It looks like winter may hold on until the end of the month, so you will have to wait until April to collect sap. I was in Vermont on Friday and everyone had their buckets out waiting to catch their first run. The wind was howling most of the day and it never got above freezing.
The big snowfall had blown off most of the fields and drifted along the roadsides. In some places drifts were eight to ten feet high along the roads.
While I was there I met up with bird bander Ted Hicks and my friend Ellie George to try and catch some of the snowy owls that had come down from Canada in great numbers.
We were using a Bal-Chatri Trap made especially for hawks and owls with a live mouse for lure.
The trap is a made of quarter-inch hardware cloth which has a base of about sixteen inches with a dome on the top and trap door on the bottom to put in the mice.
The top dome is covered with nylon hoops of fishing line which are all attached to the dome.
When the bird comes in to catch the mouse it hits the trap and treads around on top of it.
Sometimes its foot catches in one of the nylon hoops and the bird is caught.
The trap is too heavy for the bird to fly away with so all you have to do is grab the bird very carefully and take one or more loops off its foot.
Then you have a bird in hand, which is what you were after.
We drove around looking for hawks or snowy owls beore putting out the trap on the side of the road or snow bank in hopes the bird would see the mouse and come to the trap.
We did this a few times and got no attention from the birds.
Finally, we put it out not far from a rough legged hawk. We no more than turned the car around before it was caught on the trap.
That’s how fast it happens when it happens.
The hawk, a beautiful male, was banded, weighed, checked for fat content, aged by feathers and then had some photos taken before it was released unharmed.
We tried for a couple snowy owls but had no response so we moved on to the next bird. We saw eleven different snowys that day.
This snowy sat on a pile of dirt about 250 feet from the road so we put out the trap and turned the car around.
The bird took a couple looks at the trap and flew directly to it and hit the trap. It was caught instantly and we went back in a flash.
Ted held the bird and I took the loop off one foot. It was a beautiful male bird that we had in hand. Its talons were long and black—something you wouldn’t want in your arm.
These birds are feathered right to their feet.
The bird was banded, weighed, checked for fat content, aged by feathers and photographed.
Ted got a little nip on his finger in the process.
Ellie wanted to hold the bird as she had been chasing them all winter. You could look into its big yellow eyes that can see a mouse at one-quarter-mile away.
This beautiful and powerful bird with almost a five-foot wingspan was released wearing its new band.
About an hour later we put the trap out not far from two red-tailed hawks.
One flew away and the other one went directly to the trap and was caught instantly. We banded and processed this beautiful male bird and released it.
We tried several more snowy owls during the afternoon but they weren’t interested in our mice. We all felt it was a great day having three hits on our traps and catching all three birds.
Hare season is over for this year with the last weekend being a tough go for the dogs. With their big feet, the hares could run right on top of the snow.
But not so for the dogs that were nearly sinking out of sight.
Jason Harter was up for the weekend with some relatives. Some hunted while others fished on Limekiln Lake.
Near the end of the hunt on Saturday, Jason said that the dogs were about done.
But then they hit a new track and went up and over the mountain for about another two-mile run before they were actually done.
No doubt they were after a male hare that had come over to check out the females in this swamp.
He traveled back to his area when the dogs got on his tail.
Last weekend Jason came up with a friend, Rick Rollins, and they hunted for the day with his dog Buster and Buster’s sister, Dixie.
This was her first time chasing hares and she caught on pretty quickly. She is a little lighter in weight than her brother and I think she is going to make a great hare dog.
Jason shot one in front of her and Rick got one in front of Buster as there were several times when each dog was running a different hare.
I saw a couple hares but didn’t get any shots. Rick also had a Pine Marten run by him as he was waiting for the hare to come around.
One Square Mile of Hope is moving along. Sign up before April 1, but that’s another story. See ya.