No ice, no snow, open water

Sunrise over Pincho Lake - December 13, 2015

Non-winter is in place here on Roundtop Mtn.  The ski resort hasn’t yet been able to make snow, as the nighttime temperatures are well above freezing.  I haven’t turned on the electric heat in the cabin, though on a few damp mornings, I had a fire in the fireplace.  For the past week I haven’t even needed that.

Birds are not flocking to my feeders.  They are apparently still able to find natural food in the forest.  Oh, a few of them show up in the morning and again in the evening. I think it’s more to check that food is available than from any real sense of needing it.  By this time turkey and black vultures have usually departed at least some ways to the south.  Yesterday, I saw 9 of them twirling around the top of Roundtop. 

El Nino, the apparent cause of this warm weather, is showing its impact.  How long this record-breaking, strange weather will last is unknown.

Today, a northwest wind is driving down the temperature, though it’s still above 50°.  The northern robins, a Labrador subspecies I believe, still forage through the forest.  When I was younger, they were called woods robins locally, browner and larger than the summer robins that breed here in that season.  I saw a flock of 14 yesterday.  I usually find them by sound.  They tend to hang together in a loose flock, skimming through the forest.  I see them mostly in the mornings and evenings.  Most winters I see them into January, though they do disappear during the worst of a winter.  In February they often reappear on the first sunny day. They are always able to find open water—perhaps from a spring-fed pond, a puddle or an open stream.  So far this year, the pickings are easy and open water is everwhere.

Note to summer: Go away!

Sunrise September 6, 2015, Gifford Pinchot State Park 

Someone, please tell summer, “it’s over!”

If the heat doesn’t break soon, this September is already heading towards being the hottest ever in my area.  Currently, the monthly average temperature is 13 degrees above average.  So even when the heat breaks and presumably normal temperatures arrive, that won’t come close to getting the average temperature back to something approaching average.  It would take a good 10 days of some seriously cool weather for that to happen, and such weather is not anywhere on the forecast horizon.  And so we swelter.

Naturally, this much heat with limited rainfall has dried out the forest around my cabin.  I was even skittish about setting up my little picnic grill in the middle of the driveway on Sunday, but I did it anyway, keeping a bucket of water on hand just in case.  Fortunately, nothing untoward happened and the wind was calm.  Even so, I am done with grilling until rain comes along and dampens the dust.

As you might expect, signs of the approaching autumn are in short supply with summer refusing to go away.  Bird migration is still early and progressing but slowly.  The barn swallows leave the end of August no matter what the weather, and now I believe the yellow-billed cuckoo has departed, too.  I would hear those birds perhaps 2-3 times a week over the course of the summer, and it has now been 10 days since I heard them call.  They are the only new species that appears to have left the mountain.  I haven’t heard the wood thrush recently either, but their song is much less evident in the second half of the summer. They might still be around.

The mountain is dry and dusty and smells of dust.  It’s a far cry from the lush smells of spring or even a midsummer morning after a rain.  I await rain to reawaken the good mountain smells, but that won’t come for days and even then the chance is not a good one.

Misty sunrise at Pinchot Lake

Too wet!

Lakeshore Trail at Pinchot State Park

After the deluge earlier in the week, I was ready for some drier weather and some time outdoors! Spring is springing, and the annual explosion of new growth happens quickly.  Miss a week and suddenly it’s summer.

Baby Dog and I decided (well, I decided and she readily agreed) to go for a walk.  Although up at our cabin the ground has already drained from the 4 inches of rain that fell, flatter land at lower altitude was still soggy.  In other words, we didn’t get too far. I could easily have returned to the cabin for my wellies, but I didn’t want to have a wet and muddy dog dirtying up the car, so we aborted our walk and returned to higher ground.  Baby Dog was fine with that—she got a car ride and a cavort around the mountain.

Spring is further along down off the mountain though not by too much.  It won’t be very long before I lose my view of the mountain to the west for another 5 or 6 months. At the moment, I can still see the mountain through a maze of budding leaves.  Even that level of visibility will be gone in 2-3 weeks.

