Have a foggy, foggy Christmas

 Wait!  That’s not how the song goes.
 

And this is not how Christmas is supposed to look, either.  But here it is.  Foggy and warm enough to sit out on the porch, if you don’t mind a little drizzle. 

Foxtail with raindrops, like a miniature Christmas tree with bulbs

I’m already tired of El Nino, which shows no sign of let-up or allowing winter to return to normal.  I want cold and snow, though it’s hard to argue about the lack of a heating bill.  Still, this is not the kind of weather that makes me want to put a warm, winter stew over the fire.  It’s not even good hot chocolate weather.

What it is, is about as foggy as it can possibly be.  These photos were taken shortly before noon today, not at dawn or dusk or even first thing in the morning when fog is usually thickest.  No, this is noontime fog.  It’s the kind of fog that makes me glad I don’t have 100 miles of driving ahead of me today.  A quick trip down the mountain and into town at 35 mph is about as exciting as I want it to be.  And 35 mph is about the only safe speed today, which makes me glad I’m not on an interstate somewhere.

Fog for Christmas is a new thing for me, I think.  At least I don’t remember any other year with fog, let alone fog like this.  So now I am back in my cabin, where I plan to stay for the rest of the day, cooking up the last batch of Christmas cookies and hoping that Christmas day will bring something other than more fog. 

I hope all of you and yours have a very, Merry Christmas and a great holiday!

Fog is here to stay for a while

Heavy rain and fog makes the ever-shortening days feel even shorter.  This morning the chickens weren’t even out of the coop when I went to feed them and let them out.  They made a few noises when I talked to them, but that still didn’t encourage them to come out.

I have not yet been plagued by marauding fall raccoons, but a local opossum has discovered the chicken feeder and waddles around occasionally.  I tend to see opossums and raccoons most in spring and late fall.  Sightings are rarer in midsummer around my cabin.

Opossums don’t hibernate and winter is, understandably, difficult for them to survive. That’s why I see them more often then and often in daylight, too.  They come out when the day warms up to look for food. Around my cabin the chickens scatter their feed all over the place or sometimes leave untouched the produce scraps I give them.  Both raccoons and opossums will take advantage of that.  It’s far too early in the season for either species to find food gathering difficult.  Likely the opossum I had was just wandering through the area, perhaps hoping to keep the location of my cabin in its memory banks until winter makes for slim foraging.

I am starting to see some color change in the trees around the cabin. The overall effect is still all green, but individual trees and branches show color.  Once this rain and Hurricane Joaquin clear the area and clear out the fog, I’ll try and get a few photos. For now, it looks as though rain and fog will be covering the forest at least though Monday.  In other words, the fog photos aren't going to go away too soon!

Summer fog

Summer is here and with it comes heat, humidity and dense fog in the mornings. I am not a summer person and prefer to move slowly under cover of shade as much as possible.

I am already thinking ahead to fall and watching the poison ivy turn red with some glee. Soon, I think, soon the temperature will be cooler and nights chilly.  But truly, in the meantime, summer seems interminable, and the idea of continued hot weather through sometime next week feels like forever.

July, a repeat of June

 

The strange June pattern of a soaking rain every other day or so is continuing into July at Roundtop.  Even when it’s not raining, it’s foggy and overcast, with hardly any sun or even a blue sky.  Looking ahead in the forecast only shows more of the same into mid-month at least.

One thing I have noticed that is not the norm and that appears to be caused by the odd weather is that poison ivy is everywhere.  This nasty plant apparently thrives in the wet weather.  The patches I find are larger than ever before, and I’m seeing the plant in more places than ever, too.  Just one more unhappy result from the atypical weather this summer.

The first batch of spring babies have apparently left the nests.  I say this because the male wood thrush and ovenbirds are singing again after a month or so of silence.  The silence means nesting is going on, and the return to singing means they are likely looking to start a second brood—or at least thinking about it.  For me, the return of the wood thrush song, especially, is welcome.  I love to hear that sweet song fill the forest, though I don’t often see the birds.  Their singing is a lovely summer sound that lasts not long enough for me.  And I am fortunate in that I hear the sound more than most people.  The birds are common here, and I heard them virtually every day they sing.  Even with that, I’d be happy to have the singing be heard constantly until the leaves fall.

