Summer, that is. In all but the actual date.
 |
| Signal of change? A heron (this very heron?) seems to visit only when the season shifts |
It doesn’t matter if the weather should get hot again and we go swimming one more time––that won’t change anything. It’s all in the signs, the atmosphere. School buses are back on the roads. The clouds have become the clouds of fall, long, dark–even on bright days–and extravagant. Not all the time, mind you, but often enough. And the morning dews are heavier; steps leave footprints in the grass.
Our meadow was mowed, at long last, but this will be the final cut; it will stay short until next spring.
THE COWS OF YESTERDAY
 |
| Addison County Field Days Midway in full swing. |
 |
| Cow love. (Ben) |
Addison County Field Days already belongs to another season. How,
then, did our 4-H’ers make out? There
were essentially two judging categories that mattered: the cow or calf rating, and rating the
person who showed the calf. (This was called “Fitting and
Showmanship.”). The quality of the calf, being essentially genetic, hence not
controllable, left style of presentation the judgment to aim for. Ben’s well-behaved calf Kinzie seemed
to lack some je ne sais pas, so,
alas, Kinzie put Ben near the end of the cow-quality award line. Neither Audrey’s “Belle” nor Carly’s
“Autumn” ended up with beauty prizes either, for that matte, although their
calves looked lovely enough to me.
Happily, Audrey made second (named a “Champion”) for showmanship in
the large novice class in which Ben also got a ribbon. This, despite the fact that Audrey’s
calf kept trying to lie down and take a nap while in the ring. Her cool and friendly handling of this
may not have been a handicap. (By
this time, day four of the fair, all the cows were mighty tired, having been
subjected to more activity and attention than they may ever get again.) Carly was awarded a blue ribbon in her
senior novice class; this was especially satisfying as her calf had spent the previous
24 hours in heat and was pretty agitated. Only Ben’s Kinzie remained serene throughout. But no prizes for serenity. After the fair closed on Saturday the
exhausted 4-H’ers (who as part of their project had to rise at 5 AM each day, clean
the stable area, and otherwise care for and feed the cows every day) went home. So, too, the calves and cows, back to
the quiet rhythm of their own barns and pastures.
 |
| The judge bends over to help Audrey raise an uncooperative Belle. |
YESTERDAY’S HORSES
The most interesting animals at the fair,
other than the cows of course, were the huge draft horses. You seldom get a chance to see these
behemoths close up. Fortunately,
along with great size comes great decorum. Intimidating as they are, they are also uniformly placid and
well-mannered.
 |
| Two gigantic beauties |
We watched a farmer (an actual plowman)
from Whitehall, New York, turn over a field with his massive Suffolk Punch pair.
Suffolk Punches aren’t the biggest of working horses (that would be the
Shire), but were probably the most frequently used agricultural working horse
in their time, the Fords of horsepower.
(Any early description has these selling points: “The breed tends to mature early, be
long-lived, and is economical to keep, needing less feed than
other horses of similar type and size. They are hard workers, said to be
willing to ‘pull a heavily laden wagon till they dropped.” Change a noun or two and this could be
a car ad.) He has owned this pair since they were born. When they reached the right age, each horse
was hitched to an already trained horse and, as it were, trained itself.
 |
| A team of Suffolk Punch |
LAST HUMMINGBIRDS OF SUMMER
They will be gone soon. By mid or late September all our
hummingbirds will migrate south, flying over the Gulf of Mexico, a trip of some 2,000 miles
plus, to reach their wintering grounds in Central America. Given their size, it is astounding that
they can survive such a journey.
 |
| Hummingbirds will nest on a tree branch some 5 to 20 feet off the ground in a nest built of soft down from ferns, milkweed, fireweed, or thistles, and held together by spider or tent caterpillar webs and covered with lichen. A clutch of 2 tiny white eggs, about the size of large peas, is laid and incubated for 11-16 days. |
Archilochus colubris, the ruby-throated hummingbird, is the only variety found east of the Mississippi. It’s three and a half inches from the
tip of its needle-like beak to its tail, and weighs a mere tenth of an ounce. Peering
through binoculars I have managed to see the shimmery ruby throat (a spot only
males have), and its metallic greenish body. Their movements are so rapid I haven’t been able to observe
any more details than that.
