16 March 2013 - Antelope Island

This is always such an interesting stretch of days: Pi Day, Ides of March, David's birthday, St. Patrick's Day all in a row, followed closely by the Vernal Equinox.  It is a great time to get out of the house and celebrate longer days and warmer weather. At least today was--tomorrow has rain and snow in the forecast. 

Jack has been down and miserable with the flu for the last week. Since he wasn't feeling as bad as he had been, he agreed to go on a quickie morning car trip with me to Farmington Bay to see if anything was happening in the bird world. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee, packed up the scope, tripod, camera, binoculars and left. No leisurely morning for us! 

It was an interesting trip out, driving on a freeway that hadn't even been built when we left here for Michigan. There was nothing happening on the Bay. It was so quiet - odd. There was a man running a remote controlled boat around-- herding ducks, but that was about the extent of the activity. 

Jack said he was feeling okay, so we decided to keep going north and check out the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. About halfway there we saw a sign for Antelope Island. Change of plans!

We hopped off the freeway and headed for the island. Leaving the town of Syracuse we drove across a 7 mile long causeway to get to the island. It was beyond words. We were driving with snow covered mountains behind us, lake on either side and heading toward an island. 

The last time I tried to get to the island--which was years ago, the lake was over the road and had washed it out in spots. No luck. In fact, after the road was washed out, it was ten years before it was rebuilt so cars could get out there again. 

A funny thing about Antelope Island is that from across the lake it looks arid. Baked dry and brown. Anyone flying into SLC gets a good look straight down on it and it does not look inviting. Nothing could be more wrong. 

Today was perfect. The colors were incredible: many blues of the lake, the white sand moving into buff grasses, then the gold and rust of taller phragmites--it looked like a watercolor painting. The mountain snow reflecting on the water was the icing on the cake.

    
We chose the road heading south on the east side of the island, so the mountains across the lake are the Wasatch. One of the only signs on the road made us laugh. The island has a herd of 700 buffalo. It is a managed herd and is culled every year to keep it at that number, as the island cannot support a larger herd.  Not more than a mile from this sign, we saw seven buffalo grazing near the road. 

  In addition to buffalo the island has bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope and mule deer. 
 We didn't see any of those. We did see a coyote. We were a long way away from it, but it was unmistakable. 

 We watched it come out of the water and make its way inland. I like the vee wake it is leaving behind.  

We also saw jack rabbits, boy are they fast! Jack saw three maybe four having a fabulous game of chase through the sagebrush and rocks. They were having a great time. Since jack rabbits can really mobile, by the time I found them with my camera and got them in focus they were long gone. I did get a blurry picture of one bunnying off to follow his buddies over the rocks. 

We spent a lot of time oohing and aahing. Fortunately there were many places to pull off the road for some serious admiration.    Every rise, every curve revealed a new vista. All incredibly gorgeous: from the shore line views to the rocky crests.  
 

This slope was topped with what looks like a rock wall. We wondered if the the original Lake Bonneville came up to the rock level. Makes me want to take a geology class. 

We were headed for the Garr Ranch-- originally owned by the Morman church and founded in 1848. It has the original farmhouse, spring house, and rootcellar under a school room.  When we saw a sign pointing to a lookout, we took a detour. The road went pretty much straight up the side of the mountain. I wasn't sure my car would make it up that hill, but it did. The vistas were worth it. 
 
Whenever we stopped  you could hear the air vibrate with the songs of Meadowlarks. Lovely!  Even found one of the singers on top of a rocky outcrop at the top of the lookout. 

 Running around the base of the rocks were lots of little lizards-- the kind we used to catch as kids. I think they are whiptails, but not sure. 

Here are two views looking across the lake from the lookout point. 

The high point, okay one of many high points on this trip for me was seeing two (2!) great horned owls. They were sitting in a knot of branches high in a cottonwood tree. Hard to see and harder still to get pictures of as the camera wanted to focus on the branches in front of them. But still, what a treat!

 Almost as interesting as the owls were the remnants of a meal hanging from a branch below them. 

 

Can't help myself-- four more pictures of the island. 

 I got tickled when I saw a line of cars pulled over to the side of the road. Everyone was taking pictures of these two riders. Okay, it was picturesque. Towering mountains behind the riders in the sage brush. Still funny. And yes, I took a photo too, but on the fly. Didn't pull over. 

Found several buffalo statues:

 Loved this. Crow on a stump in the lake.

 Here is part of the causeway going across the lake.

