Rick Marsi On-Line
November Nature Sightings
Nov. 1, 02 - Carolina wren at sunflower feeder, banging open seeds
Nov. 1, 09 – GC Kinglet in yard, flitting among branches of bare oak.
Nov. 2, 10 – I watch a nice 8-point buck breed a doe in woods behind house. I
have seen this buck 3-4 times in the past week (not once before this).
Nov. 3, 09 – Red-bellied woodpecker female at sunflower feeder many times. A
first for Brier Hill. Bird took single seed, flew to nearby ash tree and cracked
it open in a fork.
Nov. 3, 10 - Male red-bellied woodpecker coming to the sunflower feeder
regularly now. At Brick Pond – Mockingbird, Caroline wren and several
White-throated Sparrows.
Nov. 4, 08 - Nov. 4 – Floated Chenango from Brisben to Greene. Gauge at 3.75.
Cloudy. 60 degrees. Many mallards, a few wood ducks, hundreds of geese. Several
kingfishers, and two great blue herons. Encountered small flocks of bluebirds
several times. Three or four cardinals. One red-bellied woodpecker. Fished with
crayfish. No bites.
Nov. 4, 09 – Bear came to feeder in the night. Male purple finch at repaired
feeder in afternoon.
Nov. 4, 10 – Thirteen turkeys eating cracked corn under the Scotch Pine.
Nov. 4, 11 - Female red-bellied woodpecker at suet. First in the yard in many
months.
Nov. 5,
11 – Fisher appears in back woods for third time in a week –at 8 a.m.
Nov. 6, 01.
Glowering clouds gradually are swept away by brilliant blue sky. The classic
tug-of-war between the two ensues, as gray gives way grudgingly and gradually.
The first blast of sun into my office, through south-facing windows, hits like a
blinding meteor. My mood, and the room, brighten instantly. No need for lights
in the room anymore.
By mid-afternoon the sky has become brilliant. Pale blue, almost white if you
let the clean air scrub it. Low sun. Always low at this time of year. Hell when
you are driving but wonderful when it shines on the last aspen leaves, or
tamarack needles. The gold deepens as the afternoon wanes. Even brown oak leaves
take on a hint of gold toward sunset. Spots of yellow on the hills are
highlighted by the bright sun. Aspens and larch are the spots.
More Norway maples glowing bright yellow in the flatland suburbs. Norway isn’t
warm at this time of year. Why do these trees keep their leaves and their color
so long?
Goldfinches crowd the thistle feeder. No more empty perches. You need a
reservation now – with cold weather here and in force. Siskins also appear from
the north. I hear a n evening grosbeak overhead.
Big buck at 8 a.m. Before he appears, we watch 10 does and fawns parade across
the back yard. Sometimes a large doe turns quickly and stares out of the picture
– out of our view. We assume she is looking for a buck who is following her
scent, nose to the ground.
When this buck appears, I can see his huge rack easily, although the light is
still subdued and he walks 30 yards in the woods. Maybe it is the purpose with
which he walks that attracts my attention. He walks with his neck slightly
lowered, his snout pushed forward, his gait lurching almost uncontrollably from
nervous walk to ungainly trot. He would walk through semi if need be to follow
this doe.
His antlers are huge – spreading and tall, a foot or more over his head. How
does he walk through the woods with those things? Jan inquires. Sniff and walk.
Sniff and trot – nose hardly leaving the carpet of leaves. He follows the estrus
trail out of my sight.
The wind cuts, my breath steams in a steady north wind. I clean gutters, scoop
oak leaves and shingle grit out of aluminum channels. Two crows fuss above. I
look up. There, a redtail soars low, not much over treetop level, harassed by
this gain of two. The crows, as they do, get quite close but not too close for
comfort. The hawk, as it does, seems oblivious at first, hoping they’ll just go
away. Even when they persist, the bird barely acknowledges its life has been
altered. When dive-bombed, it banks, catches air and sweeps away, belly
cream-colored in bright sun, tail russet almost beyond telling.
Mow the lawn one last time, shunt the leaves in windrows, which I’ll rake up
when dawn brings tomorrow. It is cold on the mower – 40 degrees as the sunset
approaches.
Red-breasted nuthatch clings on the suet feeder, picking chunks and not leaving
– swallowing, then picking another. This tells me the night will be increasingly
long and respondingly cold. The nuthatch is bulking up. For the past two weeks
it has seemed to prefer sunflower seeds. But this late afternoon, it can see to
the future. This future, up here, where we ain’t got no leaves, demands it
digest fat to prosper.
Nov. 7.