Ever since Bob Norland installed two
hummingbird feeders on our front porch in mid-summer we have been filling them nearly
each day, sometimes twice a day, with nectar. The fake nectar consists of four
parts water to one part sugar. We have watched countless ruby-throats zipping wildly
back and forth ever since, their size at odds with their aggressive
nature. There have been daily
aerial battles, and once I even heard the clicking sound of a swordfight of
bills. The constant fighting for
dominance over one feeder or the other (a hummingbird would claim a feeder, sit
on top of it and fend off all comers) doesn’t tend to create much empathy.
But then I read about their lives, and
their migration route, and how close they are each day to starvation. Consider: Hummingbirds fly on average about 50 miles per hour, males
beat their wings about 70 times per second, females about 53 times, their tiny hearts
beat 600 times per minute and up to 1200 times during periods of exertion
(compared with 72 for humans). To survive they need great amounts of energy and must feed
all day, at least every 10 minutes. Each feeding lasts a half to full
minute, as they lick (not suck) nectar from flowers. (They loved our
trumpet-shaped reddish weigela shrubs in July.) Their grooved forked tongues lick about three times per
second. But nectar isn’t enough.
For protein and fat they eat insects.
During severe weather or food
shortage they are able to enter a state of torpor in which their heart rate,
breathing and body temperature drop drastically. They can only remain in this state for some 8 to 12
hours. And they are
loners. Males and females are
together only during courtship and mating.
Already
our feeders have been less attended.
The constant fights over possession seem to have abated. Some have probably already left for
their great trip south. As for the
young swallows that built their nest on our front porch, four young swallows
fledged and have blended in with the other swallows. It was interesting to see that they returned to the nest at
dusk for at least three or four nights before giving up its security forever.
 |
| Four large baby swallows cram themselves back in the nest after fledging. |
THE BATS THAT WEREN’T THERE
By this time most people have heard of
white-nose syndrome that has been held responsible for the tremendous loss of
bats throughout Vermont. The
fungus has killed off nearly six million bats nationwide
since it was first discovered in New York State in 2006 and is spreading
westward. Vermont is home to nine
bat species. The little brown bat
and northern long-eared bat, once common to Vermont, have declined 90% in
recent years. Other bat species currently on the Vermont endangered
species list include the state-threatened small-footed and the state and federally endangered Indiana bat.
I came across a wildlife study conducted in Milton, Vermont, by the
Vermont Fish and Wildlife early this spring, in which 67 bats were tallied in
bat houses that had been erected the previous year, a twenty percent increase
from last year––a low number, but a glimmer of hope that there might be
survivors. I saw one bat (I
think!) flying in front of our house at dusk about a week ago.
European bats seem to have an immunity to white nose syndrome, we
learned from our neighbor Don Mitchell, author of a new book called “Flying
Blind”* and subtitled, “One
Man’s Adventures Battling Buckthorn, Making Peace with Authority and Creating a
Home for Endangered Bats,” as much
memoir as bat story. Mitchell is
our neighbor up the road at Treleven Farm. He has been offering “Bat Walks” (more accurately, bat
habitat walks) every Saturday morning from the end of August to early
November. We were the only hikers on
a Saturday morning before Labor Day.
 |
| The view from the Mitchells' cliff is similar to the view from Buck Mountain. We overlook their pond and pasture. |
It all began with the visit of a Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department
biologist visited approached him about tracking endangered Indiana bats on his
land, some 150 acres of mixed pasture and woodland. Mitchell took up the challenge of participating in and
essentially creating a project of bat habitat improvement, opening up areas
around shagbark hickory trees (a favorite haunt of these small bats) and
removing encroaching invasive plants.
Time will tell whether the number of bats found in these enhanced and
welcoming environments will grow.
A worthy line, though, to add to a life resume´: novelist, writing professor, shepherd
(the farm raises sheep)––batman.
 |
| A towering Shagbark hickory has plenty of niches for bats. |
AND SUMMER TOURISTS, ALSO GONE
 |
| Micah and Stephanie at the calf barn |
With the unofficial end of the summer
upon us our warm weather guest list has come to an end. Temporarily, anyway. Our guests came
from Noosa, Australia (first duo), and Melbourne, Australia (second duo; third
expected this winter?), Brookline, MA, Campton, New Hampshire, Newburyport,
Massachusetts, Novato, California (via Maine), and Paris (not the one in Maine).
Several of our visitors made it to Kingsland Bay and up Buck Mountain.
 |
| Paul posing for Sue; nothing like this in Paris! |
*Flying
Blind
by Don Mitchell, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT, 2013.
