Hawked

The following may or may not be fiction, or a figment of the authors imagination.

So last night I'm doing my evening drinker chores for the pigeons, when I get to the brown loft I find a dead half eaten pigeon on the floor, a bunch of terrified pigeons, and a cooper hawk inside the loft. Cooper hawks are just crazy, a week ago I was outside and one shot out of the woods, flew right over my head, then continued towards the pigeon lofts. On that occasion I hooped and hollered and the hawk flew back into the woods.

In the past when there is a cooper hawk in the loft they usually go down on the floor and try to hide and will sometimes lay on their back with their feet/claws out for protection. This time however the cooper went up high, near my head, so I retreated from the loft and went to get a pair of gloves. I returned with a pair of leather gloves and a headlight as it was dark. The LED headlight has two operating modes, a single red LED or two bright white LED's, I went with the single low light red LED. With the leather gloves I was able to safely capture the hawk and grasp it by the legs. I placed the hawk into a portable pigeon crate and put the crate in the back seat of my car.

I know that some people kill hawks, and I was told by a TWRA officer who visited the farm that it was OK to kill a hawk if it was killing our chickens or pigeons, but I never do. I look at it this way, the hawk is just being a hawk, I've got a bunch of gorgeous pigeons flying about, so in a way I'm attracting the hawks. The only way I know to eliminate the hawk problem is to lock up my birds, which is not really fair to the birds as they love to fly and that's what they do. I hate to lose pigeons to hawks, I wish that the hawks would cull the flock for me, to take the slow birds, the weak birds, the ones that are not too smart, but that is not what happens. Hawks are just as likely, perhaps more likely, to take the best pigeons. I think the reason is that the best pigeons are the most healthy, like to fly more, spend more time outside, and are perhaps more confident.

I've seen some wild pigeons that are very smart, they approach the loft very high, then just sort of spiral descend almost straight down to the loft and go in. The homing pigeons on the other hand will approach low as a large group and fly many low altitude laps around the loft before finally settling on the loft and then going inside. I can't blame a hungry hawk who watches this from the woods for going after the homing pigeons.

There is one good thing though about the cooper hawks, when they get a pigeon they get "a" pigeon, as in just one. Some other predators such as weasels I've heard will get into a loft and kill every single bird.

So, the hawk is in the crate in the back seat of my car. I decided that I would take the hawk and release it in the morning on my way to work. The idea is to relocate the hawk so that this hawk will not come back and kill any more of my animals. I start driving to work and a funny thing happens. The hawk got out of the crate and was jumping around in the back of the car while I was driving. Apparently I had not securely latched the top door on the crate and the hawk bumped it just right and it opened and the hawk got out. Hawks look very mean, kind of scary, with a sharp beak and menacing eye. I was afraid that the hawk might come in the front seat, get up in my face or something. So I put my hat on, talked to the bird and kept one hand up for protection. The hawk stayed in the back seat and remained relatively calm. I drove a couple more miles to a good release spot and pulled the car over, opened the windows, and got out. About 30 seconds later the hawk flew out the window and headed straight for some woods and disappeared. The cooper hawk has amazing camoflage, when it gets near the woods it literally disappears.

I then got back in the car, closed the windows, and continued to work. Again, this may or may not have actually happened.

I have thought about ways to keep cooper hawks out of pigeon lofts. The coopers are not very big and I think they can fit through just about any pigeon sized opening. Pigeons however are capable of flying straight up. Perhaps it would be possible to make a tall structure where the pigeons entered at the bottom, flew straight up, and then entered the loft. I may try this someday.

