Shortage of rain means low water levels, leaves a-turning early

Hurricane Isaac is still creeping up the Ohio Valley and we will feel some of its effects before you read this column. It dumped many inches of rain in the New Orleans area which their system of water removal couldn’t handle.

Many homes that were flooded by Hurricane Katrina got hit again along with many that had previously survived the storm.

The states to the north that were in a drought situation prior to the storm got five to six inches of rain in a short period of time which also caused a lot of  flooding.

We are in a mini drought in this area as lakes and streams are on the low side, to say the least. Stillwater Reservoir is nine feet down.

The power generators downstream past Watertown are not producing power for lack of flow.

There hasn’t been much wind so the wind generators haven’t been producing much power either.

This causes the area to pull power from outside sources on the grid.

If you are looking along the shorelines or from a mountain top you’ll see that the shortage of rain has also caused the leaves of the red maples to turn.

Many of the trees in my yard are a-changing.

My pond is down a few inches too. When I went down yesterday to feed some grasshoppers to the trout there was a White Rumped Sandpiper feeding along the shore.

I had one here a few years ago. This one was breeding up near the timber line a few weeks ago.

Now it’s on its way south for the winter.

I also had a couple reports of a Cormorant on Seventh Lake.

These birds are typically juveniles who have fledged the nest and got off course while looking for a way south.

Previously I have seen them on Raquette Lake, Beaver Lake in the Moose River Plains, Cedar River Flow and Woodhull Lake at this same time of year.

Many of the Cormorants that we banded several years ago on Four Brother Islands in Lake Champlain have been killed in the effort to control the population in Vermont.

We recently did some more Hummer banding at Stillwater Restaurant.Among the 15 we caught was just one male as they have mostly left for their long trip to South America.

Hummer bander Ted Hicks banded two juvenile males at my house. I’ve been catching them in my bird net and releasing them all week.

I got a nice warbler on Friday (8/31), and a female Golden Winged, which was a new bird for me in my yard and also for Hamilton County.

I’ve also caught several American Goldfinch and Purple Finch.

I caught a Black Capped Chickadee, too, which was the 12th bird that I banded in January 2003 when I first started banding locally.

If you see some bright lights at night during the week on the Fulton Chain, it’s just us trying to catch a loon.

We are trying to put Geo-locaters on a couple birds to track their travels and see if they share their winters together.

The Garden Club will be at the Farmers’ Market on Friday, September 14th selling potted plants and seeds of local wildflowers that are mostly resistant to deer. Hope to see you there.

Local NYS Forest Ranger John Scanlon, Squaw Boss, just returned from two weeks of Western fire fighting duty in Polson, Montana.

He was among a crew of individuals from across the state who went to fight the 89,863 acre West Garceau fire and were later assigned to the 585 acre Elevation Mountain fire near Greenough, MT.

Among the crew were forest rangers Crew Boss David Kallen from Northville-Fulton County and Squaw Boss William Giraud from Cayler-Cortland County; firefighter Michael Thompson from Stony Brook-Suffolk County; some DEC personnel, sawyer Eric Kasza Lands and Forests from Ballston Spa-Saratoga County; and other volunteers.

They returned last Friday and I’m sure they will have some tales to tell.

I’ll get to those Deer next week, but that’s another story.

See ya.