Through the Window: September 2017

Blue Jay, carved by Bob Spear (photograph by Erin Talmage)

It’s pretty dry out there this month . Several people have called in to report no one is at their feeders. What are your thoughts about that? Have you observed a decline in recent weeks at your feeders? You can compare this September to past ones: 2016, 2015, 2014. Consider coming on October 19th to Steve Faccio’s presentation, The Status of Vermont Forest Birds. (RSVP, so we can have the right number of chairs and possibly refreshments.)

Continue reading “Through the Window: September 2017”

The Bird Carver’s Daughter Part 13: Daughter vs. Tractor

Bob Spear driving a red tractor at the Birds of Vermont Museum

Guest post by Kari Jo Spear, Photographer, Novelist, and Daughter of Bob Spear
This post appeared first in our Summer 2017  issue of
Chip Notes.
Reprinted by permission.

I had never been so terrified in my life.

I usually loved sugaring season and how maple permeated my life for those short, intense weeks between winter and spring. I loved the trees as they came to life, loved how the chickadees’ spring whistles would answer the gentle creak of my father’s hand awl as he tapped the trees. I loved the pinging of sap into metal buckets, loved the smell of the steam-filled sugar house, and loved the
quiet roar of the evaporator over the crackling wood fire. I even loved helping out at the famous sugar-on-snow parties at the Audubon Nature Center, endlessly explaining to tourists the route a drop of sap takes on its adventure from tree to metal can.

But I did NOT like the Nature Center’s tractor.

It was a huge, red behemoth with rear tires that were taller than I was. It had a seat on a spring that bounced up and down and a little pipe on the top where exhaust came out. I liked riding on the back of it just fine, standing behind my father and holding onto his shoulders. I also liked standing on the wooden runner boards of the gathering tank while my father towed it through the orchard. It was especially fun when my father drove through the muddy brook and the water gushed up over the boards. I had to pick my feet up and cling to the tank itself. He would always glance over his shoulder to make sure I hadn’t been swept downstream.

But the tractor itself was loud and scary.

One year on the first day of tapping, when I was about twelve, my father hitched on the wooden, flatbed trailer and loaded it with hundreds of stacked buckets. He would drive through the orchard, stopping at central locations, and we would carefully place the required number of buckets at the base of every maple. Then, over the next few days, he and volunteers would tap the trees and hang the buckets. But he was the one who made the all-important decision about how many buckets each tree would get. It was an instinct my father had—I never saw him measure a tree’s girth. After years of sugaring, each tree had become a personal friend of his.

But before we headed out that morning, he paused. “If someone drove the tractor slowly,” he said, looking right at me, “and I walked along beside it to scatter buckets, it wouldn’t take so long.”

Behind me, I felt the tractor getting taller by the second.

“You do know I’m twelve, right?” I asked. “And I can’t get my learner’s permit for three years?”

My father did that kind of shrugging thing he did. “Well, you’ve got long legs.”

I rolled my eyes and was glad he hadn’t pointed out that he had been driving tractors since he was six.

“I’ll show you how,” he said before I had agreed, and he swung himself up onto the seat. I climbed to my spot behind him. He fired up the engine and started pushing his feet on pedals I’d never really noticed before. And he did something with his right hand on some little sticky-up things near the steering wheel. All the time, he was talking very loudly over his shoulder at me.

I found myself nodding. It was kind of like when he explained my math homework. I understood it as he went, but by the time he got to the last step, the first few were long gone.

After a little while, he stopped. “Okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said.

He took that as an affirmative, and before I quite knew it, we’d traded spots.

Yes, the tractor was at least six times taller when I was in the bouncy seat.

“See, your feet reach,” he said from where he stood at my shoulder.

I looked ahead of me. We were on the side of a hill. The road was just a little wider than the tractor, and it was sunken down between banks on either side. Innocent maples grew close. I glanced over my shoulder. The trailer loaded with buckets was even wider than the
tractor.

“Stop before you get to the brook,” he said. “You probably don’t want to try that today.”

