Every morning, the flock of eight Canadian wild geese responds to the call of “Gladys goose”, our crippled Canadian goose now residing on our lake. Doodles, of course, goes into the bunny brothel each evening at dusk, to enjoy safe housing and food throughout the night when most predators are out and about, lurking in the shadows, watching for an unwary victim that could be turned into a quick, immediate meal. Doodle’s has been with us for over a year now and wants his room in the barn as soon as the light starts to fade a little. I have been hoping that Gladys would watch and learn that the barn equals safety, as she watches Doodles march in by himself every evening and return when I open the door the next day. She is now roving closer and closer to the barn and allows me to get within ten feet of her on foot, or on the garden tractor. She is no longer afraid and running to the lake in my presence as she did at first. Soon, I will approach her with corn in the evenings after the other chickens are penned in and maybe by the freeze, when the pond will offer no refuse from predators, she will also choose to “room” in the barn. Anyway, each morning, Gladys calls and the eight healthy geese fly in and spend time or the entire day with her. If not, they come in the morning and leave after a bit, to return to her calling again in the late evening to dusk. They always come. They have left at nine in the evening too…well after dark and I hear more and more geese flying overhead late at night and into the wee hours of the morning. Recently I read an article by David La Puma, on his site entitled “woodcreeper”, where they have been tracking migrating birds from a trailer in Pennsylvania. This trailer is equipped with radar and infra-red cameras, which allow the sightings of flocks overhead…and then the infra-red cameras allow actual species identification in the dead of night. Believe it or not, it was recently calculated by a member of the Pennsylvania game commission, that migrating birds were passing overhead at the rate of thirteen thousand birds per hour! And if that’s not amazing enough...just remember that this radar and camera set-up is only a small sampling of the night sky in total, so just imagine what goes past overhead at night that we don’t see. This number is only what could be individually distinguished by the infra-red camera, not the masses of “un-countable” migrating birds, shown as dots and blobs on the radar. Many of these blobs reached as far up as ten thousand feet!!!!! Again, this is one of the many unknown things going on around us during the fall. Thinking back, I remember many nights around Halloween that I was out and saw migrating flocks of geese passing in front of a big, beautiful Harvest moon. I remember thinking how these things were one of the reasons I love this time of the year. Now I know it was much more than met the eye. Yesterday, Vick, her Mom and I made the trip into Massachusetts, where we veered south at Springfield and headed toward Hartford and beyond to the Cabela’s store in East Hartford. We met her Aunt Sheila and Uncle Charlie there for lunch, which we enjoyed on site. We spent a few hours there visiting and shopping before leaving and following Uncle Charlie and Sheila to their local Stew Leonard’s store where we shopped for an hour or so. They go there all the time, but this was our first time in any of the many S. L. stores. We pass the store in Yonkers which is right off I-87, but never stopped. I believe a stop is now in order anytime we drive past there in the future…… Today our new dining room table is being delivered sometime between two and five. We bought it at Tip-Top Furniture in Freehold. They are great folks down there and we’ve bought all our furniture there. (Any we’ve bought since living in New York anyway) After it arrives, we will take Vick’s Moms home, ending her little vacation with us since the beginning of the week. We had a good time with her and dined out a few times, made some good meals here and enjoyed yesterday’s adventure to top off her visit. I’ll post some pictures of the new table when it arrives…or later this evening, if not tomorrow morning.
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