Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 355
March up and down like a yoyo. Maple sap ran well for a few days then locked up with colder temperatures that were popping the trees outside my bedroom window. It looks like it should be running good by the end of the week. My neighbor Eric Sutherland at Moose Maple said he had a good run and made thirty gallons one day that it was running for his one-man operation that day. If his open sign is out, he sells it right there while he is processing. The color looked exceptionally good from the syrup he has been making.
The geese have been flying over and there was a flock in Old Forge Pond today along with a few Mallards. My Evening Grosbeak flock has remained about the same seventy-five to one hundred most everyday and I got out to band few of them. The Blue Jays are still hogging the feeders with around twenty each day. A few Red-winged Blackbirds come and go, and a few Common Grackles are here. Not many small birds but a few Slate Colored Juncos and American Tree Sparrows. The Black Capped Chickadees, both Nuthatches and the Woodpeckers are about the same all winter with the Red-Bellied Woodpecker still showing up each day working the peanut butter logs mostly. With his longer bill he doesn’t take any guff from the Jays.
The snowpack is about a foot in the woods but looking across the pond to the south slope of Potter Ridge that is about bare. The one big rain day and night plugged the culvert on the ski trail up from the house with sticks and leaves which gives added water flowing into my pond that the outlet won’t manage. I must keep checking that when I see water going down the gully in front of the house I know there is a problem up above. With that culvert open it flows under my driveway with no problem and not into the pond.
This year View Arts Center is celebrating seventy-five years in operation from the start on Mernie Kashiwa’s chicken wire fences with art on her front lawn to the green building it now operates out of. Just opening last Saturday is the Regional Show of artwork in the main galleries and artwork from many young adults from many of the local school’s art classes in the Hank Kashiwa Gallery.
I’m sure as most have noticed there has been a big up tick in gas prices locally it went up a week ago from 3.39 to 3.79 and then this week it went to 4.99.9, which I think is five dollars a gallon. Then I got fuel oil today and that went from 3.59 a month ago to 4.79 today. If this had occurred a couple of months ago my trip to Yellowstone Park, which was certainly an outdoor adventure with car travel, air travel, vehicle rental, room rental, meals, and the many other things you encounter on any trip. It would have been double what I paid. That’s what people are now going to be encountering even if you can get on your plane trip on time.
The DEC announces record-breaking 2925 Bear harvest estimates but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Rusty Blackbird