I awake with no quilt so it must not be too cold outside. Temp around 45
degrees. It has clouded up overnight, keeping temperatures warm. I needn’t have
trucked my petunias into the bed of the pickup. Only one hard frost so far would
have killed them.
I return them at 9 a.m. adding a few colorful, small squashes to the window
trays the petunias have held by themselves all through summer. Now they must
share them with pumpkins and these squashes, all bumpy, rock-hard, yellow,
green, black, emblematic of autumn.
Driving down Powderhouse Rd. to Manni’s Bagel Shop at 8:30, I am wrenched from
just being alive to becoming aware. A hawk sweeps into view from the side of the
road – right beside me. It then takes a hard left, to avoid me, no doubt, and
finds itself coursing down the hill by my side, 10 or so feet from the truck.
Maybe it does this for two seconds before veering back into the woods. During
those seconds, I stare at it intensely. I see its brown tail – immature bird
that tells me. I then see a belly band of vertical streaks on an creamy white
breast. An immature red-tailed hawk, perhaps chasing prey when it zoomed into
sight, perhaps merely clueless about how roads carry vehicles hawks would be
wise to avoid.
I drive to Murph’s funeral mass. Murph and I shared gnats and bright Sundays,
wind that swirled the clay on the court into mini-tornadoes; the sight of
bluebirds perched on a Page Fence surrounding the courts.
Skies remain uniformly gray, a 15 mph wind blowing from the northwest, but it
could but colder, it could be a biting wind, but it isn’t. This wind makes you
turn up your collar but not turn around and walk into it backwards.
I drive by Recreation Park, and the city tennis courts Murph haunted. They are
bare. I wish someone was playing in his honor out there. In the park’s otherwise
empty parking lot, a man stands behind a van, dressed in a kilt playing
bagpipes.
I go to the church, sit and listen to priests tell his family and friends that,
yes, his life was short, very short – dead at 61 – but he now enjoys eternal
bliss.
A large skylight over the alter tells me nothing has changed with the sky, which
remains light gray and casts a diffuse and not-unpleasant brightness over people
whose faces are solemn.
Outside, afterwards, we congregate by the church’s front. There stands the
bagpiper I saw in the park, playing Amazing Grace as that wind swirls and people
try turning their backs. Next to the door, a small ornamental maple still holds
fiery leaves. John’s daughter approaches, pain and grief on her face. We hug.
The wind stiffens. The bagpiper plays his last note, takes an envelope given by
family members.
We clustered admirers of John David Murphy disperse.
At 4 p.m. I drive through the hills coming home from a trip to Lowe’s. On top of
a hill, on a large pond in front of a well-maintained house – within sight of
five or six other houses – a flock of 40 or so geese eat grass. How long will
they stay? Are they the same geese who raised young here this summer, camped out
here, defied one and all to usurp their claim to this place? Granted, I do not
have to walk through goose droppings daily. If I did, I might hold different
thoughts. But mine on this day are that seeing wild geese on a November
afternoon, three miles from a Lowe’s, where traffic and people conspire to
strip one of nature, is a good thing to see, a good thing for someone who needs
nature.
A few more bright flashes on the drive home: clumps of yellow apples on a tree
devoid of leaves; weeping willows on an opposite hillside. Weepers are last to
drop their leaves, first to grow them again in the spring. These bright spots
counterbalance the somber shades I noticed today as drove by the river: bleached
seeds of box elders, clumped on leafless branches; bleached leaves of silver
maples, dried out and curling, dropping to float down the river.
When I reach Fuller Hollow Road, and can look across the hollow to the hillside
where my house is located, I note the clump of aspens just south of my house –
the ones that let me know exactly where my house is located when they explode at
this time of year – have just about lost all their leaves. I can’t see my house
when I look across this valley. It is obscured by hardwoods year-round. The hill
is one big forest, so I need to find landmarks that let me know where the house
stands. When bright aspen leaves fall, I will revert to locating my house by
tall Norway maples across the road.
I rake laves from 4 to 5 p.m. The sky has broken up a bit, the wind still blows.
Just at sunset, on the southwestern horizon, a break in the clouds allows me to
glimpse the sun setting. My window is brief. In the course of a minute or two,
the sun drops below a dense gray line of clouds, reveals its entire golden disk
and then falls below a hill that has turned almost black with the coming of
darkness.
I rake, hearing only the tines scratching earth. Fallen aspens leaves catch my
attention. I pick up three, twirl their square stems, feel for their waxy
exterior, which is there, but already diminishing. All three leaves I’ve picked
up feature small splotches of green, thumbnail sized, where chlorolphyll still
fights the good fight.