Digging ditches, oh yeah

Just came in from doing some serious manual labor on the driveway. It's 60 degrees F and we've had a good bit of rain. Our driveway was in need of some drainage improvements (an ongoing task), during rains it sometimes becomes a creek and parts of it will wash away, not a good thing. When it's wet, and cool, it's easy to see where the water is flowing, where it should be flowing, and the ground is somewhat soft. I grabbed my Tilley hat, of course, a T shirt, a gore tex shell, a pair of gloves, and a mattock. A mattock is sort of a digging axe, it has a long handle, and on one side of the head it has an axe/splitting edge and on the other side it has a wide curved digging edge. I have a tractor and a box blade but it's of no use really for this task, a backhoe or mini excavator would be good, but no need for that when you have a strong back, determined spirit, and a good mattock. I worked my way from the top of the driveway to the bottom, fixing the drainage as I went. Hard work! When I was near the bottom I was worn out, sweating, soaking wet, covered in mud, so I sat down in the middle of the driveway. Pup-pup came over and kept me company as I recovered. I was not right at the bottom of the driveway but about 60 feet up and a few cars went by. The driver of one car spotted me and decided to turn around and check on me, I told her I was fine and thanked her for stopping. I then finished the ditch work at the bottom of the driveway and admired my work as I walked back up to the house.

Red Sky!

On Monday evening this week (October 24) Debby and Mary were returning home from a dance class when they noticed that the sky was red, this was after dark at about 9:30 pm. The next day Debby informed us that what they had seen northern lights, the result of a huge coronal mass ejection from the Sun which collided with the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field and created a visible light show at unusually low latitudes.

First frost of the season Oct 3, 2011

It was 35 degrees outside this morning according to the thermometer. We had frost on the grass, I had to find my ice scraper so I could clear the windshield of my car this morning.

It's Raining!

It started to rain a few minutes ago, just before 6:00 pm on Sunday September 4. We have been in a bit of a drought, no rain at all for at least a month, lot's of hot sunny days. Some of the grass was becoming brown and crunchy, some leaves have changed color and already fallen from the trees. The forecast is that we will get several inches of much needed rain in the next few days.

See the US Drought map here.

Unfortunately our friends in Texas are still suffering from a serious drought situation and I hope that they will soon get some rain.

morning zoo

We've now got 50+ chickens. This is good because we are starting to know what we are doing and it's not really any more work to take care of 50 vs 20. Our flock includes four of our 2009 golden girls (golden comet hens), some of our 2010 rhode island red (RIR) hens, a RIR rooster named Opie, twenty some RIR's that we got a few months ago (including several roosters), and a new batch of 14 RIR hens and 6 barred rock (or plymouth rock) hens that arrived last weekend.

The batch of twenty some RIRs that we got a few months ago have grown out well and are looking very nice. The only problem is that there are several roosters in that group and they are now starting to act like roosters. In the morning when one rooster crows that starts the other roosters and they take turns crowing. At this point only Opie has a really good rooster crow, some of the others sound rather pitiful. At least one of the roosters sounds like an elephant when he tries to crow. So in the morning right now it sounds a little bit like a zoo. The rooster contingent will be reduced shortly.

Bark vs. Bite

Pup-pup loves to chase deer. We see deer here at the farm every day. Recently though Pup-pup has changed his deer chasing method. He used to run, bark, and chase deer away into the woods. Now he is content to run, bark, and hold his ground about 100 feet or so from the house. The reason for the change?

Well, a few weeks ago Debby watched as Pup-pup ran out to chase away some deer. In the group of deer was a mom and a fawn. The mom initially started to run but then decided to turn and take on Pup-pup while the fawn got away. Pup-pup was not expecting a deer to stand up to him, this must have been the first time it happened. Since then Pup-pup has been keeping his distance and the deer don't seem very afraid of the Pup.

The color purple and out of breath

My fingers and lips are purple and I'm out of breath. So naturally I need to blog about it.

I've just completed my workout which explains the out of breath part. My workout consists of going from the house to the mailbox and back. Sounds easy but the two are separated by about 1/3 mile in distance and 200 feet in elevation. Plus it's warm and humid. If I feel good I try to get in a couple of brief uphill sprints. My goal is to get to the point that I can run the entire distance uphill in one go.