My last frost was April 18, and though the temperature has been very close to freezing several times since then, it hasn’t actually dropped to that magic number.  At this point, it’s unlikely to.

Icing stream

The December thaw is underway at my cabin.  The carpet of snow is shrinking and may well disappear by Sunday.  It’s not a surprise that I’m getting a thaw. It’s more unusual that most of the month was as continually chilly as it has been.

Baby Dog and I enjoy our nighttime walks just before bed.  I like to check around the cabin to make sure all is well and to look and see what’s going on around me in the forest.  This year I’ve noticed one thing lacking—I haven’t been hearing the call of a great horned owl.  For all the years I’ve lived at the cabin, the sound of a nighttime owl, usually the great horned but sometimes the screech owl, often accompanied our forays.  This year I haven’t heard an owl call since September and that one was quite distant.  More typical was 2012 where hardly a week went by without hearing one or two. I hope this is but a temporary lack, a miscommunications between their schedules and mine.

With just 11 days left in 2013, I’m already looking ahead to a new birding year in 2014.  As I mostly enjoy birding in the forest on Roundtop, the odds aren’t high that I will find a new species for my 2013 list.  And that means that I’m looking ahead to 2014. I will likely participate in the Greenbirding challenge for other people like me who don’t chase birds all over the state or country or county trying to gather up more species than anyone else.   I will try and gather up species at Roundtop—saves on gas, for one thing.  For another, not driving someplace to find a bird gives me more time to bird.

Shades of gray and white

Looking onto Pinchot Lake

Another day, another inch or of snow.  2013 may not end up as the December with the most snowfall, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it ends up being the December when snow fell on more days than before. I haven’t gone more than 2-3 days without snow so far.

Today’s photo shows a local stream that’s starting to freeze over.  The lake beyond is already frozen, and near the mouth of the stream, where I took this photo, the slow-moving stream has reached the point where its flow is stopped by freezing temperatures.    It was snowing as I took the photo, as well as fairly early in the morning.   Gray and white is the color scheme of the day.

At the cabin the fresh and powdery snow tells the tale of who visited overnight. A deer walked down the center of my driveway, walked right up to my front steps and continued past and up the mountain. A rabbit moved down the lane, not stopping as it hopped down the hill. Baby Dog gallops past me, racing around like crazy. The icy conditions have shortened our morning walks, or at least slowed them, the past few days.  I don’t think she likes that, but she has better balance on her four legs than I have on my two.  We go at my pace, not hers.

October colors

Taken at Pinchot Lake October 20, 2013

This autumn is one where the only way I can get the fall colors to show up in a photograph is to take a photo at sunrise when the low angle of the sun could make green leaves look golden.  It certainly makes drab color look pretty spectacular, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s not this pretty in real life.

I am hoping that a bit of predicted frost later this week will improve things, assuming the leaves don’t fall before then. At my cabin, even on days without a breeze, the leaves are still falling. One by one they drop to the ground without any help from even the faintest breeze.  A little breeze sets them to falling by the hundreds. Leaves litter my decks by the thousands, and will even after all the leaves are down, until snow or a wet rain pins them to the ground. Until then, they swirl all around the forest but always manage to end up on my decks.

For all that many leaves have fallen, I haven’t yet regained my western vista. I can see the sky above the mountain to the west, but not the mountain itself. I check at least once each day for the first glimpse of the mountain—so far no joy.  It won’t be long, though. I can hardly wait!

Fall colors on a dreary day

Gifford Pinchot State Park

On a dreary fall day, the autumn color looks even more drab and less advanced than it does in sunshine. I took this photo on Sunday, mostly so I could better notice the change from then to the upcoming week. To me, photos help me notice changes that I can’t remember from day to day. Were the leaves on this twig yellow yesterday?  Are they more yellow today?  A photo lets me compare the two in a way that my memory can’t.

I certainly hope the color improves before the leaves fall. Autumn can be such a gorgeous time of year.  I don’t like to think it may be another year or three before I get to see nice color again.  365 days is a long time to wait for something and to hope that it or me will still be around to see it.