Fogged in, up and down

Already a few hesitant buds are appearing in the forest around my cabin.  Likely, more would be in evidence with the first sunny day.  This week hasn’t produced even a moment of sunshine, just a constant drizzle, and, as you can see, a lot of fog. Not much actual rain has fallen, though given the amount of mud around the forest, you might have guessed differently.  

Last night the fog was so thick and gray that it actually made my bedroom seem light.  I kept waking up wondering if Roundtop left some lights on, or perhaps the neighbors.  But no, the gray color of the fog just made the night paler than the usual dark of the forest that I’m used to.  I suppose I could have gotten up and closed the curtains, but I don’t think I woke up enough to do that.  Or didn’t want to wake up enough do that.

This morning during my walk I heard more than I saw in the forest around me.  Sometimes I could identify what I heard, sometimes it was only a noise in the woods, and often that was enough to spook one of the dogs.  We almost walked right up to a pair of geese and startled two deer bedded down under a small spruce tree.  Even they were nonplussed by the fog, I think.

Fog and coyotes

This week is shaping up to be an unusual one for sightings at Roundtop.  First, the fog and then the coyotes.  The fog you can see in today’s photo. The coyotes were hidden by that fog but they were close.  The chickens are on full lockdown for the foreseeable future and perhaps even longer than that.

The fog was as thick as I’ve ever seen it. Even with my headlamp, I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me.  I can’t tell you how often I stumbled over my own feet because I couldn’t see a dip  underfoot.

I got home last evening around 5:30 and proceeded to run Baby Dog.  We had just gotten outside when I heard 2-3 coyotes howling.  They were down at the bottom of the mountain, probably near the bridge along the little stream where I take the adventure camp kids in the summer.  So that was close enough. Although I’ve seen single coyotes at Roundtop over the years, I’ve never heard them singing here.  That means there’s more than one—the singles don’t howl, having no one to howl to or with.

I take Baby Dog back inside.  About an hour later, Sparrow needed a walk as she was all full of herself, so out we went.  It was then that I heard one of the coyotes barking and very close by.  I am reasonably sure it was along the access road that heads down towards the little stream.  The road leads up to the slopes and a pond here on the mountain, just at the edge of good neighbor Larry’s house.   A few seconds later, the bark repeats and is slightly further down that road and then a third time it was further yet.

I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that even the coyotes couldn’t see very far and were more vocal than ever just trying to find each other. It’s also possible the ongoing rifle deer season has moved them off the adjoining gamelands and onto Roundtop’s property.  Still, that howling carries a long way and I’ve never heard them howling here before even at a distance.

I do know that this morning when Baby Dog and I were out walking, her hackles suddenly went up, and she started her serious, deep-throated, I-really-mean-it barking.  I didn’t see the coyotes—too foggy for that—but I’ll bet they were close.

Waiting..

 I’m awaiting the change in weather, the appearance of north winds and the drop in temperature and humidity. I will have to wait another day, until Saturday, for that to happen.  The year’s strongest slam of summer is underway, gripping my mountain in heat and humidity.  But I can wait it out.  I can last another day or so to wait for more pleasant weather, for a day when the hawks will fly and the songbirds will start to move south again.  For 24 or perhaps as long as 30 hours, I can wait.

Until then I am confined within the false fall of air conditioning, trying to avoid the humidity that turns everything and everyone to dripping water-logged shadows of our regular selves.  It will only last another day.

A foggy spring day

The first signs of new growth are appearing around Roundtop Mountain! This morning I saw the leaves of the (pick one) 1) yellow dog-toothed violet 2) yellow trout lily 3) adder’s tongue 4) fawn lily were up. No signs of flower stems yet though. And the leaves of the one-day wonder, the bloodroot, are also breaking through the ground. That’s pretty impressive, considering I still had snow on the ground a week ago.

The robins are singing, as are the juncos, who will soon be heading north again. More phoebes have arrived and call from both sides of the cabin. I also had a pair of golden-crowned kinglets at the cabin this weekend. I didn’t see any insects, but they were busy little things, so I’m sure they found something. It took me a while to identify them. They like to be in the higher branches of the trees, so I never get very good views of them, even with 10x binoculars, and seeing more than their bellies takes a bit of luck.

