Smartie's Bar & Grill #74

Cool - did you take those?

 

Thank you it was pure luck.

 

Yes, I love taking pictures of birds, actually I just like photography. Most of my favorites are just lucky.

 

What was it Nick Faldo said. "The more I practice, the luckier I get"

 

True..the practicing is the best part.

 

No, if he was real and I had my camera .....

 

We usually only get great horned owls (which I can easily identify) so for a long time I thought it was a screech owl. Now I’m quite certain it’s a barn owl as the female was much too large and “flat faced” to have been a screech owl. I didn’t have a smartphone back then so unfortunately don’t have a picture of the female.

I had a 20,000 bushel bin about half full of corn. The price was good so I sold the corn under contract to deliver by a certain date. When I went in the bin to set up unloading of the bin I found this little bugger with all these mice the female had stockpiled. Didn’t know that was a thing.




Anyway, I had about 10 days to get the corn delivered so I put the chick and it’s pile of mice in a big rubber tub about 8 inches deep and moved it around periodically to keep it from sliding down into the unloading auger. Sometimes the female would stay and supervise and sometimes she would disappear, but always came back and took good care of the chick. I used to have pictures of it almost mature, but moving pictures several times from phone to phone etc. they are gone. I do have a few more of it’s big wings etc.





It would be impossible for anyone who hasn’t lost their sense of smell to Covid to mistake a buzzard chick for an owl. We had a pair of buzzards raise chicks several years in a row in an old barn at the “home place”. You couldn’t hardly stand to go look at them. It smells like he**. It’s indescribable. Worse than a broken freezer of rotten meat. Worse than the bloated roadkill on the shoulder. But the babies are cute. All babies are cute.

 

Like it or not you have an eye for a picture. Photography, like art is 60% skill 40% talent.
You see what you like, but it also happens to be what others like.

 

It wasn't a swag it was just a wag guess. The eyes should have been the give away. Spare me the COVID curse, I just suffer the isolation.
Your experience was an awesome one that few people will have. I have a lot of respect for buzzards they have a hard job to do. I hate when people don't brake for them on the highway.

 

You've got a good eye for it, too.

Catchin' a picture of an owl is lucky. Since we moved out here 8 years ago I've heard the owls in our woods but they've refused to show themselves.

I have managed to catch some not-so-great pictures of some of the birds of prey that have visited us - by far the most interesting was this bald eagle:



The eagle would not let me get anywhere close to him/her so all the shots were from a long distance.

We also see a lot of hawks in these parts (a subpar shot through the window):



In fact I saw two of them together in our front yard last week and I'm hoping they're a breeding pair. God knows there's plenty of critters for them to hunt out here.

Still haven't caught an owl, though...

 

You are so lucky to get a good shot of an eagle. I have one but it isn't a good picture. I took it with my cell phone. Must be the time of year for eagles now because I have seen several. I saw one flying with some crows hot on his tail.. I don't know what he did to make them chase him. It was funny. We have a lot of hawks around but eagles are rare.
Do you have pileated woodpeckers in your area? That is one picture I would like to take.

 

On a less interesting note, here's a pic of the varieties of pumpkins we grew last year:



They're all edible cooking pumpkins except for the classic jack o'lantern (Aladdin) at center back.

The front two are my favorite varieties - at left is a Fairytale or Musque de Provence which has deep orange sweet meat which is great for pies and cakes and the one at right is probably the best - a Blue Doll - that is great for just about everything, but I they're my go-to pumpkin for savory stews.

The two at back left and right are Porcelain Dolls that are good multi-purpose pumpkins but I prefer the Blue Dolls, which are the most productive pumpkin we grow.

Here's my recipe for a hardy Blue Doll and Sage Sausage stew with potato gnocchi, blue cheese, fresh sage and Oktoberfest lager (aka Marzenbier):

SAVORY BLUE DOLL PUMPKIN SOUP

This soup can be as thin/thick, chunky and flavorable as you like. While the recipe requires blue cheese and sage, the sage sausage and potato gnocchi are optional ingredients that will take the soup from a thin pumpkin puree towards a chunky soup or stew. Unlike some pumpkin soups, this is a savory squash recipe that makes no effort to reproduce the flavors in a pumpkin pie.

Note that this recipe is slow-cooked at lower temperatures over the course of 3-4 hours so that the flavors of all the ingredients have time to cook through one another. One could also cook this recipe one day, refrigerate it over night and then heat it up and serve the next day.

INGREDIENTS

- 1 gallon fresh Blue Doll pumpkin (or any other hearty blue cooking pumpkin - do not use an ordinary Jack O' Lantern pumpkin!)
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 1 Vedalia sweet onion
- 1/2 to 1 tube sage sausage (more or less depending on how meaty you want to make the soup)
- 1 lb. potato gnocchi (more or less depending on how thin or hearty you want to make the soup)
- 8 ozs. Blue Cheese (to taste - up to but not exceeding that amount) - Be sure to use a good blue cheese - don't skimp.
- Dried fresh Common Sage
- 18 ozs. (approximately) Oktoberfest lager or Brown ale (a malty amber or brown beer/ale that is somewhat sweet)

Note: There is no salt in this recipe. The ingredients will contain all the salt that is necessary.

