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.

Bee hive inspection

John and I inspected the hives on 5/7/2011. The first hive appeared to be doing fine, we pulled a few frames and saw honey cells and brood, the bees still have a few empty foundation frames to build on. When we removed the top cover on the second hive we could see that the bees had built comb on top of some frames and connected to the inner cover.

We carefully removed the inner cover and cut/scraped away the extra comb. The bees in this hive are ready for a second hive body, they have almost completely built out the first hive body.

John and I wore protective clothing but the bees were really gentle. We used Dad's old smoker.

Warning: pictures are large, about 3 MB each.

Old Rag April 2011

Another great Old Rag hike!

Orchard planting

In March we planted a few fruit trees. The soil was in good shape, every hole we dug had earthworms, grubs, and organic matter. The chickens jumped right in and ate several bugs.

Mountain horse?

Also from February, picture shows Spirit on top of a huge pile of dirt that I excavated from the pond last year.

February Skiing

I took the kids skiing at Cataloochee in February, just found a couple of pictures. We had a great time.

Bees are here

I picked up my two bee hives this morning in Oliver Springs and brought them back to the farm. I have them setup near the edge of our front north pasture where they will get morning sun and afternoon shade.

Each hive has a young mated queen that is laying and young worker bees. At the moment each hive has a screened bottom board, one deep langstroth hive body, an inner cover, and a top cover. Each hive box has 10 frames of foundation, presently the colony is using about 5 frames.

In a week I'll open the hives and check on their progress. I plan to add a second deep hive body to each hive later this year. I may need honey supers also if the hives do really well.

Chicks

Debby picked up 25 Rhode Island Red chicks earlier this week, they are about 6 weeks old. We'll raise them up and add them to our flock.

Tornados, storms

Severe weather hit East Tennessee on April 27 as part of a huge weather event that caused much death and destruction across several states. Fortunately the Tennessee Piller's are all fine.

On Wednesday afternoon I was at work in Oak Ridge and the lab issued a "shelter in place" warning just before 4 pm which lasted about 45 minutes. Shelter in place means to proceed to the basement of a substantial building and stay away from doors and windows.

I arrived home at about 6pm and our emergency weather radio kept going off with tornado and severe thunderstorm watches and warnings for our area. All of the tornado warnings were to the south and east of us. Just before 10pm however during an impressive thunderstorm the radio went off and issued a tornado warning for where we live. We were prepared, our suburban was parked right outside the house. We jumped in the suburban, along with Pup-pup and Kitness, and drove down to the bottom of our driveway.

Our home is a double wide trailer and it is exposed in the middle of a field so it's not a safe place to be during a tornado. The best place to be during a tornado is underground, or in a ditch or low lying area. The bottom of our driveway is about 150 feet lower in elevation that the house and is protected by sloping terrain.

This is our safe spot, at least until we get our cheese cave going :)

We waited in the suburban and listened to the radio. It was quiet and calm outside and everything was just fine. After about 45 minutes the tornado warning was lifted and we drove back to the house. Everything was just fine at our place, nobody was hurt, no damage, all of the animals were OK. There was no tornado in our immediate area.

Update: The man who is keeping cows in our upper pasture stopped by this evening. He said that while checking on his cattle he found a metal cover for an HVAC system in the middle of the pasture. I looked at the panel, it's an Intertherm panel used inside mobile homes, we have one just like it in our double wide. Apparently one of the tornadoes on Wednesday hit a mobile home somewhere and this metal panel traveled countless miles only to end up in our pasture.

Invaders!

Help we are under attack! OK, not quite, this is just a picture of Chip modeling his new beekeeping suit. Chip and John attended a beekeeping class recently and are planning to get two hives next week. Stay tuned.

Dogwoods!

The dogwoods are really beautiful right now. It rained overnight and is drizzling this morning, so it's a little dark and overcast. This makes the bright white dogwood flowers really pop out in contrast to the rest of the forest. From the house we can look around 360 degrees and see many dogwoods at the edge of the pasture/forest and into the forest.

More birds, plus some bees

Birds: Yesterday Debby saw three wild turkeys out at the edge of the pasture.

Bees: Knoxville was recently rated the worst US city for allergies, there is just a ton of pollen in the area. Right now we have all sorts of things blooming, the air smells very sweet. We have some bushes that are blooming and sweet smelling and just full of loudly buzzing bumble bees.

Last night I picked up some beekeeping equipment from a local beekeeper, along with some local honey (mmm good!). We plan to have two bee hives this year. This beekeeper has about 80 hives in his bee yard. One of his hives swarmed yesterday and landed in a bush next to his shop. He placed an empty hive with a single deep chamber under the swarm and he shook the bush and the swarm fell down on the hive and went in. He was waiting until it was dark to move the hive. The beekeeper also showed me some of his apple trees and how he is grafting apple limbs onto crab apple root stock that he buys.

Goodbye Old Taurus

We gave our 1995 Taurus to some friends last weekend. I bought that car new in the spring of 1995 when I was working at Antenna Research in MD and living in an apartment in Falls Church. That Taurus had been a good car. We now drive a 2006 Taurus and a 1998 Suburban.

Birds

About a month ago I was outside doing chores in the morning and I saw a large bird flying over the field headed towards me. I watched as it approached, it was very big. The bird was just gliding, flying calmly, straight towards our house. The bird was black and had "finger" feathers spread out at the end of it's wings. As the bird got closer I could see that it was all black except that it's head was white. It was a bald eagle. I don't remember ever seeing one, and this one flew right over me.

At the pond in our upper field we have a nesting pair of geese, a nesting pair of mallard ducks, and some wood ducks. A couple of weeks ago the new NRCS agent came by for a visit and he took a few pictures and notes and said it was unusual to have those three species all at the same place.

A couple of days ago I saw two large birds flying over the farm near dusk, it was a pair of blue herons. I usually only see one blue heron at a time, it was nice to see a pair.

New, new alarm clock

OK, long time since posting on the blog. We lost several chickens and our rooster over the winter months due to hawk attacks. Hawks also killed and ate a bunch of our pigeons. Last month Debby and the kids bought a new rooster, he's a Rhode Island Red name Opie One Kenobi. So far so good.

I had a TWRA officer visit a couple of months ago to ask if we could take an injured pigeon, which we did. I told him about the hawk problems and he said that we could kill them if they were killing our chickens and pigeons. I was surprised to hear that, but it's good news. Some of the hawks are just crazy, Debby was outside and watched a hawk swoop down and kill a chicken not far from where she was standing. Another time a hawk got into a pigeon loft and Debby was getting it out and the hawk managed to sink all of the talons from one of it's legs into Debby's hand. Debby went to the doctor and got a tetanus shot and all of her lymph nodes swelled up.