Curmudgeon

I hate cutting trees with a chainsaw on snowshoes. I'll take a bow saw up and cut branches.

Oh, I was hoping Wildcat vs. Papist.

Ouch!

They eat eggs out of song bird nests sometimes. Same thing, a video can be found.

Thanks Single Shot. I learn something new once in a while. Today is a good day. Thanks too to grow. Sorry to have gotten the hackles up.

Really, deer groom each other? Forgive my ignorance. Can you provide some documentation. I would love to see it.

"Co-opting", "supplanting", isn't this semantics? No neo-druid am I. I'm no scholar, just interested in religion. I've spent some time reading Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong and such. I recently read Zealot by Resa Aslan. My general interest is why I ask Catholics what they think of the Pope.

Papist - Without getting into the solstice/Christmas details, do you agree that Christianity co-opted some pagan holidays and customs? Having spent a good deal of my working life at the bench next to a WWII vet and Jehovah's Witness, I got learned some interesting things. They think the whole Christmas celebration is a pagan ritual.

LI is terra incognita for me. Up here on the Appalachian Plateau we have a deep snow pack but not so deep that deer can't move. They just aren't moving much. We broke a snowshoe trail around the property a couple of days ago. Deer are sticking tight to old Christmas tree plantations where there is browse and thermal protection. We bumped some. I hope they didn't move too far. We found no coyote tracks, no fisher tracks - actually no mammal tracks larger than squirrel and cottontail. We found no deer mortality. If the snow pack stays this deep for another month, I expect it to take a toll on the mature bucks and fawns. The does are loaded with fat and should be okay.

More Freewheeling "Rockin' In The Free World" by Neil Young There's colors on the street Red, white and blue People shufflin' their feet People sleepin' in their shoes But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them So I try to forget it, any way I can. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world. I see a woman in the night With a baby in her hand Under an old street light Near a garbage can Now she puts the kid away, and she's gone to get a hit She hates her life, and what she's done to it There's one more kid that will never go to school Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world. We got a thousand points of light For the homeless man We got a kinder, gentler, Machine gun hand We got department stores and toilet paper Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world.

Wow. Has this train gotten derailed or what?

More photos including some aggressive coyotes, a rabbit right out of Monty Python, golden and bald eagles, ravens, red-tailed hawks and rough-legged hawks. I just realized, if you click on the photos, it gives you a larger version. Maybe I was the only one who didn't know that.

Both of my kids got their bachelors degrees there. I don't recall the store. Maybe its new - like in last decade.

Oh no they aren't atheists. I have a neighbor who is a witch, a Wiccan actually. She worships nature.

We've tried to figure out how to set one up. We cannot get the necessary upload speeds in these rural areas. I do have about 6 hours of raven and eagle chatter that I edited down to the best 6 minutes. I hope to have that MP3 posted on youtube soon. When it happens, I will provide a link. Ravens make some bizarre noises. If you have never heard a Bald Eagle, they sound like other seabirds - more like a gull than anything you hear in a movie.

I was really looking forward to a War on Christmas debate. Too bad that fizzled. A lot of pagans buy Christmas trees. However, sticking to the topic at hand, when my son lived in Northern Ireland during the troubles many weapons were illegal. Sports equipment on the other hand was perfectly okay. Gangs of young thugs would walk the streets carrying baseball bats. It turns out that baseball bats were a very popular item in sports shops in the north at the time in spite of the fact that no one in N Ireland played the game.

The dark bird was almost certainly an immature Bald Eagle. The only similar looking bird would be a Golden Eagle - and they don't usually hang out near open water. They will be found skirting the south side of Lake Ontario during the spring migration because they don't like to fly over water - no lift. Occasionally they will be seen with Bald Eagles feeding on the remains of deer on the ice of lakes. Goldens are upland birds. Balds are sea eagles. Our camera traps for goldens are set up at the highest elevations we can easily access.

I did have someone come for a Yule tree once.

How would I shear Christmas trees?

LOL

I suggest finding the photo and doing a Google image search. The last time someone sent me a photo of a mountain lion supposedly taken in NY, it turned out to be from our west. I have wolf photos at a camera trap from an AEP site in the UP in MI. I could just as easily post them in the AEP thread under game cameras with my NYS photos. The habitat is even similar looking to here. Let the buyer beware.

We use mostly Moultries because we have been able to buy them wholesale. The newer ones are a lot easier to use that the old I series. I have a bunch of D444s in service. I like them. They have much better photo quality than the old D series. However, they are all cheap consumer electronics. Some people are using Bushnells. They take better quality photos. I know they have had a few problems but they seem more reliable. The Bushnells use AAs so we need to use lithium batteries in the winter. One person is using a Wildgame Innovations. He has had problems with internal fogging. The Moultries get really quirky in this cold. Dates and times change. Settings change. One of the problems with batteries and cold is the number of photos we get. I got 583 last Friday with a one minute delay. I went through them all because I wanted an exact count of 14 individual Bald Eagles for the Great Backyard Bird Count - which was this past weekend. It is the 50-70 ravens that set off the camera every minute from before dawn until after sunset. They come and go caching food all day. The more flash photos, the quicker the batteries die. The eagles have been showing up at 6:30 AM and not leaving some days until 5:30 PM. The early and late photos use the flash.

I am willing to play by whatever rules everyone else does. However, I will get a handful of DMAP permits every year. What about the guys who just want to fill the freezer?

Here are some more. Note what the guy on the sled is sitting on.

Yes, a springer would flush those birds vertical right in front until they cleared cover. Then they would stall like they were thinking about where to go - being between the dog and me. Then they would head out in a level straight line.