I rake, start to sweat and thank someone somewhere I am healthy enough to rake
leaves and prefer it to buying a blower. I feel my upper arms strain – stomach
muscles, too - as I pull. I heap leaves in a cart, then rake them out of a cart
into a pile that grows big but will shrink when the snow piles upon it.
I think the kindest of thoughts for one John David Murphy. He should be here
this day. I thank someone somewhere that I’m able to watch a gray sky in
November turn black.
Nov. 7, 06
Nice buck with big six-point rack walks through the back woods at 1 p.m.
Immature accipiter perched in pine in the morning.
Nov. 8
Wrong forecast.
Forecast at 8 a.m.: A few glimpses of sunlight this morning. Clouding up this
afternoon.
Reality: Very cloudy all morning, clearing dramatically by 2 p.m. Brilliant sky
until sunset.
Squirrel antics – 8 in the yard, a new record. They maintain their space for the
most part. Occasionally, the spacing agreement falls apart. Two squirrels meet,
swirl and twirl in one another’s grasp. Are they biting, clawing? Is there a
pecking order I can’t detect because all squirrels look alike to my ignorant
eyes?
Occasionally, a squirrels climbs the red maple, leaps through the air, strikes
the feeder and falls to the ground. A few seeds spill out, which the squirrel
speedily consumes, like a vacuum beneath it. Birds continue arriving. To me,
this seems like we’ve reached compromise.
Waxy aspen leaves, plucked from the ground yesterday, lie curled and drying by
my computer. One day after falling, they crinkle like parchment, their yellow
fading from butter yellow to the color of hair on old men who once used to be
blond.
Aspen leaves flutter down on the lawn I raked clean yesterday. Once they fall,
they lie as individuals, separated from their fellow leaves, surrounded by
grass, standing out as having recently dropped. Low sunlight at 3 p.m. shines
through those that have landed perpendicular to the ground lie propped up. The
sun courses through them, illuminates their transparency.
I see the same thing on a Japanese maple on a street corner, in a neighborhood,
an hour later. The sun, even lower, instills incredible crimson in the leaves it
shines though.
Bradford pear has its best day all year – yellow and red at its finest. It does
seem that non-native trees are carrying the torch at this time of year:
Bradford, weeping willow, Norway maple, Japanese maple.
I rake more leaves. At the edge of the lawn, I rake leaves and uncover dozens of
bright red thorn apples on the ground. A bumper year. I think back to a morning
two weeks ago when I watched four deer standing in this same place, less than
five feet from one another, nosing about in the leaves, eating something. Now I
know what that thing was.
I drive by two Lombardy poplars. These are wimps in the north country scheme of
long-lasting survival. They grow fast, they block wind, then they die before two
decades pass. I’m not a big fan, but these two… Ramrod straight, tall as flag
poles, their columnar shapes boast yellow leaves that have mostly fallen away on
their lower reaches, but remain dense and bright at their tops. Thus I see, when
I pass, two great flagpoles with bright yellow flags on the top, against
cloudless blue sky.
A beautiful breeze, 10 or 15 mph, from the southwest, defies early November.
Crows manage it routinely, landing on spruce branches, where they teeter and
sway as if this was the norm, and it is.
The sky is big now. I look through trees where leaves once blocked my vision. I
see the outline of hills that surround me – these hills that define who I am,
where I live, what it looks like in all its incarnations.
Through leafless branches I watch clouds turn pink at sunset. Contrails blaze
through the twilight. White clouds ripple away, turning pink by the second.
Nov. 8, 11 - On the river... Air temp at 68, water temp at 40.
Light south wind. One blue-winged teal in channel, along with two ducks I think
were goldeneye. One showed white on face as they flew away. At home... female
red-bellied woodpecker coming regularly to suet.
Nov. 9
Cold front blows through in the night. Strong wind through bare branches. It
moans around corners. It howls in cul-de-sacs where it swirls piles of oak
leaves. It makes the night long. One feels vulnerable, even though the house is
warm and the log walls impervious to wind of this nature.
Four jays in the yard, on the ground, after sunflower seeds. For the first time,
after watching a million jays, I note they feature two different types of color:
pale purple on the neck and back, with bright blue on the wings and tail.
Stiff wind continues through the late morning. Driving along Riverside Drive, I
watch a flock of 30 starlings trying to fly into the wind. A gust blows them
into disarray. They blow around helter-skelter, like flecks of pepper tossed
into the wind.
Sun glints on the river, blinding, glaring, even when viewed through tree leaves
that have yet to fall.
A nuthatch pair spirals down a column-shaped maple on the way to a bird feeder.
They both work their way down the trunk upside down.
