February 2nd Tracks

Good morning everyone,

There is a dusting of snow on the ground and in the air this morning. It feels like a well-mannered human gently shook a snow globe and let the pieces swirl. Big, fat snowflakes are falling from the sky and coating the ground. This is the kind of weather you want on a Sunday when you light the pellet stove and eat pancakes.

It is currently 28°F outside and the wind is light. The snow should continue and accumulate between 1-2 inches by tomorrow morning.

Outside, I’m proving to Winston that I’m just a good of a tracker as he is.

We’re calling these tracks a bunny invasion.

We also heard a very eery cry from above, one we’ve never heard before. A large bird soared from one tree to the next and thanks to its white underbelly and black-tipped wings, we were able to identify a Rough-tailed hawk.

Our February bird list now has 3 birds: Rough-tailed hawk, Dark-eyed junco, and ruffed grouse.

Time for those pancakes.

Enjoy your Superbowl, Groundhog day or Sleepy Sunday.

-Bella

August 7th Coyotes

Good morning everyone!

The rain and thunder we received yesterday was surely the outcome of the warm front passing by, but the rain we shall get today will be the result of a cold front bearing down from Canada! No more 85°F for us – perhaps not until 2020.

The temperature was solidly at 60°F as we walked outside this morning before 6 a.m., just in time to catch a beautiful pink and orange sunrise. But if you looked at your paws and then back up to the sky, you would have missed the blushing colors – that’s how fast they acted up this morning. The ground is still very wet from all the rain we got yesterday, and the weeds were full of dew. Winston and I looked as if we had been submerged in water when we emerged from the nature trail.

Our human stopped to eat some late raspberries and early blackberries, as we raced around the property chasing smells. We’ve always suspected that there are coyotes to the East of us – we’ve found what looks like coyote scat at the edge of our woods, and we’ve heard (or imagined) howlings in the night. Well, it is no longer in our imagination! Non-blogging human successfully recorded the coyotes howling in the night he was woken up because we were chasing meteors. Their howl is a convoluted, high-pitched series of yips and cries, and it is hard to tell if it was a single coyote or a dozen. Long story short, Winston and I are no longer allowed to race each other in the dark.

Our flock of starlings seems to obey some sort of mysterious nature clock, timed with the rising and setting of the Sun. For days we’ve noticed that the flock seems to un-nestle itself shortly after the Sun pokes out over the Eastern horizon, and after the Sun sets in the West. Not only are they timed with the Sun, but they change their habits daily to accommodate for the Sun rising slightly later every day and setting slightly earlier every evening. Today, they seemed to be in a fuss at precisely 6:12 a.m., whereas we noticed the colors of sunrise showed at about 5:50 a.m. Starlings aren’t so much fun as blackbirds. Winston spends a fraction of a time chasing them before giving up, but if he finds a red-winged blackbird, he can be entertained by simply barking up a tree for full minutes (I’ve been told that humans don’t think it is very impressive to have an attention span that can last for minutes, but it certainly is a novelty in our world!).

Non-blogging human has been tracking the progress of our baby birds as well. He reports very excitedly that they opened their eyes yesterday. All three chicks and both parents seem to be in good health and out of reach of our numerous Gardner snakes.

It may be a sunlit morning, but we are expecting clouds and rain for the rest of the day! Isn’t it odd how mornings are often very colorful, even if the rest of the day is dreary? To think of all the people who miss this colorful start to their day. It’s almost like someone is spelling ‘hope’ all over the countryside before drenching us in rain.

Take care everyone!

Love,

Mack

July 31st Babies

Good morning everyone! It is still a 61°F morning, but we can already tell it isn’t going to warm up to 85°F like yesterday. A cold front passed us yesterday, bringing with it several storms that mostly just ruffled our feathers but caused power outages in other places in our county.  Today, it is cloudy and warm; the temperature will not pass 75°F. Another cold front and low pressure systems should bring the temperature back into the 50’s tonight with some wind and rain.

Speaking of feathers, look at these adorable robin babies! They seemed to have hatched yesterday and both mommy robin and daddy robin are taking good care of them. All credits go to non-blogging human who found them! I haven’t seen them and neither has blogging human because we don’t want to overwhelm the parents.

 Our human reports that both mommy and daddy robin were taking turns feeding the birds (he knows for sure that there were two because at one point, both of them were in the nest) and that mommy robin was fluffed up on the nest from time to time protecting her babies. They were also observed feeding whole worms to the babies. Can you believe that robin’s stomachs are developed to eat whole worms on the first day of their life?!

According to our human, the babies chirps are inaudible, except when you’re right next to them, and then they sound like “little pins dropping”. The mommy bird sounds like “an alien” in a slo-mo video, and also according to him, it was definitely the mommy standing guard over her chicks looking all important albeit “weary” while the daddy was out hunting.

Meanwhile, in my life, nothing remotely interesting has been going on – oh wait. I DID get hosed down yesterday and slathered with doggy shampoo. I thought it was very refreshing so I was a very good dog and stood still, but little Winstok squirmed so much it he had to be restrained in our human’s lap! Last time our human did this, Winston revenge-chewed her favorite flip-flop to shreds right in front of her. I wonder what he is plotting this time?

Our human is walking towards us with a smile and a vial of tick poison in her hand. Time to scram!