There was one little downside to this trip. Ticks. On the way home we stopped at a gas station. We were waiting for a pump to open up. Jack pulled off his ball cap did a double take and started laughing. "Look! I have a passenger."  Big tick walking across the bill of his cap. He rolled down the window and flicked the tick out there somewhere. 

We stopped at David's next, took him cake for his birthday and he fed us dinner. We were telling him about the tick and he was not amused. Especially when we were having dessert.  We set the plates down on the table, I bent over mine for a big sniff of dark chocolate and a tick fell off my head and was crawling across the plate. Jack nudged me surreptitiously, but David noticed it and freaked. Stabbed it to death with a pen.  Later that evening he called Robin to tell her we had infested his house with a plague. 

We did drop all our clothes directly into the washing machine as we stepped into the house. All should be okay.  But truly, those were the biggest ticks I have ever seen. Probably buffalo ticks.  

 

14 March - Spring Fevers

The weather has been warming up. I have spring fever something awful—and that is in addition to Jack’s flu fever and my slightly nauseated feeling (great). Eveyone keeps saying think how bad it would be if you hadn't gotten the flu shot. Small consolation when you are sick. 

The last two days, I got Jack to walk up to Foubert and back, which was hard on him, being sick, but I felt it was better for him to get out in the warm air than languish in the house. The second day, I let him go back by himself and continued on around the loop. A good walk on a sunny day. Fabulous. 

The walk confirmed that under the snow spring is coming. In my own yard I have snowdrops in bloom and daffodil points poking out of the ground. On the walk I saw several of the early trees showing signs the sap is running. Here is a really early aspen tree putting out some catkins. Just this one branch end has fluffed out like the popcorn, but the branches behind it have big swollen buds.

Our neighbor's magnolia is starting to show buds.  And one lone silver maple was covered with red flower buds,  looking  very ready to open. My heart is so happy.
 

Back home I was contemplating spring clean up.  Most of the snow has melted off the lawns and left them in a flat matted state. not good. And the pool-- pretty putrid. Robin called during my musings, and since multitasking is my middle name, I put the phone on speaker, stuck it under my bra strap and proceeded to rake the middle lawn while talking. After a while Robin asked, what is that noise?  Turns out the raking sound was quite annoying over the phone. I tried to rake more quietly. 

Finishing the call, I got serious about the lawn raking. Finished the middle lawn and the side lawn, plus I scattered the trail of deer poop so it would be fertilizer instead of grass killer. This was a solid black trail about 14 to 16 inches wide and at least 15 feet long. It was similar to the trail of sun on a lake as the sun sets.  Hard to see, but this trail goes all the way to the fence behind the tree.

I got Jack to help with the hose and we got the lower pool drained. The next day we raked the decaying leaves out so they could dry, raked leaves out of the upper pool, emptied it into the lower pool and started draining it again. 

Since Jack was up and not feeling too bad, we took the Christmas lights off the trees. Tomorrow we'll tackle the lights under the eaves. 

I would like to finish raking the lawns this weekend, plus we have some downed limbs to cut up and get out.  We have rain in the forecast for the middle of next week and it would be great to have all this done first. We worked so hard on the yard last year that our Spring clean up will be minimal. Minimal being relative of course. 

Yesterday there was an article in the paper about the Avocets returning to the Great Salt Lake in mid-March to start nesting. Mid-March? Close enough. We took a drive out to the lake, but we saw very few birds. I was surprised how few birds there out.  One little brackish pond had a pair of  Redhead Ducks. There were a few coots and many cormorants. No Avocets. But.. the ones we saw? Cool! 

Here is the pair of Redheads, but the black and white duck?  If I have identified it correctly it is a Lesser Scaup, another first for my list!  Ooo-ee!

We parked a stone's throw from the marina and watched a raven. There was a large bird beyond the raven. Too far too see clearly. It was going through all kinds of contortions. I thought it might be bathing. Couldn't see it well enough with the camera to tell what was going on.  After getting home and downloading my pictures, I realized it was an eagle eating something. The contortions were most likely him pulling out the intestines, or stretching pieces of meat from whatever it was eating. 

I bet the raven is waiting around for leftovers. 

At a tailings pond across I-80 was a little island filled with cormorants. 

 The lake is so beautiful and yesterday was no exception. A mist was rising and made it look very otherworldly. 

Just another perfect day in paradise. 


Speaking of Spring, we are 6 days away from the vernal equinox. And not only are we 6 days away,  but we are 6 minutes away. This morning sunrise was at 7:39 am and sunset will be at 7:33. My heart is happy.  