Nature provides a lot of “big events” throughout the year, some of which simply aren’t repeated until the next year.   Autumn leaf change is one of those.  In addition to hoping for good color, I also hope for that color to stay on the trees for a while. Sometimes one day of great color is all I get. Other times the color hangs around for a week or 10 days, which at least reduces the wait time until the next year by a tiny bit.

Unfortunately, here on my mountain, snow has been one of those rare events the last few years.  I am no longer guessing or taking bets on what will transpire with that anymore. The 11 inches of rain I had last weekend is also a rare event, but one that I hope doesn’t become any more common it is now. Other natural events are often less showy. The 36 hours that the bloodroot blooms is one of those. If you don’t look and don’t know where to look, you’ll miss that pretty spring flower.

I probably miss a lot of other natural events, those both big and small.  Each year I try to add to my stock of events to pay attention to.  I chew them over, compare this year’s event with those past and wonder about their differences. Each small change affects the wheel of the season’s turning in some way.  Things change all the time, but the wheel of the seasons still turns.        

Plans

Pinchot Lake, September 12, 2012, 6:30 p.m.

Tonight a rare occurrence at Carolyn’s cabin: a evening free of other obligations and clear weather. So tonight I plan to do a little outside work, and though I don’t have to mow in my forest, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do.

First off tonight, I will clear out the pipe that drains the basement during heavy rainstorms. This is a chore I have to do many times in the fall. This cleaning will take care of the accumulation of summer’s leaves and twigs that clog the “stream” that’s created by the draining basement. Then once the leaves begin to fall, I’ll need to do the job every week or two until all the leaves are finally down and not being blown around.

My chicken pens also need attention. Last night the first egg from my new chickens was produced, a lovely little brown thing about two inches long—about half the size of the eggs produced by the 3-year old chickens. So I need to make sure the nest boxes for the new girls are deep with new straw and that they are happy with the arrangements. The rest of them will begin to lay any day now, too. The first pullet eggs from a chicken are always small, but they reach normal size within a week or so.

I also need to put anti-skid tape on all my outside steps and around the front deck. This is a yearly job, as that tape works well but never lasts more than a year. Those wooden steps are slippery when wet or iced up or snowed under. And the tape doesn’t stick well below a certain temperature, so I have to remember to do this chore before it gets too cold.

If I have time I will take a look at chopping down some of the undergrowth behind the cabin. I worked on that in the early summer, before July’s heat made that job too much to any sane person. Fighting off the multiflora rose is a never-ending job. Sometimes I think I’m making progress, sometimes not.

And I need to redo my bird feeders in preparation for the heavy feeding season in fall and winter. My feeder arrangement is different every year, partly because I’m always trying new things, partly because my feeders never last more than one season. Raccoons, opossums and the weather all take a toll.

Naturally, I won’t get everything done tonight, but it will feel good just to have the time and nice weather to work on it all.

Can I call this fall yet?

Beaver Creek

The soupy weather of midsummer is in the process of disappearing today. The humidity is falling down to normal levels and will even be low tomorrow. Nighttime temperatures will be below 60 for the first time since June, and the breeze is from the northwest. It’s too early to call this the start of fall, but I’m certainly tempted to do that anyway.

Summer is certainly on the downside of the season, and the signs are looking good for cooler and less humid weather ahead. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a moment too soon. This is all a long way of saying that today’s photo may be the last day of “soup” in my photos for some time. I hope so. I hadn’t quite planned on living in a rain forest or a jungle when I moved to Roundtop Mtn. I had in mind crisp breezes, cool summer nights, solitude and the constant sounds of the surrounding forest. I was half right.

And lest you think the second week of August is too soon to be thinking about fall, which officially doesn’t start for another six weeks, let me report that the first of the fall hawkwatches have opened for the season, the chimney swifts are already migrating and the barn swallows are thinking about it. Shorebirds are migrating, too. Just because the sun hasn’t reached the fall equinox yet doesn’t mean the season isn’t on its way.