I shot him an incredulous glance, but he was already telling me what to do with my feet and the little sticky-up things. I drew a deep breath, held it, and tapped the thing he’d called a clutch very gently with the toe of my boot.

“Clomp on it,” he said.

I clomped.

Things happened fast. The red behemoth made a deeper-throated  growl than I’d ever heard before, a huge puff of dark smoke came out of the pipe, and then there was a lurch and a jolt and we blasted forward. I heard my normally unflappable father yell something in my ear that sounded like “Steer!” But the wind racing past me tore
his words away. I looked away from my feet and up the road, but it was gone and there wasn’t anything except maples in front of me.

I heard the word, “Brake!” but I had no clue which pedal that was, and the maples were picking up speed. So I slammed both my feet down on everything they could reach.

With the shriek of overstressed metal, the tractor flung itself to a halt and shut itself off, tilted to one side. Behind me, piles of neatly stacked buckets toppled into each other, flew off the trailer, crashed to the ground, and rolled down the hill. For a while, my father and I were silent, listening to buckets slam into trees. Then it was very quiet.

“Huh,” I said.

“Well…” my father said. “Guess that’s one way to scatter buckets.”

He kind of laughed, but I wasn’t feeling it. So he jumped down, and he had to give me a hand because my knees weren’t working any longer.

The tractor had one set of tires in the road and the other set up the bank. There was a maple about five inches in front of its nose. I thought the poor tree looked kind of pale. If it had had apples, I’m sure it would have thrown some at me.

“Did I kill it?” I asked, nodding at the tractor.

My father snorted. “It’s a Farmall.”

Still, I noticed he gave it an apologetic pat as he climbed up to the seat. While he backed onto the road, I started picking up buckets.

Hours later, when it was getting dark, we walked to the parking lot. But before we got into the car, my father stopped and looked at me. “Three years, you said?”

“Maybe longer,” I said.

He nodded fervently.

Bob Spear driving a red tractor at the Birds of Vermont Museum

 


Kari Jo Spear‘s young adult, urban fantasy/romance novels are available at Phoenix Books (in Essex and Burlington, Vermont), and on-line at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: The Early Years
Part 2: The Pre-teen Years (or, Why I’m Not a Carver)
Part 3: Something’s Going On Here
Part 4: The Summer of Pies
Part 5: My Addiction
Part 6: Habitat Shots
Part 7: Growing Up
Part 8: My Dead Arm
Part 9: Remembrance: Tales of My Father
Part 10: Canoe Lessons
Part 11: Battlefields
Part 12: My Father and the Speedboat

 

Through the Window: May 2017

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Female (woodcarving)

Wow, what a spring! Some unusual species seen and heard this month, for us, down here at the Viewing Window. (Okay, okay, we did record a few birds heard or seen while we were coming into the Museum or running out to check the mail….)

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Female (woodcarving)
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Female (carved by Bob Spear)

Bold items in this list are those species not recorded last month.

  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Dark-eyed Junco
  • Blue Jay
  • Red-Winged Blackbird
  • Mourning Dove
  • Tufted Titmouse
  • White-throated Sparrow
  • Wild Turkey
  • Brown-headed Cowbird
  • Hairy Woodpecker
  • American Goldfinch
  • Common Grackle
  • Rose-breasted Grosbeak (May 2, 2017 and often thereafter)
  • Downy Woodpecker
  • Wood Thrush
  • Ruby-throated Hummingbird (First of Year male: May 10, 2017; female: May 13)
  • White-breasted Nuthatch
  • Red-breasted Nuthatch
  • Common Raven
  • Northern Cardinal
  • Baltimore Oriole (FOY 5/15/2017)
  • Ovenbird (heard outside May 16, 2017)
  • Canada Goose (heard outside May 14, 2017)
  • Song Sparrow (heard outside)
  • Scarlet Tanager (Male, seen drinking from stream below the riparian slope pollinator gardens on May 17, 2017)
  • Eastern Phoebe (nesting under Bridge)
  • Cooper’s Hawk (trying to take prey at the feeding area, May 28, 2017; two unsuccessful attempts)
  • Olive-sided Flycatcher (heard and seen Tuesday May 23, 2017)
  • Eastern Towhee

The usual mammals maintained their presence: Red and Gray Squirrels, and Eastern Chipmunks. We didn’t observe the Eastern Cottontail but we did see the Woodchuck. Wood Frogs tadpoles occupied the pon on May 17, 2017, and Tiger Swallowtail butterflies are back by May 23.