At dusk a turkey glides – looking as big as a cargo plane - over treetops from
the woods in the back toward the hollow. Sunset is special: It begins with
intermingled horizontal bands of light blue, dark gray and pink. As the twilight
deepens the pink bands grow more and more brilliant.
Nov. 10.
Fork horn buck walks through the woods at 8:30 a.m., head down, trailing scent.
42 degrees on the thermometer at Arena on my way to Upper Lisle. The Norway
maples still hang in there, soft and gold in the early morning sun, yellow
turning a bit more toward orange. On Jutland Rd., two Norway maples are losing
leaves as I drive by. Leaves fall steadily, building a circular mat of yellow on
the road.
Warm sun and a southerly wind at Upper Lisle. Blue sky and dry rustling of
bleached marsh grasses. I walk through a landscape of light browns: flower tops
of goldenrod, crinkled, weathered pods of milkweed, dark brown fronds of ostrich
fern. I walk through those fronds, among the large round balls that hold next
year’s fronds. My foot strikes a milkweed pod still holding its seeds. They fly
into the breeze, twirling as randomly as the starlings I saw flying yesterday.
The seeds glisten bright silver in the late morning sun.
A pair of hooded mergansers float nearly against the riverbank. The bank is high
and topped with tall grasses. Male’s bright white head patch clearly visible
from 50 years. A pair of wood ducks flush from beneath me, also close to the
bank. They cross the river, land by the opposite bank, begin preening and slowly
making their way downriver.
Kingfisher rattlers. Great blue heron flaps slowly through the leafless willows.
I hear the faint scream of a red-tail hawk. The bird lifts from a dead limb and
circles. The bird seems almost clumsy for the first few beats of its wings, then
finds the groove and circles easily several times before drifting away
downriver. The bird seems huge, compared with the broadwings I have been
watching all summer and the Cooper’s hawk that has swept through the yard
several times in the past fortnight.
A hairy woodpecker approaches from across the river. Out in the open, it beats
its wings several times very hard, then swoops deeply on folded wings. Coming
out of the dive, the bird uses its momentum to rise once again, still without
beating its wings. Only when it has reached the same height where it last beat
it wings, it beats them again. Arriving on my side of the river, the bird deftly
lands on a very dead tree trunk and begins pounding out Morse Code.
Nov. 10, 11 - Adult red-tailed hawk soaring and calling just over the top of
lower woods. Pileated woodpecker has excavated a huge opening at base of large
decaying red maple at edge of trail in lower woods.
Nov. 11. Cold Sunday morning. Dark at 6 a.m. Don’t want to get up. Start a
fire. Slowly the gray begins to lighten. Smoke from the fire swirls. There is
wind. Mike and I float the Otselic. The river is low. As I pull it through
shallows, snow flurries descend. Many jays. I also hear woodpeckers squeaking
and drilling. We see ducks – male common merganser sees us and moseys downriver.
Three black ducks and two mallard hens erupt just beyond a grass clump in the
middle of the river. Hemlock banks, very steep. We hear scratching feet, see
turkeys silhouetted at the top of the ridge. Sparrows flit through riverside
tangles. Three wood ducks take off from beneath the protective, tangled branches
of an overhanging box elder.
Wind kicks up from the northwest, ripping the river, right in our faces. It cuts
our bare fingers. In a protected cove, we see 15-20 wood ducks, swimming about.
No wind over there. They make us, take of, whirl and swirl in the sky. A flock
of 15 geese honks as it makes way to the south on the wind we are cursing this
moment.
Nov. 12
More cold and west wind – high around 40. I hear a grosbeak while hacking dead
branches from shrubs. I look up to see grosbeaks and see none. But I do see the
silhouette of a buteo, soaring south, slipping not far above treetops, in view
only two or three seconds, then gone, over a hill to the south.
Most of the leaves are gone. They reveal berries, fruits – yellow apples the
deer much (I can hear their teeth chomping), viburnums (nanny berry) dark
purple, gray dogwood, bright white; thorn apples on the ground; autumn olive,
pale red.
Another fortuitous glance: I look out Chris’s window to watch a brown creeper do
its patented upward spiral.
Walk in the woods – find a deer skull, a fork horn with spurs, not gobbled by
deer mice.
Chris has killed 15 deer mice since returning from a three-week trip two nights
ago. He puts them on a stump and the crows happily carry them away. They are
cute, but they have to go. They eat through coffee packages, dig up the house
plants and throw dirt around, eat through juice boxes so that juice drips down
walls.
Chipmunks still active. When will they go underground?
Clearing toward evening. It will be well below freezing tonight.