In fact this might be a very pretty fall locally, given the amount of moisture that fell in the spring and has fallen in the past two weeks or so. That would be a nice switch from the past few years, too, when the fall colors have been spotty at best or drab at worst. We’ll have to see what the next few months bring, but so far, the signs are positive. For today, that's good enough for me!

Sunday morning

Beaver Creek trail

On Saturday night, my area was “treated” to a downpour. I got off lucky here on Roundtop, getting just over 1.5 inches of rain in 30 minutes. Only a few miles away, more than 3 inches fell, and several miles further away, flooding resulted from the nearly 6 inches of rain that fell in an hour. That’s why I say I was lucky. I didn’t get that.

When Sunday morning arrived, the entire area was fogged in, and the humidity was oppressive to the extreme. My forest was simply dripping, but I still felt the need to go for a walk, so I headed the few miles down the mountain to Gifford Pinchot SP. The trails there tend to be wider than the ones at Roundtop, so I figured I wouldn’t get so wet. And, truth be told, I was looking to walk someplace that I don’t see every day, just for a slight change.

The forest at Pinchot isn’t really very different than the one up on Roundtop. Certainly, the tree species are much the same. The trees where I walked on Sunday tend to be a bit smaller than those at home. The underbrush tends to be not quite as thick. The result of being surrounded by smaller trees and less underbrush is that I can see further into Pinchot’s forest than I can at home right now, a small but welcome change that makes photography a bit easier and more interesting, at least to me.

The haze from the humidity was so thick that breathing took an extra effort, and I felt as though I was breathing something thick and solid enough to eat. Who needs to eat when you can breathe in humidity and get your calories that way? Truly, I have had soup that was less substantial than Sunday morning’s air.

I was the first person to walk the trail on Sunday. I brushed aside many cobwebs, all outlined in dew and raindrops. The mud was empty of human tracks, and I saw few signs of animals in the squishy mud yet either. The creek ran muddy, not surprisingly. The forest had the look of midsummer, still very green but with few flowers or brightly-colored fungus to add different shades or contrast to the woods.

My walk was largely a silent one, except for the sound of water dripping from the leaves and the shrill cry of a distant blue jay.

November foray

Now that the leaves have dropped, the brown shades of winter dominate the forest, even if the temperatures of winter have yet to arrive. This time of year can be challenging to photograph because the landscape is something of a monochrome. October brings such a riot of color that the sudden change to brown can be something of a shock.

This weekend the quiet that has pervaded November 2010 continued, so I was eager to get outside. Temperatures this November are about typical, but unlike many Novembers that produce a variety of precipitation, this one hasn’t done much of that so far. In other words, this has been an excellent November to be out and about and not huddled around a fire.

The sameness of the color of my local landscape drives me to look for things that are not brown, and that search usually finds me looking at fungus and moss. This weekend I found lichen and fungus and moss in abundance, so for the moment I happily have something to photograph.

The moss I found looked like a tiny little field of ferns, nature’s own miniature landscape.

The fungus covered the west side of this tree with ribbons of tiny, white polka dots of fungus.

Lichen is a favorite of mine. It is sensitive to air pollution of nearly any kind, so when I see a nice healthy patch of it on a rock or a tree trunk, I know I’m in a healthy forest.

So the leaves have fallen, the forest has turned brown, and the deer are taking on their duller winter coats. Can snow be far behind? Probably not.

The quiet of the season

Quiet is good, I tell myself, hoping to believe it sooner or later. The wind has died down, which is a good thing. I was tired of finding limbs in the driveway that were too large to drive over. More than a few of them seriously tempted me. I sort of wanted to see what would happen if I did drive over them or at least tried to. But then I grew rational again, thought of the possible car repair costs and did the smart thing by exiting the car and dragging the limb or branch or half a tree out of the way.

Quiet is a good thing because it means the raccoons haven’t dragged the bird feeders deep into the woods for several days. One feeder I never have found. Another was tossed or dragged off the back deck. The glass is still missing out of the squirrel-proof feeder. It did keep squirrels out. I’ve never seen a raccoon-proof feeder for sale. I think people know better than to advertize a feeder that way, because there would be no possibility of truth in such a statement.

