Bogieblog

Lawn Mowing - Green Style

The NH Audubon center is going green. It maintains some grasslands that are important for not only conservation efforts, but also for teaching. It has hired beneficiary lawn mowers - cattle. An area natural beef farmer will be moving cattle in and out as the grasslands need them. Around here, golden rod, milk weed, asters and other plants will move into grasslands or any area where tree canopy doesn't keep them in check and try to take over(ask me how I know).

The cattle, apparently don't mind the milky part of the milk weed, the crunchy stems of the asters, or the ticklish hairyness of the goldenrod. They also don't disturb the ground nesting birds like a machine would although the timing has to be controlled for when eggs and defensless chicks are present. As an added bonus, the cattle fertilize where they have been.

The flowers that are kept in check in the grasslands, will be allowed to grow in other designated areas, just not the areas large enough to encourage eastern meadow larks, bobolinks and savannah sparrows.

What a nice win/win situation. The farmer gets organic grazing for the cows for just the cost of trucking the cattle between grazing areas, and the Audubon society gets free, nature friendly mowing. Okay, so the cattle do produce greenhouse gasses, but at least they taste good when it is time to take them to market.

Wednesday's Word of the Day

I haven't had a filled bird feeder hung outside, other than hummingbird, for 4-6 weeks. I take them in for a while until the bears have had plenty of time to find food after their long winter fast. Wednesday morning I put out a feeder and that night I saw the first pair of rosebreasted grosbeaks for the season. Also saw a very purple finch, our resident white breasted nuthatches and a downey woodpecker.

Word gets around fast in the avian community!

Saw our first hummer at the feeder tonight. From my Android phone.

Birding App

Cop Car forwarded and email to me on Friday about Amazon having the Audubon Birds: A Field Guid to North American Birds app on sale for 99 cents. Unfortunately, that was their Deal of the Day, and the email had been sent to her on Thursday, so it wasn't applicable when I received it. However, I looked around, and finally checked the Google Play store, and sure enough, they had it for 99 cents (that sale is over as far as I can tell, but it is on sale at theiTunes store if you have an Apple product). I immediately downloaded it and found that it not only is a field guide, but provide samples of the birds' songs too. Way cool.

You are given the opportunity, after download, of actually downloading the entire content (downloading the app just gives you access to the content, so saves memory if you don't have much) so that night I did so. The only issue I've had with it so far is trying to create an account, which allows the saving of life lists and sightings, but that may be me. Also, not a huge deal, just a bit of an annoyance.

Anyway, just wanted to give Cop Car a shout out for pointing out this app to me!

Eagle Cam 2012

eaglets have hatched. I believe this nest is in Iowa, although I could be wrong.

Free desktop streaming application by Ustream

Short Takes For March

After a record warm day, I put out the hummingbird feeder. While watching the news, they had a picture of a ruby-throated hummingbird at a feederin NH, so I decided that I better put mine out. I have never put it out this early; usually toward the end of April.

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Spent the day repotting house plants. Will have pictures next week.

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Had 3 evenings last week that we didn't start the woodstove. Also, didn't start it until evening last night, and may not start it tonight.

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Attended the town meeting yesterday from 9 AM until 2:30 PM. We approved a new ambulance, and the submitted town budget (after adding 1k for maintenence for the police cruiser to cover issues that arose a couple of weeks ago). The selectmen did a great job keeping the budget fairly flat, so we didn't find much to complain about. We did have a long debate on a couple of items added by petition; one of which passed, and one that didn't. All in all, a typical town meeting for Deering.

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It will be really nice this coming week, temperature wise. Unfortunately it is so muddy that there is no sense in us getting the bikes out of storage. Just have to wait it out for a while more.

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WS did bring BILs bike down from the storage unit out back. He thought the tire was flat the mud bogged it down so much. But, everything was fine, so he spent the afternoon washing it and starting cleaning up the rims. Once it is all cleaned up, we will be putting it up for sale.

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The laptop has suddenly (as of this typing) started having trouble with the space bar. So will close out this post, shut down and see if I can clean it out.

Hope everyone had as nice a weekend as we did!

Get Out of the Road Tom!

The other day while going to work, upon the road I spied a beach ball. At least that's what it looked like from a distance, in the semi-light of dawn. As I got closer, I saw that it was a beach ball with something coming out of the top of it. As I got even closer, I surmised that it was a Tom turkey, all fanned out, that I was seeing the profile of.

As I approached, he turned toward me, but stayed in the other lane. I slowed and looked for other turkeys to be ready to cross the road. There weren't any, but as I passed, I looked up the driveway nearest the dispaying Tom, and saw about 15 more turkeys - at least one of them was another dispaying Tom.

Pretty cool to see in a fairly populated neighborhood, it made me wonder why they were all on a paved driveway milling about. Perhaps there was a bird feeder that I couldn't see. Or, maybe it was just the vagueries of turkeydom.

Eagles Landed

Bald Eagles Land On 101 Eastbound - New Hampshire News Story - WMUR New Hampshire.

Rt 101, in Bedford, was closed down for a while this morning as two bald eagles thought it was a great place to get a break from the wind.

NH Matriarch Eagle Succumbs to Injuries

In other birding news, NH's oldest known eagle has died. Gold W22, as she was known, was found in injured in Antrim (a bordering town for us), and succumbed to her injuries. The eagle was 19.5 years old, and was hatched by non-releasable captive parents (I assume rescues). She was placed in a nest in Massachussetts, and as she matured, made her way to Hancock (not to far from here, and a place we ride thru on a regular basis). Go check out the link for her history (I promise it's short)

This is old news, as it came out in the November issue of Affield, but I had it in my blogging folder, which I finally remembered to look at.

Bird Counts for 2012

The NH Audubon Winter Bird Survey is being held next Saturday and Sunday. If you live in NH, take a couple minutes out of your weekend to count birds (and squirrels) and report it. We participate every year, it gives me a good excuse to feed the squirrels birds.

For the first time, they have online data entry - making it easier and cheaper (no more envelope or stamp, or printing out the form) to particpate - no more excuses not to!

And, with the NH Audubon Bird Count here, it must be almost time for the Cornell University Great Backyard Bird Count. It is being held the next weekend, the GBBC is a 4 day event, being held 2/17-2/20 and is open to all North American birders.