IT'S OVER

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.