picture at Roundtop, looking towards one of the snowmaking ponds. The trees look cooler than the area felt.
It's been so hot I haven't even turned on the computer until after dark.

This is more like it!

After nearly a week of being stuck in a city, in a hotel, surrounded by lots and lots of people, today I finally was able to escape and take a walk in the woods. It's still muddy, so I kept to an old woods road, but it was fresh air and quiet, so I was happy.

It's hot as all get out here, and the temperature is expected to flirt with 100 degrees on Monday. Today was more than hot enough for my taste, so my walks are limited to early morning and near dusk. The woods are lush and moist--too thick for bushwhacking. Winter is the time for my bushwhacks, not mid-July.

The other evening, as I was driving back to the cabin late I saw a doe with twin fawns and a monster buck right near Roundtop. Yes, I took a picture, but it didn't turn out well enough to publish. Dusk was just a little too far along for it to be good. Next time.

Dog Behaving

Here's a shot ot Dog behaving himself for once. And listening to me. A miracle!

It's been another rainy week, though not as rainy as the big 15" rain of 2 weekends ago. Still, I'm so sensitized to it, that even another inch of so or rain seems too much.

I've been away and busy at work for most of this week. I have a few more work things tomorrow and then the weekend off to enjoy prowling around in the woods again. I feel as though I haven't had any time in the woods in ages, and I've been forced to spend all week in a city hotel with no woods around me. I'm just not cut out for that. Too many people, too much activity and no woods. But at least the end is now in sight!

Unexpected Hazard

The photo is of a chipping sparrow sitting on the lower fence railing. Chipping sparrows are more common than robins here in the summer. And they account for about 99.5% of all sparrows seen at Roundtop.

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Most of the potential hazards association with living in the woods are probably ones just about anyone could name--wind and fire probably top the list. Others might be rabid animals, snakes for some people. But I'll bet you never thought of acorns as a hazard, but they are.

Now is the time when acorns are falling from the oaks. It almost sounds like rain. I hear them crashing through the leaves and plopping onto the forest floor, where almost none of them will ever get to be trees.

Last night I was out walking one of the dogs, wearing the flip flops that are my summer shoe of choice. And one of those little acorns fell right onto the top of the base of my little toe. Boy, did that hurt! It was as bad as a bee sting. This morning I have a little red mark there. Okay, so acorns can't compare to wind damage or rabid animals, but who would have guessed that acorns would be any kind of a hazard, even a little one?

Brown-eyed Susans

The brown-eyed susans are blooming, which tells me it is mid-summer already. The days are hazy, with thunderstorms almost every evening. The woods are quieter than they were in spring--birds are nesting and so trying to hide their nests and their babies. Since they no longer need to sing loudly to attract a mate, they are quietly raising their young ones.

I saw a great-blue heron this morning--the first I've seen here this year. Roundtop is not exactly prime territory for these birds, so they are uncommon.

I started to walk down the mountain yesterday and into the valley between the mountains but gave it up. It's still too muddy down there to make a walk enjoyable. My hiking shoes have only just properly dried out after the rain event of last week. Perhaps next weekend.

And for my rant of the day: I swear that every day there's a possibility of seeing aurora borealis this far south, it turns out to be rainy or cloudy. It almost seems like a rule: If there's a geomagnetic storm, I will have 100% cloud cover. And so it was this weekend.

Nighttime Visitor

I had a nighttime visitor to the cabin's deck last night. Mr. Raccoon was after the cat food I put out for the stray cats around Roundtop. After the cats get their fill, the raccoon appear, which drives the dogs crazy. As fas I can tell, the raccoon is silent, but Baby Dog keeps a lookout, and the howling starts as soon as the raccoon appears. The howling doesn't seem to bother it.

Morning!

This photo was taken looking towards Roundtop after I'd driven off the mountain. A smaller hill blocks the view of the bottom of Roundtop. The crop is corn, and this year it is well above the "knee-high by the 4th of July" that's supposed to be the normal gauge of how the crop is progressing. The odd looking thing on the right middle of the photo is a power line tower that cuts across the lower hill.

This morning when I was outside walking the dogs I suddenly had a moment of panic. Was I late? Had I set my alarm improperly? It felt like mid-morning, not just after 6 a.m. I didn’t have my watch on so I couldn’t check it. I hurried Dog along and started back towards the cabin and then it hit me. I wasn’t late. The sun was out! After 2 weeks of rain, gloom, clouds, fog and haze, the sun was finally out, and this is how 6 a.m. on a July morning is supposed to look! Whew! I’d forgotten. Maybe things will finally start to dry out. At this point, I think even my mold has mold.

