May 13, 2010 - Back home, where spring is in a hurrySUFFOLKTIMES.COM I MAY 13, 2010
Back home,
where spring 0
s in a
u
Before we left Florida we had read that spring
was two weeks early on the North Fork this year.
That meant we were going to be in a new green
world when we arrived. The lawns should not have
been so green. The budding trees should have
been in their infancy. Everything was c
ahead of schedule. . -
Across our pasture we could see
three or four ospreys flying and call-
ing around our windmill. Each year
they make an attempt at building
a nest on top of it. We wondered if
this year they would finally succeed.
But no, all that seems to be accom-
plished is a pile of sticks and debris Equi_
that has mostly fallen to the ground.
Each day it was the same: ospreys diving and flying
and screaming and dropping nesting material on
the top of the windmill.
ur
maven tnougn we were sad to see failure, we
always enjoy the ospreys landing on our windmill
to dine on their freshly caught fish. Most of the fist.
we could identify as bunkers, for their forked tails
and silver sheen gave them away.
One day Barbara caught a glimpse of some-
thing moving not far from the windmill and tried
to identify it. She thought it might have been the
groundhog that visited us last year. She got out the
binoculars and to her surprise it turned out to be a
beautiful, big red fox. Later that day we also saw a
young fox playing on the back hill.
Barbara thou --ht it prudent to check on our
thickens, as we've had problems with foxes betore.
[hey like chickens. Some of you readers may recall
he day we had a family gathering and sat and
Hatched a fox chase a hen across the lawn, only to
match the chicken out of the air when it could'fly
no longer. Our real concern was for
the two bantam hens now setting
on eggs that should hatch within the
next week, but it turned out that all
was well in the hen house.
All the time we were watching the
ospreys and fox, we were surprised
to notice how green everything
I and how many shrubs were in
blossom and trees were in leaf. Our
r_ edbud is in full bloom, along with
e az eas, a star magnolia and, of course, the
daffodils and tulips.
We stopped by our son's place to pick a bunch of
lilacs with their wonderful spring fragrance. That's
not what I remember most about the lilacs from
years ago. Lilacs were the signal that the weakfish
were running. As I've mentioned before in this
column, one of my greatest days when weakfish
were in was a day Dennis Puleston came to the
house and I took him across the bay in my canoe to
do some birding on Robins Island. On the way back
I thought we'd try to pick up a few weakfish. To the
delight of both of us, we loaded our bucket with
those silvery fighting fish.
The only bad side to that story was that when Bar-
bara filled the electric frying pan outdoors with the
roe and walked down the driveway to the mailbox
while they cooked, she returned to find Flicka, our
golden retriever, licking her chops and an empty fry
pan! So much for weakfish roe for the rest of us.
Before we left Florida, we had been watching the
red - bellied woodpeckers as they enjoyed the suet
cake at our window. Occasionally they woke us
up with their drumming on. the gutter. I think we
spoiled them by feeding them raw peanuts in the
shell. What they would do was fly away and take
the nuts out of the shell and then fly to a nearby
telephone pole, where they would insert them in a
hole for later use.
It didn't take us long to see our first red - bellied
woodpecker back here in Cutchogue performing the
same ritual of drumming on our rain gutter. It has
taken to the sunflower seed and suet and perhaps
soon well see if they, too, like peanuts in the shell.
Actually, wildlife in our backyard has kept us busy
since arriving. Early mornings, three or four deer
wander through our place heading out for the day,
and later in the afternoon we often see them when
they return for the night. We've lost a few plants and
bushes to them, so we fence in whatever we feel we
need to keep for ourselves, like our vegetable garden
and some special bushes, and the rest we share.
We enjoyed feeding the birds in Florida and now
back home we have enjoyed seeing and hearing
our old friends the chickadees, nuthatches, titmice,
cardinals, finches, wrens and others, all adding
their voices to the mating chorus, which means
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