The nights are quieter than I have been used to for a while. My windows are closed now. I had gotten used to the gentle sounds of the forest as my ever-present background music. But now those sounds are gone until the weather warms in the spring again.

For the moment, not much is going on around my cabin. Migration is quickly winding down and that means the birds that I see outside my door today are pretty much the only ones I will see until roughly the middle of March. Oh, I will likely find a few waterfowl, perhaps the odd wintering-over raptor, but I will have to travel to see them and there won’t be many.

Winter is a time of quiet, and the quiet is again settling over Roundtop Mountain. I enjoy the silence, though sometimes I also think I understand the urge towards hibernation. After the busyness of the fall season, the quiet and the silence of near-winter is making me feel a bit restless. Perhaps I should just hibernate through the quiet and awaken to spring’s bustle. Perhaps I’ll get over my restlessness and settle in to the quiet. Maybe that will be tomorrow. Or the next day.

The night visitor

Last night clouds moved across the sky, growing ever lower, and before morning drizzle began to fall. The spate of warm and lovely November weather is ended. When the storm clears, the weather will turn to late fall temperatures, and snow showers are even in the forecast for Thursday. Winter will soon be on its way.

When it’s cloudy at night and rain is due, the clouds actually make the forest lighter. The contrast between the gray clouds and the trees makes it easer to see further than does a clear, black sky against the dark trees.

After I turn the lights out at the cabin, the nighttime view from the window lets me see across the forest floor, until the slope of the mountain hides it. Last night, as I lay in bed, I saw the silhouette of an owl cross the view. It was a great horned owl, as nothing else is so large. It crossed my view heading diagonally across the window, heading towards the ground. No doubt a mouse, perhaps on its way to becoming dinner, attracted the night time predator.

I don’t often get to see the owls that live on Roundtop. I hear them frequently, often several times a week. The great horned is the most common, though I fairly often hear the eastern screech owl, too. Barred owls are rare up by the cabin, though are more common down in the swampy area at the base of the mountain. Anything else is very rare, possible only during migration. I’ve heard the saw whet owl a few times and heard rumors of long-eared owls, but have never seen one of those here.

Most often, when I do see an owl, it’s not long after dawn on a grey and rainy morning. I’ve always thought the owls simply hadn’t gone to roost yet because the morning was so dark. Seeing one of the silent predators of the night swoop across the forest in those few minutes when I lay waiting for sleep is the rarest of treats. I’m sure it happens much more often than I see it, perhaps many more times, but long after I have fallen asleep.

A walk in November

Sunday was such a nice November day that I was compelled to go for a hike—not that I need much in the way of compelling. But I usually end up starting my hike right out my own cabin door, and it is a bit unusual for me to actually get in the car and drive someplace to go hiking.

I didn’t go far, just the few miles down to Pinchot Lake to walk on a trail I hadn’t walked on in a while. The walk is an easy one, mostly flat with a few mild uphills. The trail was rocky in spots, though, and those rocks are now covered with ankle-deep leaves, so that made the walk a bit more demanding that it would otherwise have been.

I was simply looking to get out of the cabin and wander around the woods for a bit before I became mired in household chores, so that was good enough for me. This lovely spate of pleasant November weather is soon coming to an end, and I was determined to take advantage of it while I could.

I left early on Sunday morning and never saw another soul on my little trek. White-throated sparrows and Carolina chickadees scolded me throughout much of the walk. A time or two I heard a deer crashing through the woods to get away from me, though I never saw them.

Nothing recharges my batteries like a quiet morning walk in the woods. It doesn’t matter to me if I don’t see anything unusual. It doesn’t matter to me if the walk doesn’t take me to some exotic vista. I’ve never quite understood the folks who feel they have to see a waterfall or a great view on their hikes. It’s the time away from the everyday that’s important. It doesn’t even matter if I don’t go far. It’s only important that I go.