Mud remains everywhere, as are puddles and gushing seasonal streams. With the amount of water through these temporary streams, right now it’s hard to imagine that they won’t run all year long, but they don’t. Last night I saw a frog, too, my first of the year. It hopped in front of my headlights as I was heading back to the cabin after dark and was gone before could get out of the car to find out what kind it was. It wasn’t small enough to be a peeper or large enough to be a bullfrog. It was the size of a green frog or leopard or pickerel frog.

 

Spring may have arrived later than usual, but the season is doing its best to catch up. 

No improvement in fall color and nearly invisible deer

A foggy morning isn’t improving the lackluster autumn colors this morning. To my eye, the leaf canopy is already starting to look a bit thin, so I’m even less optimistic that this fall might produce even a day or so of pretty colors than I was before.  That’s what a dry August and September will do, even when the temperature isn’t overly hot.

At the moment acorns and hickory nuts are dropping everywhere and anywhere.  The big nuts hit the ground with a thud and hit my car with a sound that makes me wonder if they will dent the top of the car.  When the nuts hit the roof, they roll down with a clatter, which usually sets Baby Dog to barking in warning—she has no idea what the warning is for, but she is sure she doesn’t like the noise.

Can you see the deer?

The deer seem to grow bolder by the day, and considering how bold they were three to four days ago, that’s saying something.  This morning I turned after feeding the chickens and found the big doe standing in the middle of the driveway, just in front of where I park the car.  She couldn’t have been more than 30 feet away, watching what I was up to. She disappeared before I could snap a photo.

This morning three of them stood at the end of the driveway, nearly invisible among the leaves and tree trunks even though they were close.  When the deer stand still, they are easy to overlook.  They bolted across the driveway in front of me as I pulled the car out of the driveway.  At this rate, they will be eating out of my hand before next week is through.

Something foggy, something new

I am tired of the fog and overcast that is the month of August in 2013. Fog has worn out its welcome, as far as I’m concerned. Photographically, fog can be interesting, but I’ve come to suspect that it’s only interesting if you don’t have to look at it every day.  Partly as a result of the fog, today marked the first day of the waning part of the year where I needed my headlamp on my morning walk with Baby Dog.

Around the cabin, the Joe Pye weed is blooming, a sign that summer is waning.  It’s too early to say I can see signs that autumn is approaching, but I can tell that summer is past its peak.

This weekend for the first time I heard three yellow-billed cuckoos calling at the same time. Two were quite close to the cabin. I even saw one as it flew away, though if I hadn’t been able to pinpoint where it was by its call, I never could have ID’d the bird from the momentary flash of wings that I saw. The second bird wasn’t much further away but on the other side of the cabin.  I only heard the third bird because I stopped what I was doing to listen to the calls of the two near me. The third bird was so distant, it may well have been on the neighboring mountain.

I’ve always assumed there was more than a single cuckoo around, but I never heard them calling back and forth like this.  Usually, I hear one and after a pause, I’ll hear another call a bit of a distance away, and then perhaps I’ll hear another call from even further away, but that could easily be explained as a single bird moving through the forest.    I’ve never heard three separate birds calling at the same time before.  
Something new like that really makes my weekend.  Much that happens during a natural year is a repeat of what happened the year before and the years before that.  As much as I enjoy the ordinary progress of a year, catching something new to me is always much appreciated.

Foggy morning walk

Baby Dog enjoys her morning sightings of deer, which happens nearly every morning.  Still, no matter how close they are, they are not as exciting to her as a rabbit. This morning we nearly walked up to a small, young deer. It stood and watched us as we approached.  It twitched its tail but didn’t seem inclined to move.  When we finally got too close it bounded away, but not too far, stopping to look at us yet again.

Baby Dog saw the deer and watched it carefully.  Her ears were up.  When the deer eventually went into the woods, she watched it go and we kept walking.  And then she saw the rabbit, which was further away than the deer, and that’s when she nearly pulled my arm out of its socket.  This is the reason why I don’t let her off lead.  As long as we didn’t see anything, she would stay right with me.  If we saw a deer, she would probably stay with me, but I’d need to tell her to stay.  With a rabbit, I would have no chance.  She’d be gone before she heard me say a word, and who knows where she’d end up?