Quiet

Yesterday I was the only human being on the mountain. Both my semi-near neighbors were away and that meant that for at least a mile in any direction I was the only one around. Oh, I suppose it’s possible that someone could have walked into the woods at the far edge of that mile without me knowing about it, but given the poor weather yesterday that is unlikely. And even if that event happened, the woods were pretty much as quiet as they are ever going to get. And it still wasn’t all that quiet around me.

Birds sang, the breeze rustled the leafy canopy, and occasionally a plane flew over or the sound of a loud and distant vehicle could be heard. So I can’t say that I felt unusually alone. The quietest I ever “heard” it here was right after a tornado came through (very!) near me about 10 years ago. Then, the leaves were completely still, and the birds were silent. That was an eerie and scary kind of quiet that I hope never to experience again.

Still, the quiet background sounds that are a part of my daily life are far quieter than are the typical daily experience for most people. To me, even a small town seems too loud. Several people holding a conversation can seem too loud. The volume in a movie theater makes my ears cringe.

Does the high level of background noise that most people live with every day have unknown consequences, I wonder? Does it contribute to high levels of stress or anxiety? I have no answer; I only know that what most people experience as “normal” levels of background noise sound way too loud to me, and I escape back to my mountain as soon as I am able.

Raspberries!

The wild black raspberries that grow along the edge of the road and the forest are mostly ripe now. I pick them and eat them right off the bush. I figure that since I've just had 15 inches of rain, they're not going to get any cleaner by me running them under my tap for a few seconds. Plus, it rained again last night for a bit. Even my neighbors are away so there's been no one driving on the lane up or down the mountain, except occasionally me. I've had to stop taking Dog along when I go raspberry picking, as he picks nearly as many as I do. Usually, I keep the raspberries for breakfast cereal and in good years I get to freeze a few cups. This year the flavor of the raspberries is good but there aren't enough to freeze and not all that many make it into the house, either!

Summer Days

I have no special reason to post this photo today. I simply like this view--it's the first non-woods view I see as I'm driving off the mountain. I've posted the same view in early spring when it was covered by a dusting of snow. So, since it's mid-summer now I thoughtI'd post a summer version of it.

It's hot here, and consequently not much is going on. The critters spend about 23.5 hours a day sleeping and no more than 30 minutes doing other things.

I like this time of year at Roundtop. No one is around, and it's like living on an estate--one that I don't have to pay taxes on or mow or maintain. I get to wander all over and don't have to worry about running into other people. Even the wild animals usually ignore me--they're not stressed by the presence of anyone else or too much extraneous activity so they're pretty calm. It makes watching them even more interesting.

Almost Back to Normal

Flood waters are still receding and though everything is still wet, everything is no longer water-logged—except perhaps these turkey vultures who were out drying off on the fence along the road into Roundtop. And my walking shoes which took 3 days to dry out.

Last night several moths entered the house when I opened the door to walk the dogs after dark. The cats went wild. The bad cat was so fixated on watching the moths that he ran headlong into a wall. This morning he has a small bump above his right eye to prove it.

The first of the black raspberries are ripe. I’ve picked enough along the driveway to put on my cereal in the morning. Dog loves black raspberries. Last year I fed him one that I’d just picked, and now he tries to pick his own raspberries. Unfortunately, he picks the red un-ripe ones as well as the black ones.

No Rain Today!

It hasn’t rained for almost 24 hours, which makes me feel today as if I am on a different planet from the one I’ve been marooned on for the past 4-5 days. The basement, while not completely dry, is at least no longer deep in water. So my life is starting to feel a little more normal again.

The local streams and rivers are a different story. The water under the bridge I cross to come to work is nearly up to the bottom of the bridge. Debris that can no longer pass under it is banging up against the side. The Susquehanna River was within a few feet of flood stage this morning when I crossed it. This normally sleepy river is a raging torrent right now, filled with trees and other flotsam.

I saw a coyote yesterday evening—the first I’ve seen all year. It bolted across the road in front of me, visible only in the moment it was in the open space of the road.