Our “summer” hours have arrived! May through October, we are open daily from 10am – 4pm (with a few extra evenings, and sometime closed for part of the July 4 holiday). Click over to our events page.  If you follow us on Facebook, Twitter , tumblr, and/or Instagram too, you’ll find more comments, links, and observations. See you soon!

The “Through the Window” series is an informal record of observations made by staff, volunteers, and visitors. Anyone at the Museum may add to this list. Observations are usually through our viewing window: a large window with a film covering that helps hide watchers from the birds. We have chairs and binoculars to try, a white board, and many identification guides. Outdoors, several feeders are attached on a single, bear-resistant pole. A small pond, flowers and water plants, shrubs and trees add cover and (seasonally) other food choices . You can sometimes see what we see via our webcam.

Through the Window: April 2017

Welcome spring! As often in April, the number of species seen rises dramatically. Boldface in this list are those species not recorded last month.

  • Wild Turkey
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Blue Jay
  • Northern Cardinal
  • Dark-eyed Junco
  • White-breasted Nuthatch
  • Mourning Dove
  • Red-Winged Blackbird
  • Downy Woodpecker
  • Red-tailed Hawk (seen soaring over Museum 4/4/17)
  • Hairy Woodpecker
  • American Tree Sparrow
  • Turkey Vulture (overhead, westward, 4/4/17)
  • Brown-headed Cowbird
  • Tufted Titmouse
  • American Crow
  • Song Sparrow
  • Fox Sparrow (4/6/17)
  • Eastern Phoebe (talking 4/10, and at bird blind)
  • Purple Finch (First of Year 4/15/17)
  • Pine Siskin (First of Year, 4/15/17)
  • American Goldfinch
  • Common Grackle
  • Downy Woodpecker
  • Red-breasted Nuthatch
  • Northern Flicker (4/17/17)
  • Ruby-crowned Kinglet (4/19/17)
  • Barred Owl (heard 4/13/17)
  • Chipping Sparrow (First of year 4/25/17)
  • White-throated Sparrow

The usual mammals maintained their presence: Red and Gray Squirrels, Eastern Cottontail rabbit, and Eastern Chipmunks. Wood Frogs made the feeder area mini pond noisy on several rainy days, and Spotted Salmander eggs will remain in the pond for a little while longer.

Our “summer” hours have arrived! May through October, we are open daily from 10am – 4pm (with a few extra evenings, and sometime closed for part of the July 4 holiday). Click over to our events page.  If you follow us on Facebook, Twitter , tumblr, and/or Instagram too, you’ll find more comments, links, and observations. See you soon!

The “Through the Window” series is an informal record of observations made by staff, volunteers, and visitors. Anyone at the Museum may add to this list. Observations are usually through our viewing window: a large window with a film covering that helps hide watchers from the birds. We have chairs and binoculars to try, a white board, and many identification guides. Outdoors, several feeders are attached on a single, bear-resistant pole. A small pond, flowers and water plants, shrubs and trees add cover and (seasonally) other food choices . You can sometimes see what we see via our webcam.

Through the Window: March 2017

March was a mix, with bare ground and then snowstorm Stella. A small snafu, so we don’t have our white board list from February but we did of course keep track over on eBird. for our monitoring walks and so on.  So bold in this list indicates “not seen in January” instead of “not seen last month.”

  • Wild Turkey
  • Northern Cardinal (male)
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Blue Jay
  • Red-Winged Blackbird (The First-of-Year Red-winged Blackbird showed up at the end of February, which always seems to surprise us, even though it happens almost every year.) 
  • Mourning Dove
  • White-breasted Nuthatch
  • Tufted Titmouse
  • Downy Woodpecker
  • Red-breasted Nuthatch
  • Hairy Woodpecker
  • White-throated Sparrow
  • Common Grackle (F.O.Y. March 25)
  • Dark-eyed Junco
  • American Crow (3 on March 27)

The usual suspects: Red and Gray Squirrels, White-tailed Deer, and an Eastern Cottontail rabbit. On th enight came: a Raccoon.