Nov. 12, 11 - Several small flocks of blackbirds migrating south. Also 20 or so
ring-billed gulls heading south over lake at sunset. Photographed
red-bellied woodpecker at suet feeder. Chris reports seeing three river otters
in a beaver pond south of Forest Lake is Susquehanna County, Pa.
Nov. 13.
Hard frost in the morning – mid=20s. Only the second hard frost in a very mild
fall.
As I drive down Foster rd. in the afternoon, an immature red-tail flies off a
fence post and flaps low across a mowed field. Very large and very brown.
Late afternoon – a doe in the yard, very tame. I note the black that rims the
inside of her ears, the black of her muzzle and eyes.
15 mourning doves feed on the ground. They blend with the soil, gray on brown.
Then they erupt, surprised by my quick step. From calm to panic, always
graceful, wings whistling (which adds excitement to their vigorous flapping.)
I walk to the edge of the woods at dusk. Dozens of opened acorns under my feet
beneath a spreading white oak. I hear leaves rustling in the woods. It is too
late for squirrels and turkeys to be about. Deer are descending the hill.
As darkness descends they become even more invisible than normal in a November
woods. A flicking white tail may give one away. I am discovered. One deer stands and
stamps, then walks forward a step, then stops again. Then a nasal shriek, and
the deer takes two or three bounds back up the hill. I retreat from the woodland
edge, as the cold sets in quickly with clear skies over head. Pink and blue
streaks slowly fade on the southwest horizon.
Nov. 14.
Warm day in the mid-50s, with sun and a soft south wind. A large buck chases a
doe through the woods around 8 a.m. Both are trotting, she about ten yards ahead
of him.
Went to Chris’s and cut some small red maples we had dropped two years ago.
Then had a campfire around 5:30 p.m. Pine needles thick and very dry. Fire
creeps among them as we kick the burning needles back into the flames. We break
pine branches for fuel and they burn. The fire quickly dies to a mound of embers
with blue flames leaping above them. It is a mild night – no cold air on my back
as I face the flames. As usual, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to
the flames as the fire dies.
I hope to hear a great horned owl but only hear the echoing barks of a distant
dog.
Nov. 15
20 turkeys in the yard this morning.
Nov. 15 – 06
Large 6-point buck in the yard with a doe. Absolutely at ease eating grass.
Nov. 17 – 07
45 turkeys walk through the yard at 8 a.m.
Nov. 17
Returning from Connecticut, Jan and I discover three white-winged crossbills on
our thistle feeder. One brick-red male and two females, greenish brown and
streaky. The male hangs upside down from one perch to extract seed from opening
below. I walk to within four feet of them and they don’t fly. Their crossed
bills are difficult to see until you get very close to them. They are bigger
than the siskins we also get at the thistle in winter.
Nov. 18
Two female crossbills appear at thistle late in the day, but no male. This will
be the last time I see them.
Nov. 18, 02.
Three inches of wet snow covering everything this morning. Carolina wren at suet
and hopper feeder.
Nov. 18, 11
Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. Several hundred ring-necked ducks, numerous
green-winged teal, fair numbers of shovelers. Thousands of Canada geese. No snow
geese. About 50 tundra swans, all sleeping. Juvenile bald eagle and female
harrier.
Nov. 21, 11
A dozen turkeys at the feeder. Hadn't seen one for weeks.
All good sized;
at least one with a short beard.
Nov. 22
Beautiful Thanksgiving Day. Temp around 50. Light-phase rough-legged hawk
circling over the house, slowly making way southward. Dark patches near elbows
of wing. Dark breast. Light belly and tail, with dark tail band. Light head. All
of this very clear against a blue sky.
Nov. 23
Driving to Albany on Route 88, Jan and I see many red-tailed hawks sitting
in trees by the side of the road. Dark and motionless.
Nov. 23, 11 - Two dozen juncos arrive in yard at 3 p.m., migrating south on a
stiff NW wind. Red-bellied woodpecker female continues to visit suet, as does
borwn creeper.
Nov. 24, 08
Flock of 15 or so robins flying about at corner of Powderhouse and Murray Hill
roads.
Nov. 26, 08
Pileated woodpecker has been very active the past week, calling and drumming.
Nov. 27 - Dawn breaks with a pervasive orange sky – unworldy, the whole sky
aglow in brilliant orange. There must be fog in the air, its droplets catching
sun’s first rays. The brilliance lasts a minute, then begins fading fast. In
five minutes the sky is gray.
Nov. 28
Crowd of 21 turkeys has been here for a week or more.
Nov. 28, 08 – Two cedar waxwings in maple at edge of yard.
Nov. 30. Two gobblers appear with 30 other turkeys. They fan, strut.