Dog and Baby Dog seemed surprised this morning at the absence of rain and didn’t know what to do with themselves without it. Baby Dog was scared by a rock in the middle of the driveway. She acted as though it was a Big Hairy Monster and barked at it. I thought, at first, that she must be looking at something other than this fist-sized rock, at something I couldn’t see. It was a mild-mannered looking rock that just happened to be standing up on an edge. When I kicked it over, she pretended she hadn’t been scared at all and tried to play with it, even picking it up in her mouth and carrying it around for a while.

More Rain

More rain overnight—another 3-4 inches. I think I’m going to give up trying to count the inches. I know I’m closing in on 13-15 inches of it since Saturday night. I’ve had to borrow a sump pump from Ski Roundtop as mine gave up the ghost in last night’s downpour.

I now have weeds taller than my head out behind the cabin. I’ve been in real jungles and believe me when I say the area behind the cabin is no different. At the moment it is not raining, and every minute without it is a minute to the good, at this point.

Even the dogs, who typically ignore weather either good or bad, seem affected. Baby Dog won’t go into the woods anymore. She just squats in the middle of the lane and hurries back into the house. They’ve even given up playing in the stream rushing down the mountain that used to be my road.

Surprisingly, the Susquehanna River doesn’t yet look that terrible, as it won’t be above flood stage for another day or so. The Yellow Breeches Creek, the largest creek in the area, went from being not quite bank full last evening to being double its normal width and nearly reaching the underside of the bridge this morning. The Yellow Breeches, pronounced locally as Yella Breches (it’s not quite pronounced as britches) comes by its name honestly. It is yellow and muddy right now.

If this is global warming, I want no more of it. If it’s not global warming, I want no more of it.

Power Back!

Being without power has made me realize that even in a cabin in the woods, there’s not much I can do without it. I don’t live “off the grid,” so I’m nearly as dependent on electricity as someone who lives in the suburbs.

Food: I couldn’t open the refrigerator door unless I wanted to let the cold air out, so I had to use the contents of my emergency kit, which wasn’t particularly exciting stuff.

Cooking: the backpacking stove is handy but since I can’t use it inside and it was raining buckets outside and electricity was working just 3-4 miles away, going out to eat was far easier. Plus, the selection of food was much better.

Cleaning: The broom only works on non-carpeted areas. I couldn’t even iron.

Water: The pump doesn’t work without electric, though I had water in my emergency kit. With nearly 10” of rain (Yes, you read that right) falling since Saturday night there was also plenty outside. I have one of those backpacking showers but this isn’t ideal for hair washing. I also limited dishwashing as without firing up the backpacking stove I couldn’t heat water.

Light: I have battery-powered camp lanterns and oil lanterns but neither provides the level of light that an electric light does—especially when daylight is nearly as dark as night. The headlamp is the best thing to use for reading.

Entertainment: No TV, no computer. Bored dogs get into trouble quickly. The cats slept. I read a lot.

Bottom line: I’m awfully glad the electricity is back on.

Other news: The lane is completely washed out. Water raced down the mountain, digging foot-deep channels in the road. Four wheel drive is needed right now to get in and out. The ground is so soaked that trees are starting to fall. I actually saw one (small) behind the cabin fall this morning when I was out walking the dogs. On my drive to work, I saw a larger one had fallen on a power line and was blocking one lane of the road. But this was another power company, so this time I wasn’t affected.

No Power, No Blog

I've been without power for the past 18 hours or so, so I haven't been able to blog. This area got in the neighborhood of 6" of rain in the past 24 hours--the worst rain event I remember since Hurricane Agnes in the 1970's. My rain gauge overflowed at 5", and I didn't bother to go outside to updump it. I'll post more in a bit.

J. J. Audubon

I am reading the personal journals of John James Audubon, a gift from a friend, and I am struck by two things. Even though I knew Audubon shot the birds he drew so his drawings would be accurate, I did not realize how many birds he shot. Day and day out, his journals chronicle each one--fish hawks (ospreys), hermit thrush, 17 turkey, warblers, thrushes. Hardly a day goes by without killing 10-20 birds of as many species as he could find that day. The numbers are simply huge. Audubon also chronicles the contents of the birds' stomachs. So he's learning what the birds eat as well.

The second thing is that weather in 1820 seems quite a bit cooler than today. In mid-October of 1820, Audubon was on a boat on the river separating Ohio and Kentucky. He's already talking about heavy frosts--not one heavy frost, but cold weather day in and day out.

I remember October's weather as being more variable here when I was younger, but heavy and continual frosts probably didn't settle in until the end of the month or early November.