She forgets everything I’ve taught her when she sees a rabbit.  Baby Dog is a mix-breed dog, which is the polite way of saying she’s a mutt.  I know she’s part Chow-Chow because she has a black tongue and the one photo I have of her mother looks like she might be half-Chow.  What her other parts are is a mystery.  I’m guessing those parts must have some kind of rabbit-chasing dog in them, perhaps a spaniel or a small setter.

She is coming up on her eighth birthday, which never ceases to surprise me, as I still think of her as young dog without a lot of sense. She definitely doesn’t have a lot of sense, but she certainly no longer qualifies as a young dog.  She’s a sweet thing, most of the time, though she does think of herself as the house cop in charge of cats.  Whenever a cat is bad, she’s right there to agree and sometimes to punish. People who’ve never seen her in punishment mode can’t believe she has that streak in her.

This morning the fog made our early-morning walk darker than usual.  Still, I know the time when I will need my headlamp when we leave the cabin on our walks can’t be far away.

Bird migration at its peak!

This week will be the biggest birding week of the year. It’s the week when migration explodes and millions of songbirds and summer residents head through the lower 48. Indications are already that birds are moving through the Central and mid-Atlantic. Many summer resident birds are here already, of course, though this week is still the biggest single time of the year for birds to move.

Unlike fall migration, which is spread out over a longer time, often with males, females and immature birds heading south on different schedules, spring migration is all about finding the best habitat for the best nest site and doing it before anyone else gets there or takes the best spot. Here in the northeast, we’ll have to wait for the low pressure system that’s sitting over top of us to move before the action really takes off. Last night, radar of the DC metro area showed a big concentration of birds, as did central Kansas.

Here at Roundtop, you can see what the sky looked like this morning—foggy, with rain expected off and on all day. It’s the kind of weather where birds like to sit and wait for conditions to improve. In a way, the concentration of birds in DC may prove to be unlucky for me just over a hundred miles or so to the north. Birds can cover 100 miles in several hours of flying; they may not stop here this year. It may be that only the birds who come for the season will land. The birds that we only see during migration may well not be ready to stop for lunch, let alone for the night, at the point when they will be over top of my cabin.

The serious bird radar watchers (or is that serious radar birdwatchers?) suggest that this year fewer birds are to be found anywhere on the trip north. Their radar spikes aren’t as concentrated or as large as is normal. I haven’t yet heard anyone discuss what that means—an ordinary variation in numbers, a sign of trouble in the wintering grounds. So I will try and resist the temptation to speculate and will instead just note it for the future. 

Gloom

Don’t take my word for the gloom. Here is the proof. Sometimes fog is attractive and makes for interesting photographs but not always. And the mountain right now is in that “not always” mode as far as I’m concerned. It’s too foggy and too gloomy. Last night and this morning rain also pummeled the forest to the point where I couldn’t have the camera out for even a few seconds.

Winter appears to be essentially over, though I can’t say that it feels much like spring yet either. As winters go, this one wasn’t worth writing home about. True, winter did put in a brief appearance here, unlike last year when it was entirely missing in action . Winter started late, not getting underway in much of a real sense until mid-January. The first two weeks of February brought actual winter temperatures, if precious little snow. But now? The temperatures are March-like and the rain presages April showers. So is this what winters will be like now? Perhaps four weeks of actual winter instead of three months of cold weather?

It’s a sad state of affairs, that’s all I can say.

I can only hope that four weeks of cold weather was enough to damp down the mosquitos and ticks that will arrive with summer temperatures. I know the stink bugs are still around. I find them in odd places around the cabin—behind a painting on the wall, between the pages of a book, in a desk drawer.

In the meantime, I dodge puddles and clean mud off the dogs’ feet. I should probably store the snowshoes again someplace where I don’t need to see them for the next 320 days (at this rate of winter). My sweaters already seem too warm. It’s a depressing time, to be sure. I’m as gloomy as the forest looks today.

January or March?

If the weather had looked this nice over the weekend I would have gone birding.  Instead, the fog was so thick that trees just 20 feet away were hazy, and those more than 30 feet away were little more than ghost trees, mere shadows of trees.  There was no point in driving to a lake or a river to look for waterfowl, as I couldn’t even see crows in the trees next to the cabin.  Of course, this is pretty typical weather for March.  Wait, it’s not March, it’s January!