Even though we ask that you call or email to set up a visit (from now through April 30), we have some exceptions for open days, special events, and offsite activities: Click over to our events page.  If you follow us on Facebook, Twitter , tumblr, and/or Instagram too, you’ll find more comments, links, and observations. See you soon!

The “Through the Window” series is an informal record of observations made by staff, volunteers, and visitors. Anyone at the Museum may add to this list. Observations are usually through our viewing window: a large window with a film covering that helps hide watchers from the birds. We have chairs and binoculars to try, a white board, and many identification guides. Outdoors, several feeders are attached on a single, bear-resistant pole. A small pond, flowers and water plants, shrubs and trees add cover and (seasonally) other food choices . You can sometimes see what we see via our webcam.

Species List from February 2017 Bird Monitoring Walk

Crazily warm day for a walk last Saturday! Birds are singing: there was a tremendous cacophony of competing Black-capped chickadees singing on Thursday the 23rd, which was a delight. Today the Northern Cardinal was singing in the dogwoods. And the Birders left lots of treats in the Museum fridge; I think I gained 10 pounds just nibbling on them as I assembled this post for you… Thanks everyone, for baked goodies, bird observations, and community companionship.

Birds of Vermont Museum, Chittenden, Vermont, US
 Feb 25, 2017 8:05 AM
 Protocol: Traveling
 Party Size: 8
 Duration: 1 hour(s), 35 minute(s)
 Distance: 1.609 kilometer(s) 
 Comments:     
 10 species
 
 Canada Goose 12
     Flyover
 Mourning Dove 17
 Downy Woodpecker 1
 Blue Jay 8
 American Crow 10
 Black-capped Chickadee 12
 Tufted Titmouse 2
 White-breasted Nuthatch 1
 Dark-eyed Junco 1
 Red-winged Blackbird 1
     In the feeder area, 1 male
 
 View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S34782352

 Feb 25, 2017 8:00 AM - 10:35 AM
 Protocol: Stationary
 Comments:     Observed from the feeder window during the monitoring walk. Very warm conditions: 50 degrees.
 7 species
 
 Mourning Dove  2
 Downy Woodpecker  2
 Hairy Woodpecker  4
 Blue Jay  5
 Black-capped Chickadee  3
 Tufted Titmouse  2
 Red-winged Blackbird  3
 
 View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S34783779
 
These reports were generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org)

We’ll be out again on March 25 at 8:00 a.m. for our next Monthly Bird Monitoring Walk. Tell us you’ll be joining us!

Remember: there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

The Bird Carver’s Daughter (Part 12: My Father and the Speedboat)

Infamous Speedboat-eating Rocks in Lake Champlain

Guest post by Kari Jo Spear, Photographer, Novelist, and Daughter of Bob Spear
This post appeared first in our Fall Spring 2016  issue of
Chip Notes.
Reprinted by permission.

One family story from before I was born has always haunted me. I could never get my head around the fact that my quiet, slow-moving father had once owned a speedboat and raced around Lake Champlain in it. But as to why he no longer owned it by the time I was old enough to remember has become part of the mists of the past.

When I asked him, all he would say was, “I hit a rock.” End of discussion. End, I assumed, of the speedboat. This helps explain why my father never had anything good to say about the smelly, gas-wasting, pollution-causing, noisemakers that went so fast you couldn’t tell a ring-billed from a herring gull.

My mother didn’t like to talk about the rock and boat incident much either, but her version was more detailed than his. According to her, it happened one summer evening in Malletts Bay, near my family’s camp. She, my father, my uncle Frank, my grandmother, and one of my great aunts were out in the boat, enjoying the sunset. The 1950’s style boat was made of dark wood and had two bench seats running across the middle with a steering wheel in the front. My father was operating it.