At any rate, a lot of things have changed in 186 years.

Summer Storm, etc.

This morning Dog was fooled by the "old broken wing trick" displayed by a killdeer. We were walking in Roundtop's north parking lot, which is stone-covered and so prime territory for killdeer. When I first saw the bird it was upside down, belly in the air, flapping weakly as though it was on its very last leg. Dog has always had a thing for killdeer, since back when he was a puppy, so it is no surprise he thought he was (finally!) about to get one. After a few seconds I saw a tiny killdeer very near to where we were walking, and had to pull Dog away so the tiny baby, which Dog never saw, could escape.

Last night was a severe and slow-moving thunderstorm, with lots of rain and sustained lightning. I started hearing the storm just before dark, and because it was so slow-moving, the lightning storm seemed to go on forever. I couldn't see bolts of lightning in the sky--the thick leaf cover hides that from me. But the woods would suddenly burst into brightness with multiple bursts keeping the woods light for a second or two at a time. Then it would darken again. Some of the bolts weren't as strong and then the lightning only brightened a few trees or sometimes looked like someone turning on a flashlight for a few seconds deeper in the woods. Then it would be dark again.

And then I saw a lightning bug flash, itself a little mini-burst of lightning. Then real lightning would flash again and in the interim before the next flash, more lightning bugs, some very close, some deeper in the woods. I don't ever remember seeing lightning and lightning bugs in such a tandem operation before. It was a little symphony of light, the smaller one echoing the sky's drama with grace notes of its own.

Woods

Summer solstice has passed, and the days will start to grow shorter, though it will be a long time before they feel shorter.

This picture was taken in the early morning along an old woods road that winds along the edge of the mountain. It makes a good footpath for me and the dogs. The undergrowth is a bit too dense to make bushwhacking enjoyable.

I enjoy my early morning walks in daylight. I get up early to take a solo walk. Then I walk the dogs. I've learned that just walking the dogs doesn't constitute exercise for me. They stop and sniff and play, and I spend more time keeping an eye on them than anything. So a solo walk is a bit of time just for me. Rolling out of bed when there's at least a little light in the sky is a lot easier than when it's dark outside. Most of the time, I'm already awakening anyway as the sky fades from dark to light.

Summer Days

In every way, I can feel that summer has arrived on the mountain. The temperature and humidity are just a small part of it. Evening brings cooling temperatures and legions of lightning bugs, blinking like miniature flashes of lightning throughout the darkened woods.

Birds of many species fly until it is too dark for me to see—unlike in winter when the last half-hour of semi-daylight is already a quiet time. Now, chimney swifts fly until I can barely see them, recognizing them only by their distinctive “flying cigar” silhouettes. Wood thrush and ovenbirds call long after the sun has set. Phoebes and, especially, pewees will even call after dark, a soft and haunting coda to the day.

The air smells warm and carries the lush scent of the summer forest, so different than the fresh earthy scent of spring. Summer’s scent is rich and heady, almost like an expensive perfume applied just a tad too heavily. The dogs point their noses into the air and sniff, and would no doubt be able to tell me many secrets, if only they could.

The wind, when it blows, is usually from the south or southwest. In winter the prevailing wind is most often from the north or northwest. As often as not, the trees are still, and flags hang limply, as though moving is simply too great an effort, even for them.

Moving becomes an effort for the animals too. Dog and Baby Dog loll around, obstacles to be stepped over and tripped on. Forest animals are hardly better and seem reluctant to startle. The groundhog that lives at the foot of the lane watches warily as I walk past—but doesn’t dart down his hole. Rabbits bounce easily ahead of me, then hunker by the side of the lane, perhaps in hopes that I won’t walk closer so they can continue whatever adventure they were pursuing.

It’s a quiet time in many ways. The last migration is over and the next is not yet near. The territorial disputes are settled. Night closes in and the day ends.

And Now in Local News...

Last evening I had a close encounter with a pileated woodpecker, the smaller and less white version of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. I was out walking Dog before it got too dark to see and had just turned into my driveway when a large, crow-sized bird flew just a few feet past my right shoulder and landed in a tree about 15 feet away and about 10 feet up. The sighting is odd for a couple of reasons. Pileated woodpeckers are usually kind of shy and are most often seen flying away from me. This one, a female, flew right by me and then landed close to where I was standing. Dog was even closer. The bird didn’t act shy. I don’t know if she had a nest nearby or was just unconcerned. She looked down at us, as though surprised to find us there. Eventually, she flew to the next tree and then flew past the cabin and deeper into the woods. I think it was my closest non-binoculared view ever of a pileated.