The dense fog, perhaps the thickest fog I have ever seen, persisted throughout the entire weekend.  I couldn’t see the bottom of the ski runs when I was right next to them, let alone see the skiers on the hill.  This morning the fog was still solidly in place but completely dissipated while I was eating breakfast and about to head out the door to work.  Isn’t that how it goes?  An entire weekend of gloom as dark as dusk and thick fog, and the moment Monday morning arrives, the weather improves.Of course, it’s still rainy and overcast and far too warm for January, but I can see the neighboring mountain, when  I couldn’t even see the end of my deck all weekend long.  The only birds I saw this weekend were my regular feeder birds.  I heard a few others, but they were lost in the fog.

The snow that covered Roundtop as late as Friday evening is now gone.  Even the few patches that made it into Saturday are gone now. And I am left with pretty typical March weather, except of course, this is January.

Fogged

I have returned from the deepest fog of IT despair to find...fog on Roundtop. Thick, soupy fog of the kind that is impenetrable by high beams or low beams or any beam at all. If I hadn’t known where I was going, I sure couldn’t have gotten there.

The animals seemed as flummoxed as I was. Dog and I walked right up to a deer this morning. We startled her out of her bed and then she just stood there, not 10 feet away. Even then I could just barely see her outline, though her eyes gleamed in my headlamp. I’m not sure Dog ever saw her or that she saw Dog. We all just stood there and then she moved away slowly. Two steps was all it took to put her out of even my limited sight. That may have been the closest I’ve ever been to a wild deer.

We startled something else too, something lower to the ground. I suspect an opossum but I can’t be sure. I didn’t even see its eyes shine in my headlamp. It just scurried away, rustling the leaves as it went. The sound told me that it was close, almost underfoot, though we never saw it.

Fog, of course, is not the norm in December. November marked the only month in 2012 that fell below normal temperatures, at least by my reckoning. I suppose it was simply too much to hope that November would mark a shift, even a temporary one, to a few months with cooler than average or even “normal” temperatures.

I seem to be surrounded by people who love the warmer weather, without a care for the implications that either short-term or long term climate change brings. To me, the short-term issues are that without some deeply cold weather, the annoying insects of summer won’t die off and diminish their numbers to a population that doesn’t overwhelm when spring returns. And there’s the nasty viruses and bacteria-caused ailments that never get killed off either. Plus, if I wanted to live in Georgia or Virginia, I would move there. I don’t want that mild weather here in four-season Pennsylvania. I am obviously in the minority in that.

To me, “normal” weather is one more year where climate change is held at bay, or at least held to some form of that. Another warm month is another step where more ground is lost in this battle. In 2012, we lost a lot of ground.

Looking ahead

It’s not just me who is lamenting the fog that still grips Roundtop and much of the east coast. Yesterday, I was emailed a photo of a lonely hawkwatcher sitting all by himself up on his fog-shrouded perch at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. The only way that man would see any hawks (assuming one was desperate enough to be flying) was if one perched on his head. Another hawk counter from up in Connecticut told me he was holding a “fog watch” this year instead of a hawkwatch. It’s all funny, if not terribly amusing.

The forecast is still promising clearing up for a day or two before rain moves in again. That same forecast is promising some much cooler weather starting on Saturday. I’m already planning to bring the last of the summering houseplants back into the cabin, including my 10-ft tall ficus tree. The whole planned operation got me to thinking about dependent we are on weather forecasts in a way that was impossible just a generation ago.

Before WWII and the advent of radar, I would have little idea that the temperature would drop a good 20 degrees in another day or so. I might have been able to look at the sky and predict rain or another storm, but I never heard anyone report they could predict a 20 degree temperature drop. Back then I probably would have brought my houseplants inside based on a day of the calendar—perhaps Columbus Day. And if I’d relied on that day this year, I’d be at least two days too late for my houseplants. As it is I am scheduling my evening around bringing in the houseplants and getting them situated for the upcoming winter.

My now year-old kittens will have forgotten about the tree, or if they haven’t, they will remember just how much fun it was to climb up to the second floor of the cabin via the tree instead of the stairs. Of course, they are much larger now, fully grown, and the tree will not support three cats still operating on kitten brains. I am not looking forward to dealing with a tree toppled in my living room until they learn this lesson. But learn they must, and deal with it I must. I hope they learn quickly.

