First ran 4/22/2015
I heard a turkey gobble. First one for several years. Over against the ridge where they don’t come real often. I didn’t see him or them. Found their scratchings later. I was crashing around in thick brush with a sprayer on my back.
Japanese Barberry and Multiflora Rose. No leaves on the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus) yet. No new growth where deer had browsed. I’ll wait a while for new shoots to appear and then hit them with spray. Late Summer and Fall deer browsing make new growth through self protective regrowth from old roots in that species. Barberry and Rose àre up nicely, producing berries and thickets. They’ll die nicely too now that I’ve soaked them.
Some Ailanthus have grown too tall to spray. Can’t reach foliage with my backpack rig. I’d say one good day of hack and squirt will do the trick. Found a couple of larger trees I’d missed in past years. I’ll get them too.
A pair of Paw Paws I planted several years ago are doing nicely. Barberry nearly covered them until I got active with my sprayer. This year a bunch of fruit buds. Perhaps my first West Virginia Bananas from my own planting.
I heard a duck quack. Beautiful white ducks. A dark streak down their backs and a real dark green head. Two males and a female. Big fast ducks on Moore’s Run’s waters just above Doghouse. New van driving up didn’t spook them, but when I got out they left. Fast off the water and gone.
Internet search later back at Big House told me they were Mergansers. If I’ve ever seen such around here before in my life, I don’t remember. I wish they’d stay. Maybe become permanent Moore’s Run/ Doghouse residents along with the Heron which has left droppings of crawdad shells on Doghouse deck’s railing for several years.
I wonder. Last summer, late one afternoon I sat on Doghouse’s deck beside the creek contemplating (sipping, thinking, basking, enjoying) when motion caught my eye. A flotilla of baby ducks swimming upstream. Six little fluffy ducklings paddling for glory along the far bank. I watched them upstream at same furious rate through three rapids until out of sight.
Wild ducklings. No idea what kind. Wonder if they were Mergansers and the three I saw this spring were just back to familiar territory where they grew up. Trouble is I never saw them before that day they paddled by and I never saw them growing up in my vicinity.
I heard a goose honk. Wash ponds in bottom pasture below Big House are generally full of nesting pairs this time of year. Not so many this year.
Perhaps coyotes. I’ve not seen a bunch, but at least one has been circulating over that lower pasture this year. Guns are handy. I scan for him/her every time I walk around, go in or out of the kitchen door. Tommy’s cows calving. Big coyote might take a newborn.
But then there are Bald Eagles nesting nearby. I scan for that too. Not about to even dream of shooting at a big white head American Eagle, even if I do see him lifting out of a wash pond with a gosling. Far as I’m concerned I’d lots rather have the Eagle patrolling than the geese honking. Alfalfa front of Big House is pretty good. High enough to interest the deer. They’re coming in the evenings. Saw nine in front of house Friday evening. That many this early in the season may mean an increased crop of plastic body parts to be picked up along the highway next Spring. Fewer deer out front last year left me with reduced highway trash that Spring’s pickup.
A Spring nature column. A column I could write quickly so I could get back outside to enjoy.