Sometimes, it's like visiting a "foreign" country

Sometimes, a little change can make a big difference. Today’s photo is a case in point. I didn’t take this photo of Dutchman’s Breeches on Roundtop Mtn. I took it this past weekend down at Pinchot State Park, just three miles away. In the 20 years I have lived here, I’ve never found Dutchman’s Breeches on Roundtop. And yet, just a few miles away, they are blooming profusely,

So what makes the difference? I don’t know the full answer myself. The most obvious difference between here and there is the altitude but the Ductchmen wouldn’t mind that little change. Like the bloodroot, of which I have many, Dutchman’s Breeches are spread by ants (ditto). The plant favors rich, moist woods. Here, up where I live, the forest is probably too dry for them. But I’ve also never found them down in the valley between Roundtop and Nell’s Hill either, and to my eye, the soil down there is plenty rich and moist enough. And there’s ants down there, too.

Something apparently isn’t suitable here for the plant, and those three miles in distance make all the difference. Forests are like that. No two spots are alike, no matter how near they are to each other and no matter if the basic forest structure (in this area an oak and hickory forest) is similar. Having seen one oak and hickory forest, or even knowing one well, doesn’t mean I know them all. Visiting a different forest, especially so close to my own simply underscores how unique each spot is and makes them all seem more precious to me.

Bright spots in the gloom

Weather and birds are funny and don’t always do what you might expect. After a balmy week, the temperature on Saturday morning was a chilly 20 degrees and the day was overcast and gloomy. Sunday proved to be a bit warmer but was still as gloomy, so my expectations for a Sunday morning birding run were not high. But the time of year is right, despite questionable weather, and I added 7 species to my 2010 list—blue-winged teal, great egret, double-crested cormorant, pied-billed grebe, tree swallows, rough-winged swallows and the first butterbutts of the season.

Butterbutts are a birder’s slang term for yellow-rumped warblers, which are usually the first warbler to appear in the spring. In this area of the hemisphere, they are the Myrtle race or subspecies of yellow-rumpeds. For some time, the two were thought to be a separate species, but not all that many years ago they were lumped in with the western birds and are, for the moment at least, considered a single species.

Mud and rain are still the dominant barriers to deep woods forays and better photographs around my cabin. I did manage to get my car into and out of a muddy two-lane access road on Sunday morning, but I was a bit lucky on the getting out part.

This morning the fog was so dense that I couldn’t see where I was walking, with or without my headlamp. Dog uncharacteristically hung back, too. I don’t think he could see any better. We are both hoping for improving weather, though we aren’t likely to see any before late on Tuesday.

Snow-covered

February 2010 is now officially the snowiest February on record in my area. With 42 “official” inches in the bucket for the month, snowfall for the winter is already well above average. Some of last week’s snow has melted, but when I stepped off a road and into the snow this weekend, it still reached my knees.

The snowcover and colder than average temperatures are affecting the return of migrating waterfowl, too. The last week of February is usually prime time to see tens of thousands of snow geese, Tundra swans and Canada geese, among others, at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Lancaster County. This year, not yet. Ice still covers all ponds and lakes.

I made a short trip to Pinchot State Park this weekend and found minimal open water, inhabited by exactly 6 mallards and 4 ring-billed gulls standing on the ice. Four common mergansers flew over and circled but decided they weren’t going to try a landing in the circus rink-sized puddle of open water on the lake.

Next weekend should see an improvement in the numbers of waterfowl and the amount of open water, as the temperature will at least touch the 40-degree mark during most days this week I hope so, as I am longing for something a little different to look at or do in the woods around the cabin.

My photos today are of an old cemetery near the lake. The veterans buried here are from the Revolution or the War of 1812. The red headstones are typical of that time period, though the dates are getting ever harder to read. No was buried here after 1850, as I recall, though snow still kept me from going inside the stone walls to check for sure.

The ice sang to me

The past weekend started out very cold. On Saturday the temperature never got above 15 degrees, with snow squalls and a bone-chilling rawness to the air. So on Sunday when the sun came out, and temperature went above 20 degrees, it was time to come out of my burrow and go for a walk.