I also saw a brood of 11-12 tiny wild turkey—the first brood I’ve seen at Roundtop. They ran across the road in front of me, half going across the road with mom, the other half staying on the other side. I heard them peeping and mom clucking. I just hope they all got back together again after I passed. For several years a tom turkey has been strutting his stuff and calling on the mountain. He’s kind of a weird bird. I’ve seen him up in the north parking lot strutting around, tail all fanned out, with no one and nothing around. I’ve seen him display his tail when a car drives by. This spring I heard him gobbling all over the mountain, but this is the first evidence I’ve seen that he’s gotten lucky.

Deer are starting to drop their fawns, as well. My dad saw a tiny fawn stumble and wobble across the road in front of their farm this weekend. I’ve been seeing a few skinny doe standing around where I don’t expect to see deer. This morning Baby Dog and I saw one along Roundtop’s service road. So she probably has a fawn in that tangle somewhere too.

Goose Parade

I was walking down to the lodge the other day to get my mail when I came across this goose parade. The babies were being marched from one pond to the next, and they're about to enter this one. Yesterday, I counted a total of 19 geese.

It's been a quiet week at the cabin, pleasantly so. I heard a wood thrush sing this morning. They've been quieter for a few weeks because of nesting duties, so it was nice to be awakened by their song again.

In a few days, it will be summer solstice, and then the hours of daylight will slowly start to fade. I've been noticing that because of the surrounding mountains, my sunrise is about 30 minutes later than the the official sunrise times at the nearest city. Official sunrise is 5:37 right now, but I saw didn't see the sun breach the mountain to the east until just before 6:15 a.m. And sunset is about 30 minutes earlier as well. Sunset is officially supposed to be around 8:45 p.m., but I'm watching the sun drop below the western mountain around 8:15 p.m. It stays light for hours after the sun's disk has disappeared. Even at 10 p.m. I can't yet see but a few of the brightest stars.

Early Morning Dog

Dog never met a pond he didn't like. He doesn't seem to understand the idea that it's possible to take a drink from one without getting his entire body wet.

The baby geese that hang out here when Dog isn't around are getting large--they are the size of roasting chickens, at least. They are still down-covered, but their down is now almost the colors they will be when they are feathered. I counted 19 geese last night--7 babies and the rest adults.

Invisible

Something was going on at the mountain this morning, but I have no idea what it was. At dawn the crows were already cawing nervously, crisscrossing the area as though looking for some danger they could not find. The turkey vultures, who normally wait an hour or so after dawn to take to the skies (so the heat of the morning sun has a chance to create thermals) were already airborne. The white-breasted nuthatches, who have been silent with nesting duties the past few weeks, were noisy again.

I’ve learned to pay attention to what goes on in the forest. Just because I can’t sense or see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The forest animals can sense things that are invisible or imperceptible to me. Often, if I have time to stop and wait, I will find out what it is—a fox, perhaps, or a raptor. This morning, I suspect some kind of airborne threat, simply because the rabbit and local groundhogs behaved normally, unconcerned.

Once, I was up in the Adirondacks, already deep in the woods in the early morning, when the normal morning activity of the birds suddenly quieted and then stopped entirely. I sat down and waited and watched. After about 20 minutes of sitting, I saw a Cooper’s Hawk slip out of the pines and move deeper into the forest. Within a very few minutes, the forest birds were active again, going about their morning routines. The threat was gone, and they knew it. I hadn’t known the hawk was there, but the birds around me sensed or saw its presence and their reactions told me something was up.

Sometimes, I can sense a threat only to find out it isn’t really “here.” Several years ago, in mid-summer, I smelled smoke, wood smoke. Since I live in the woods, my first thought was a forest fire. I turned on the police scanner but heard nothing. The smell got worse, and with it my feeling of unease. Before long, I could see a haze in the air that I knew was wood smoke. I tried to pinpoint the location of the smell, to no avail. I hiked around the edge of the mountain and around the foot of it, trying to find the source of the smell. Finally, the smell faded, a bit, and I gave up my search, only partially satisfied by the results of my hike. Later that day I learned that smoke from forest fires in Canada was affecting our region.