Suddenly, according to my mother, there was a jolt. The boat’s speed and direction didn’t change. The boat just no longer had a bottom. She could see the water rushing by below her feet, as if the floor had been peeled away by a giant can opener. She said my father looked down, killed the engine, and the boat promptly sank out from under them.

Yup, hit a rock.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. Someone rescued them from the water as it was getting dark and returned them, tired and wet, to camp. The waiting relatives had become frantic, knowing that something had happened, but not what.

Recently, I emailed my uncle Frank, who now lives in Nevada, to see what he remembered about the accident. He gave me the most detailed account I’d heard about what he called The Great Boat Wreck Caper. He described a late afternoon ride in the family’s new boat along the shore of the bay, where they had slowed down to look at the trees and cliffs. (I suspect there might have been “looking for cliff swallows” too, but that’s just speculation.) Then,he said,

“Bob, who was driving, picked up speed, and as we hit full speed we hit the submerged rock or ledge. After a few seconds of bewilderment, we looked down and saw the water pouring into the boat through a large gash in the bottom. It quickly became evident that we couldn’t stay in the boat, so we abandoned ship.”

The boat sank by the stern, looking “exactly like the pictures of ships that had been torpedoed.” But it didn’t, as the other stories had implied, go straight to the bottom. It remained floating with the bow just above the surface. The survivors weren’t picked up immediately by a rescue boat. They actually swam back and stood on the guilty iceberg (I mean, rock) while someone on shore launched a boat and came out to them. (I am sorely tempted to make a comment about a flock of gulls vying for positions, but I won’t.) Once they were aboard, the rescuer towed the disabled boat to the nearest beach, where they removed the motor. Then the rescuer returned the bedraggled shipwreck survivors, along with the motor, back to camp. My uncle stayed up late disassembling and drying it.

My uncle went on to write, “The next morning, Bob woke me up early so we could take his canoe back to where we had beached the boat. We hooked a line to it and towed it back to camp.” (I sense this might have been the moment when the canoe rose to the top of my father’s list of worthwhile boats.) Then he and my uncle returned (again by canoe) to the site of the disaster one last time to dive for loose articles that had fallen out of the boat, including my uncle’s wallet, which had gone spiraling down to the bottom of the lake like the Heart of the Ocean. (Yes, he found it, along with his car keys, still in the pocket of a pair of pants he’d thrown in the boat at the last minute.)

My uncle finished with, “Over the next few days Bob worked out that we could screw a plywood patch into the hole in the bottom and cover it with fiberglass. It didn’t look great but it worked fine so we were back in business.” (Add speedboat repair to my father’s resume.) Still, I infer that the family’s interest in speedboats had ebbed, and my uncle told me that the boat was sold a few years later.

But even though my father didn’t talk about those days much, I can remember him pointing to a marker on the map of the lake that hung on the camp wall. The mark denoted a dangerous shallow spot in the middle of otherwise deep water. My father smiled a little and said, “Yep, I found that one.”

Like my father, I have chosen quiet, reflective paddling over speed. A few weeks ago, I paddled my trusty kayak deeper into Malletts Bay than I’d ever gone before. The lake level was at a near record low. As I came around a point of land, I saw a dark ledge of rock breaking the surface. Next to it was a white buoy with the word “DANGER” in red on the side. And I realized what I must be looking at. The infamous rock ledge that had torpedoed my father’s boat was actually above surface for the first time in years.

I paddled around it and photographed it with my cell phone. Then I just drifted a while and listened to the gurgle of water and the cries of the gulls, and looked deep into the reflections on the water’s surface.

Infamous Speedboat-eating Rocks in Lake Champlain


Kari Jo Spear‘s young adult, urban fantasy/romance novels are available at Phoenix Books (in Essex and Burlington, Vermont), and on-line at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: The Early Years
Part 2: The Pre-teen Years (or, Why I’m Not a Carver)
Part 3: Something’s Going On Here
Part 4: The Summer of Pies
Part 5: My Addiction
Part 6: Habitat Shots
Part 7: Growing Up
Part 8: My Dead Arm
Part 9: Remembrance: Tales of My Father
Part 10: Canoe Lessons
Part 11: Battlefields