Happy Pi Day!  

8 March 2013 - Just Ducky

 After work today, I grabbed Jack and told him "Road trip." Actually I needed to drive across the valley to Gans Ink to pick up an order, but Gans is not very far from the Lee Kay Ponds and Decker Lake.  Thought it would be fun to see what kind of avian life was happening out there--now that I actually know how to find it, thanks to the Gull-Stravaganza.

We packed up the car with David's scope, tripod, two cameras, binoculars and liquid refreshments. I'm thinking there's gotta be an easier way. Jack navigated and we started at Lee Kay. We saw lots of gulls, most were too far away to identify anything other than the Californias. There were Canada geese, a handful of Crested Cormorants, many many pairs of Mallards and a big flock of male Red-Winged Blackbirds.

Most of the Canadas were up on the islands hiding in the grass, but their heads were sticking up like little periscopes. Fun!

The Mallards were all paired up on the islands as well. With the binoculars I could see they were surrounded in feathers and wonder if they were already starting to build nests. 

Since there wasn't much to see, we moved on to Decker Lake. It was cold, gray and windy today. Jack elected to stay in the car where he could be warm. I ventured out, but not for very long. The lake had coots, some common geese and hundreds of Northern Shovelers. When you see how long and broad the bills are, it is easy to understand why they are called shovelers. The males were in breeding plumage, pretty spectacular. 

In the middle of this huge flock of Northern Shovelers was one male Redhead and several females. 

Last Saturday, in our own backyard we had a pair of hawks. I am pretty sure these are Sharp-shinned Hawks. He is perched in our sycamore tree overlooking the bird feeder.

 

 

3 March 2013 - Snow woes

Woke to the sound of rain this morning.   Two feet of snow on the ground and it is raining--great. We are down to about a foot of  snow on the roof, but I still have foot high ice dams over the eaves across the front of the house. Along with the ice dams, we have ice stalagtites.

Since it was raining, I decided some printing would be a good activity for the day. So first thing, I went out to the shop to switch on the heaters to let it warm up while we had breakfast, read the paper and eased into the day.  Opened the shop door to discover water running down the walls and puddling up on the floor. The water was coming out of the electrical box.  I ran back to the main switch, turned it off, went back and started mopping up. Jack came out and got the wire that was bringing in the most water positioned so the water would drip into can.

We were worried the roof wouldn’t last through the winter, but last winter was so mild...famous last words. I tromped out with ladders, a snow rake and a leaf rake and started pulling down layers of snow and pine needles. We had been keeping the roof clear, but got behind on the last two snow storms.  Jack went to Ace and bought a huge tarp. While he was gone I called David and asked for help. He came right away. David is convinced  we have a leak in the valley right over the door. He is probably right.

It was quite a comedy. The snow around the shop is five and six feet deep from all the times we’ve raked the snow off. You would be walking along on top just fine, then whoosh, you’d take a step and sink to your waist. David went up on the roof and shoveled more snow off, then stayed up to help position the tarp. Jack and I were slogging through the snow dragging the ladder and bench around so we could tie it down.

It has rained all day and is still raining. There is a slight possibility it could turn into more snow tonight. I sure hope not, but we have snow in the forecast for later in the week, so I guess it doesn’t much matter when it comes.

Our paper had an article saying that this was the coldest February on record.  We had 34 straight days below 32 degrees.  it also was one of the snowiest Februarys as well, but we had a lot of really dry snow, it isn’t really helping with the water situation.

I got wet and chilled. I now have changed into dry clothes,and socks and shoes. I’m drinking hot coffee, and I’m cold.  I want to go out and finish my print job, and the rest of me says Couch! Nap! Vegetate!

25 February 2013 - Full Snow Moon

The February full moon is traditionally called the snow moon. February typically has more snow than any other month. Here in Salt Lake it snowed on the snow moon. Just another snowy day in February. And we had many snowy days. 

Currently we have about two feet of snow on the lawns and even more on the roof, not to mention foot high ice dams around the edges. Water is backing up and dripping through the overhang onto the balcony. The icicles are huge. We have been trying to keep them knocked down as I think it must be a huge weight on the eves. It is scary how fast they come back and long they get. 


I know, yet another picture of snow on Mount Olympus. I'm almost through my second winter here, and I am still not over how gorgeous Olympus is, especially after a snowfall. the snow on the trees reminds me of the crystaline structures you could grow in water back when we were kids. 

 

When the sun is a certain angle, the deer trails are easy to see on the hillside.