BREAKING ICE, PILEATED, COOPERS & SCREECH

COOL!  I've always wanted to play icebreaker with my canoe!  Today was the perfect day; temps in the low 60s, but still ice on the pond from last night and Wednesday when the temperature never got out of the low 30s!  The ice was just crunchy enough to make a lot of icy noise, but I could paddle into it.  Blake thought it was somewhat unsettling! Poor pup.

 The Pileated woodpecker is around!  Michael said they've seen it several times, Linda & I saw and heard it the other evening in the tree where the screech owl lived last spring, and I saw it again the next morning in a tree in our front yard.  

A Coopers hawk is frequenting our bird feeder - I think it was probably a Coopers that I saw last week when I didn't get a real good look at it and thought it might have been a Sharp-shinned.  

And we have a screech owl who serenades us in our pre-dawn time on our porch.  Great birds around the pond.

COONS and A CHILLY MORNING PADDLE

Dumb, dumb, dumb. No, it's not dumb that I was out paddling this morning at about 6:30 when it was only 31º, it's dumb that I was out paddling without my binoculars. There are migrants on the pond and I'd love to have been able to see them clearly.

Some Canada geese came in and landed on the pond; as common (and annoying!) as they are, I still love watching them fly in and land.  This morning, flying west just as the sun was coming up, the white "V"s on their tails were luminescent!  

I think I saw some Hooded mergansers; they are fairly common during migration. Then there was something else that flew off as I rounded the bend, but all I know is that they were not our usual ducks (mallards, black ducks, wood ducks).

The pond is beautiful this time of year; there are no water chestnuts left, the scum is gone and the trees reflect in the surface of the pond. It is quite gorgeous. Yes, it was chilly with the thermometer reading only 31, and there's frost on the truck and ice in the birdbath, but somehow paddling warms my soul.

I think we had a Sharp-shinned hawk Coopers hawk on the feeder the other day and the juncos are back. (11/15/13: Decided it was probably the Coopers rather than a Sharpie.  I later got a very good view of a Coopers in the same position and I didn't see it well on this day.)

A very strange thing greeted me as I arrived at the canoes: one of our trash barrels was leaning up against my canoe, having been rolled down the hill from the house. Our coons are quite persistent. Normally they can't get into this trash can and they roll it around up near the house near where it sits, right next to the carport, but they've never taken it down the hill before!  Look carefully at this picture you can see that the trash can must have taken a very odd trajectory to get down the hill, around the trees, rolling somewhat in an arc to the west/right, to land between the canoes. The large end was to the right, so it would have rolled with that curve to the right, but still it's pretty strange. We would've wondered where the trash barrel had gone, when it came time to go to the transfer station tomorrow. Life is never dull here.

(The canoe is wet in the right hand picture, as I had just returned from paddling and repositioned the trash can to take a picture of the trajectory.)