Love,

Mack

 

July 27th Hide and Seek

Good morning everyone! It is 51°F and the sun is shining! Can you believe it was only 48°F a couple days ago? Me neither. The temperature is getting to a solid 78°F-80°F midday these last two days, so that helps us forget the morning chills. Our human still has to dry us off from the morning dew every morning or we will shiver!

I have to say my favorite game is hide and seek. It is especially funny when my humans are calling and I pretend I can’t hear them! This can go badly if they realize I heard them all along. That’s what happened in this picture – I hid in the cattails while my human was walking by, then I played the guilt-dog by flattening my ears and looking sad.

Other creatures are playing hide and seek too around the property! Our other human found this robin’s nest with three eggs, took a picture, and forbade us all to walk near it again because the mama was getting upset. This morning we found an egg remnant not too far. Could they have hatched??

  

Our human also found an eastern newt in its “red eft” stage. Look at it playing hide and seek with a slug!

 Speaking of slugs, we find them by the dozen when raspberry hunting! Who would have thought they also enjoy my humans’ favorite berry?

Going on a raspberry scavenget hunt is my human’s favorite game these days. Look how many she found yesterday!

We are near a dry line now, and it seems we should enjoy dry weather for at least 24-48 hours more! We’ve been slacking at stacking wood (dogs can be punny too you know) so hopefully it will only rain when we are all done!

Enjoy your sunny weekend everyone, I’m going to go hide – is that an open car I see?! I love cars!

Love,

Mack

July 21st The Starlings are here

Hello friends! Today is another day we woke up bright and early, just as our resident cardinal was singing the arrival of dawn. And boy, are we glad! The starlings are here, and they travel in huge flocks, like our red-winged blackbirds, and they like to hide in the tall cattails around our pond. You know European starlings – they are the birds that form huge angry mobs that do a bit of synchronized flying before settling down at their resting spot. Winston and I had so much fun chasing them around and watching their flock fly from corner to corner!

European starlings are a non-native species to the USA and seem to be our July and August visitors. That said, the red-winged blackbirds are gone. There is at least one left, but his trill is being drowned by all the starlings’ cackles.

It is glorious to start out the day at 68°F! Yesterday I believe we reached a high temperature of 92°F, the hottest in 2019 so far. A cold front is upon us from Canada, so don’t get too attached to this hot weather!

Everyone has jobs to do over here: humans are stacking wood, ripping carpet, and painting rooms. Me, my job is to pick up sticks in the lawn. The only free-rider here is Winston, whose only job is being Winston, as far as I can tell.

But our hard work has sone beautiful fruit. Our garden is producing new snowball flowers (thank you, Grandma!) and our forest hike today produced a single blueberry. I’ve heard from other howls that it is blueberry season, but ours are still quite green!

The early bird catches the worm, I guess!

Time to get back to sleep, er, work. . .

Love,

Mack

July 10th Bird Communication

Good morning everyone! The sun rose orange today right before 6 a.m., reminding us that the days indeed are getting shorter. It is still chilly at 52°F but the forecast promises that we will reach 81°F today! The Canadian high pressure system is still above us promising sunny and dry weather for the next 24 hours at least. Then, either a warm front to the West or a cold front from the Northeast will catch up with us, and rain is very possible tomorrow.

Today we have a funny bird story to share. We’ve been hearing a very interesting catbird initiate a long monologue at night. Catbirds mimic other birds and can have a string of calls to repeat, interrupted by its classic cat hisses. That’s how they are easily recognizable – no other bird keeps on going like the catbird in these parts of the world! Well, imagine my surprise when we heard a bird outside that shouldn’t be there.

“Come here! There’s a new bird outside!” cried my non-blogging human to my blogging one, knowing her propensity to birds.

“That’s not a new bird,” my blogging human said upon arriving. “That’s a catbird – hold on a second!”

And sure enough, we all heard a bird call that should not be there. Out of the beak of a catbird, we heard – we kid you not – a bird from the Southern Hemisphere. We heard a Brazilian João de Barro, a bird that shouldn’t make its way outside of Brazil and Argentina. (Its English name is “red ovenbird” but seeing as they build their nests out of red mud in Brazil, I think likening this bird to our ovenbird is a bad idea).

So how in the blazes did that happen?

It turns out my human has a Brazilian bird clock that was gifted to her by her mother. Every hour, the clock chimes with a bird song. The João de Barro is the 1 o’clock bird and has a very distinctive, almost percussion-sounding chatter. Our catbird picked up on a piece of his call, as well as our 9 o’clock bird, an Uirapuru, and was repewting their calls at just before 9 p.m., at dusk. Thanks to technology, our Northern hemisphere birds are listening to Southern hemisphere birds.

What if the pre-recorded birds were really transmitting a message to each other? Like, “Honey, we’re out of sticks, can you get more?”. What if our Northern hemisphere birds are the ones receiving this pre-recorded message and as they hear it every day, trying to interpret it?

Well, we are honored the catbird decided to choose a Southern repertoire, although we feel slightly guilty of leaving a bigger ecological footprint than we had suspected – even if “virtually”!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Love,

Mack

June 14th King Mack

Good morning everyone! It is I, King Mack, Protector of the Realm, Nature Blog Dog and Trailblazer Supreme. It is my duty to secure the realm and to note all the changes in weather, nature, and climate to best protect the realm.