Too foggy

Fog and drizzle is starting to be a broken record here on Roundtop Mtn., though the forecast promises an end by the weekend. I’m starting to find the lack of visibility annoying. The gloom of the fog only serves to make the shortened hours of daylight feel even shorter.

Bird activity is depressed. I’m not sure if it’s just that I can’t see them or if they simply aren’t out and about. I suspect it’s the latter. Even the Carolina chickadees and Tufted titmice that visit my feeders are fewer in number and nearly silent when they do appear. Instead of their near-constant chatter, they arrive quietly, grab a seed or two and disappear back into the fog.

This morning Baby Dog and I nearly stumbled over one of the deer that frequents the tiny patch of grass at the bottom of the lane that runs up the mountain. I stopped, the doe stopped and looked, and Baby Dog couldn’t see the deer at all, though it was only the width of the lane away from us. It wasn’t until the doe bobbed her head, probably trying to figure out what we were, that Baby Dog noticed. Her single bark was more than enough to put the deer into a run and disappear.

Are the colors changing on the trees? I can’t tell.

Are avian migrants on the move? I can’t tell.

Are enough leaves down that I might see the curve of the mountain to the west again? I can’t tell.

For all I know the ski resort might have disappeared in the past week. It’s simply too foggy to see much of anything, and the woods aren’t talking.

Even the geese are grounded

The fog is so dense this morning that even the Canada geese are grounded, forced to walk from one pond to the other. After weeks of drought, exacerbated by the high temperatures of July, August is settling in to be a month with frequent downpours and the resulting fog. Add this morning to that list.

Dorsey Lane, Carroll Township, York  County, Pennsylvania

  Once I drove off the mountain the fog wasn't quite as bad.  I could see a couple of hundred yards ahead.

Up on Roundtop the old north parking lot looks deserted and eerie.  The fog is a lot worse up here than in the valleys today. Usually it's the other way around.

Spring explosion!

Foggy morning on Roundtop

I can’t be the only one who thinks that trees leafing out in late March instead of early May verges on a scary abomination. Overnight, trees down off Roundtop Mtn. are past budding and are into the early leafing stage. It feels bizarre to me, and I despair of people who exclaim happily, “isn’t the weather wonderful?”

No, it is not wonderful.

We are a full 9 days before the end of March, a full two weeks before the time of a normal last frost, and now the appearance of leaves on trees is going on 6 weeks earlier than it should be.

Stink bugs, ticks and mosquitoes are out. As stink bugs are worst in the early fall, having them be numerous now is Not A Good Thing. An acquaintance reported picking 20 ticks off herself and her dog this past week. That is Not A Good Thing. Mosquitoes? Yikes! 
Fire danger is high and the forests are dry and crunchy. Yellow violets are blooming before the bloodroot (which will bloom for its one day of splendor later today) and both will be blooming 20+ days early.

Songbirds, especially warblers, normally migrate when the particular species of bug that normally appears in the particular layer of the forest canopy they inhabit first emerge. The bugs’ appearances are timed with the emergence of particular tree leaf buds. The bugs are here, the buds are here, but the birds can’t adapt to changing climate conditions so quickly. “Their” bugs will be gone when they get here. What will they eat as they try to fuel their migration north into the boreal forest? They are all probably still down in South America, happily fueling for the trip north, unaware that their “gas stations” in the eastern forest will be empty by the time they arrive.

If this is “wonderful” weather, give me something else.

Spring arrives to fog

Fog rules the morning here on Roundtop Mtn. Oh, and spring has arrived. Last night I heard the honking of a huge and high flock of migrating Canada geese. The sound is distinctive and different from the everyday honking of the geese.

I suspect the height of the flock has something to do with it, as well as the sheer number of geese. They honk continuously when they migrate, as though the flock is a traveling cocktail party with everyone talking at the same time. And they do sound happy, or at least eager, to be heading north again.

Then this morning, I heard the call of a killdeer or two. These birds are early arrivers, too. A few will nest in the stone parking lots at Roundtop, but for most the mountain is just a stop on their longer trip.

Together, hearing the migrating calls of geese and those of the killdeer, the evidence is irrefutable. Spring is here, if only as yet in its infancy.