This morning, I was reminded of that incident by the way the birds behaved. They knew something was going on but couldn’t locate the source of their unease. I could see their unease in the ways they behaved and that warned me. For me, today is a work day, and I couldn’t linger to try and find out what caused the birds’ distress. I’ll probably never know, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Turtle!

I'm so disappointed in my photos of this snapping turtle. This thing was large! The shell was in the 12-14" range. The tail added another 4-6 inches, the head when extended must have added another 3-4." I was so afraid that it would move that I didn't even think to get anything in the background that would give an indication of its size. And I was cautious about getting too close to it, as well. These things have a nasty reputation, most of it well deserved.

This isn't the snapping turtle that I rescued from the road last week. That one was a baby compared to this one. Here's how I found this one: Baby Dog and I were out for our early morning walk when I saw what I thought was one of the outdoor cats that hang around Roundtop in the center of the mountain's dirt service road. But it didn’t look quite right. So I got a little closer and then thought ah, there’s 2 cats there. But it still didn’t look quite right. So I got a little closer, and now I realized it was a turtle walking, not crawling, but walking up on its legs. The bottom of its shell was a good 5-6" above the ground. It was those back legs that I took for cats.

So I quickly rushed back to the cabin with Baby Dog, grabbed the camera and went back to look for the turtle. Much to my amazement (but, duh! It’s a turtle!) it was still there. As soon as it saw me, it came down off its legs, with the bottom of its shell resting on the ground, and suddenly it didn’t look nearly so big. Who know where it was going, but it was on a mission to somewhere.

New Bird Species

I had a new bird species at the cabin on Saturday morning. It was a northern waterthrush that perched momentarily on the deck railing, giving its "chink" call. A waterthrush looks like a brown, not cinnamon, wood thrush with an eye stripe. These birds like bogs and water and lots of cover. The fact that the area behind the cabin is dense enough to attract a waterthrush made me wonder if I need to weed whack out there or something. It was only a momentary thought. But I guess it is more jungly than I though--I don't go out that way in summer. I have a nice winter trail out the back of the cabin, and I did notice that the area seemed pretty dense out there this spring, but I never thought it was dense enough for waterthrush.

Surprises

Every now and again, things happen that are unexpected. Really unexpected. My latest sightings were both unexpected in small ways. I mean, don’t expect to read that I suddenly have wild elephants or pterodactyls in the forest. Nonetheless, what I saw was a surprise.

Surprise #1: This morning it’s just after dawn, and I’m walking the dogs. It’s mostly clear out, some clouds in the east. At the end of our walk, I turn around to go back to the cabin and there in front of me, in the western sky, is a beautiful rainbow. It’s the first I’ve seen this year. It was also the first rainbow I’ve ever seen so soon after dawn, with the sun just above the horizon, so its arc was almost as pointed as a McDonald’s arch. Apparently, the water in the clouds on the eastern horizon was enough to produce this lovely sight, but who would’ve guessed?

Surprise #2: This morning I’d just started my drive to work. I was still well before reaching open farmland and still surrounded by forest when a black rabbit casually hops across the road in front of me. I do a double take and stop the car. Yes, it really was a black rabbit. Obviously, it was someone’s escaped or released pet, but still, this isn’t an everyday occurrence. If the thing escaped, it’s at least a mile from the nearest house (and I’ve never seen a rabbit cage there). It seemed happy enough and even reasonably wary.

Not a surprise: Baby Dog has put herself on stakeout duty at the front door in the evening to watch for the raccoon. She stands with her nose to the glass, at attention and she waits. Seeing the raccoon seems to be the high point of her day, and she has enormous patience when waiting for it to show up. When the raccoon does appear, she jumps into action, barking and jumping, trying to scare it away. It is not particularly scared by her, though instead of going directly to the dish, as it did before, it now more cautiously stays on the last step and stretches a paw into the dish.

Feline Residents

"But, Mom, you promised we'd go birding!"

This picture has nothing to do with the cabin, but it's a good picture of my Maine Coon cat Ben, who should have been named Total Destruction for the havoc he wreaks around the place. When I saw him resting this way, I just had to take a picture (and was surprised that he didn't move until I ran and got the camera).

The next picture is of Smokey, my one-eyed foster
kitty, also a Maine coon cat. Smokey is a sweet old boy who loves to sit on my lap. He has taken over the upstairs bedroom but won't leave it to explore other rooms, even though the door is left open. And just as funny, my cats now won't go into the upstairs bedroom.