I decided to visit Pinchot State Park, just a few miles from Roundtop. It’s a small change in scenery, as the forest looks much the same as Roundtop’s forest. Pinchot has a nice, big lake, though, and I wanted at least a little change from my own woods.

The warmer air felt wonderful, the sun even better. By noontime, the air temperature was nearing the mid-20’s, and the ice began to sing. It sounded like whales singing, with whistles and long groans, a few pops, the occasional snapping of a whip. But mostly it was low, deep groans, as the sun did its work.

It was enough to worry the small group of ice fishermen spread out on the lake. Some headed for the shore, most moved closer to the shore, a few dug new holes, rechecking the depth of the ice to assure it was still okay. They all seemed more nervous once the singing started.

I thought it was a beautiful sound, music to accompany my walk. The sound followed me even when I wasn’t next to the lake. I could always hear it in the distance. Up close, the sound reverberated all around me, an unexpected symphony.

I stayed longer than I’d planned. The concert went on an on, and I didn’t want to leave.

Waterfowl ups and downs

On Sunday, I made a quick trip to nearby Pinchot State Park to look for winter waterfowl. So that explains why I’m foisting a bad photo of a pied-billed grebe in winter plumage upon readers. In addition to this little grebe, I also found a small flock of buffleheads and ring-necked ducks, but I didn’t find anything else other than the usual mallards and Canada geese.

Over the past 10-15 years or so, numbers of waterfowl have declined, in some areas precipitously. The worst decline is in Asia, where 62% of species show declines, but even in North America, 37% of species have declined.

Loss of wetland breeding habitat is the main reason, though for some species over-harvesting is also a factor. Certain species are also more affected than others—brant, American black duck and scaup (both greater and lesser but especially greater) are among the hardest hit. The black duck was once the most abundant freshwater species but is now increasingly uncommon. Droughts in the past few years have also taken a toll on breeding success, even where wetlands remain.

The situation in the U.S. isn’t completely dire. A couple of good breeding seasons can go a long way towards improving a population. Waterfowl tend to have large clutches, so in a good year a successful pair can fledge as many as 8-10 young. Estimates for 2009 indicate this past breeding season was a good one, certainly better than 2008.

The USFWS publishes a status report on waterfowl populations every year and in the current report found that green-winged teal are at an all-time high and blue-winged teal are at their second highest numbers. Redheads are also on the plus side. Even canvasback, a species that has declined especially in the east, are about 35% above the 2008 estimate. Scaup remains some 20% below the long-term average but is doing better than last year.

American wigeon, northern pintail, scoters and scaup are all still well below the long-term (54 years) averages. To read the entire 79-page Waterfowl Population Status, 2009, click here. You’ll find a lot of interesting reading in there.

I'm glad the news is better this year, but that didn't translate into lots of waterfowl sightings for me this past weekend. Maybe the upcoming week will be better.

Stormy Evening

Stormy evenings are the rule in this area during summer. During the day, the sky is sunny but after hours of heating, instability builds up. By dinnertime or the commute home, thunderstorms become the norm and are almost a daily occurrence.

Last evening was no exception, though the storms held off until nearly dusk. The sky had a threatening look from late afternoon on, growing ever more threatening through dinner and the early evening dog run. By 8:15, the sky looked like night, and at this time of the year, the sun should still be shining.

I grabbed the dogs and announced it was time for their final run of the day. The time was much earlier than their usual last trip outdoors. Dog, who is the smart one and who hates thunderstorms, understood my urgency, I think. At least he was eager and complied quickly. Baby Dog, who is not the smart one, fiddled around smelling dirt and chewing leaves as the thunder grew ever closer and the rain began. She was oblivious to the coming storm, or at least oblivious to the need to get back inside the cabin before the next bolt of lightning struck even closer than the last one.

Finally, exasperated with her fooling around, I yelled at her, "I’m going to give you a bath if you don’t hurry up!" Baby Dog hates water, won’t walk through puddles and seems to think her toes were not meant to ever be wet. The threat of a bath did it. She performed her duty, and we made it back inside—just as the next bolt of lightning knocked out power for the next hour. I’m going to have to remember that threat and hope it works on her the next time.