OK, now for the purple part. There are a lot of wild blackberries along my workout route, and some berries are now perfectly ripe. So on the way down the driveway I pick and eat a few blackberries. When the blackberries are just right they are plump, juicy, and require just a slight tug to release them from their vine. Ripe blackberries will just about melt in your mouth and are delicious. The juice is what causes the purple lips and fingers.

Debby gets tired of how much I talk about the blackberries, but I really do enjoy them. I'm trying to figure out the best method to manage them, the wild ones put up canes in their first year and bear fruit in the second. And they have a bunch of thorns also. So, all the blackberry spots that were mowed last fall through this spring now have first year plants. If I don't mow these areas we will have a large blackberry crop next year. I'm thinking about how to rotate areas to get a good crop every year. I think a few blackberry trails would be a lot of fun, what do you think?

Bzzz Bzzz Boom Boom

Hope you had a great 4th of July. My fourth included working our two bee hives (the Bzzz Bzzz part) followed by a nice thunderstorm where we lost power for a couple of hours (the first Boom part) followed by impressive firework displays by neighbors (the last Boom part).

Neighbors have been shooting guns and fireworks for several days now actually and the horses don't like the loud booms one bit.

Bees: Both hives appear to be doing well, at least to this novice beekeeper. Bees are really busy, shooting in and out of the hives. The bees are not "washboarding" on the hive and I do see quite a few honey bees visiting clover plants so I think that they continue to draw out comb an collect pollen and nectar and make brood and honey.

I built a shallow honey super and ten frames which was a bit of work. All the parts are assembled with glue and nails or screws. The hive bodies and supers then need two coats of white latex exterior paint. I installed the honey super so now both hives are the same, each one has two deep hive bodies and one honey super. Bees have not drawn out any comb yet in the honey supers so I don't know if we will be harvesting any honey during this first season. The goal for the first season is really to learn and develop a strong healthy colony that makes it through the winter.

Rare mussels found near farm, pigeons

I just saw a news article about a wildlife biologist who found some rare mussels in the Emory River in Morgan county not far from where we live.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/may/26/rare-mussels-found/

I've read other stories about all kinds of unique species in the Smokies, the Knoxville area (some rare cave dwelling species), and the Cumberland Plateau. We have all sorts of fascinating things on the farm, from flying squirrels, interesting birds, colored salamanders and frogs, turtles, snakes, insects, bats, even leeches (ask John how we know about them).

Interestingly enough the reporter is the same one who came out and interviewed me a couple of years ago about homing pigeons.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/feb/24/winged-wonders/

I still get contacted by people because of that article, just last week a woman called to say that she had a banded racing pigeon show up whose owner could not be found and so I met her and picked up the bird.

Peachy

Picture shows a baby peach on one of the two peach trees we planted this year.

Easter Egg Hunt 2011

The kids always enjoy the Easter Egg hunt held at our church.

Flooding April 16, 2011

This is a picture of Clifty Creek overflowing the Clifty Creek bridge on April 16, 2011. This is right next to the Emory river so it might be more appropriate to say that the Emory flooded. We've seen high water levels a few times in the past several years but this was the first time we saw water go over the bridge. Second picture shows the waterfall at the bottom of our driveway taken the same day.

End of the Rainbow II

This morning Debby called out from the kitchen for everyone to come and look. Out in the pasture we could see the end of a rainbow! This was the second time we've spotted the end of a rainbow, the place where it touches the ground, from our house. The first one we saw was about 250 feet from the house near the barn, this one was probably 500 feet away looking South. Debby said there must be a pot of gold around here somewhere.

Fireflies

I just stepped outside to see what Pup-pup was barking at. It's a beautiful evening, 59 degrees, with a nice moon. And fireflies, I believe these are the first I've seen this year. Very pretty.

Strawberries

Debby and Mary have been working in the garden. Today Mary picked the first strawberries of the season.