COOKING INSTRUCTIONS

- Brown 1/2 to 1 tube of sage sausage and set aside.
- Peel and cut one gallon of fresh Blue Doll pumpkin or other fresh blue cooking pumpkin into chunks then puree in a food processor. Set aside.
- Heat 4 cups of chicken stock in a soup pot (medium to medium high). If you don't have chicken stock, 4 cups of water and 4 teaspoons of a quality chicken bouillon will serve as a substitute.
- When the chicken stock gets hot add all of the pureed pumpkin and stir. Heat at or just beneath a low boil cooking the pumpkin.
- Chop 1 Vedalia sweet onion into small pieces and add to the stock and pumpkin. Stir.
- After pumpkin and onion is cooked, reduce heat to medium or medium low and add sage sausage. Stir.
- After pumpkin, onion and sausage have cooked together, reduce heat a little further and add the beer/ale and stir. I add about half at this point and half later.
- After the beer/ale has cooked in the soup for a bit (the smell of the beer/ale will be gone at this point) add half of the blue cheese and stir through soup until it dissolves.
- Keep cooking at a low temperature, stirring when necessary. After the blue cheese has had some time to cook into the soup begin adding some dried fresh Common Sage. It's better to add a little bit at a time - don't dump it all in at once.
- Continue cooking at a low temperature for 30-60 minutes and add the rest of the beer/ale.
- After the beer/ale has cooked into the soup, add more blue cheese and Common Sage to taste.
- When soup is pretty much finished and the flavor meets your taste, add the potato gnocchi and continue cooking at low temperature until the gnocchi is thoroughly cooked (anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes). Do not overcook, especially if you're going to have leftover soup that will be reheated later.
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Wow, we don't have a lot of pumpkin growing going on here. Awesome pumpkins. I have never had pumpkin soup sounds interesting. I would have to try it.

 

We do have pileated woodpeckers in our area and if I've got some photos of them if I can find them.

That is interesting about the eagle and crows. He/she must have been eyeballing them or one of their nests for dinner.

 

` Thanks for this new blanket . My favorite color ! ´

 

I agree with you on buzzards. For me, they are kind of an emotional smorgasbord.

If I go out in the morning and see buzzards circling out north where my young calves are in the spring, I’m sad because I know I’ve lost a critter. But they show me exactly where it is so I can go get the mama cow in and graft another calf on her. Then she is happy again. And the buzzards have to eat, too. And will eat things coyotes won’t sometimes. They are certainly necessary to a healthy ecosystem but in my mind they have mostly sad connotations because they are always associated with loss.

Owls are happier birds...and one of my favorites ...as long as you don’t forget to shut the chicken house door at night! I love listening to and watching the great horned owls. I enjoy watching them fly even more than the occasional eagle we get. Nothing flies like an owl.

 

Do you know what kind of hawk that is? We have mostly red tails and that doesn’t look like our red tails.

Your eagle shots aren’t bad. Mine are usually so far away you can’t tell if it’s a sparrow or an eagle!

 

Never saw a Green Pumpkin.How did that happen.
And don't say a little Leprechaun was tending garden in exchange
for free room and board.And since he fancied drink,got carried
away and decided to use the garden for toilet duties,especially
after breakfast and Lucky Charms w/ Guinness stout.

 

I wasn't gonna say anything ... But what goes around comes around.
I see where Miss Smarty's Thread has been co-opted.
Taken over.Supplanted.It was bound to happen.
I mean,not like Hitler's Invading { annexing } the Sudentenland.
But close.Getting there.

 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!!

 

The owl may have been after the chickens but he wasn't nearly as successful as this little fellow. There is nothing like checking out the nest before you reach in to get the eggs. He wasn't harmed, he was removed from the the nest.

 

I think it's a Broad-winged hawk. He/she is a regular in these parts and I've taken quite a few pictures of it.

Thanks - those are the two best shots I've got. The rest of them are pretty bad - I was using a cheap digital camera shooting at max telephoto at a long distance. I'm kinda surprised the one I got of him/her on the ground came out as good as it did.

Every once in a blue moon we'll spot a bald eagle in these parts and I think it's because the population on the James River - largest in the lower 48 if I'm correct - is starting to expand up the watersheds. It's great to see the conservation efforts paying off.

 

I have buzzards (chinatis) roosting at and around my place... I have (somewhere) a photo of them sitting one on each post of a fence line. They never crap on my stuff, so they are easy to tolerate...
I did see the rabbits coming out, I am afraid I am going to have a conflict when the cats from across the road start killing them.

 

i fall asleep most nights to a little owl outside the window, we've seen her and photographed her a few times.. just not good photos.. it's a little pygmy owl.