Beavers have arrived

Last fall while deer hunting in our gully, subtle signs of newly arrived beaver (or perhaps just passing through) were observed. A small beech sapling "skinned" and spear-like, floating in the creek; a handful of chomped off dogwood and poplar in the flats near the creek.

The beaver sign came up in a conversation around the dinner table, replete with recollections from my childhood in Minnesota. Throughout the winter, the possibility of beavers on our farm has generated considerable excitement among our budding naturalists Charlotte and Victoria.

So, with the thaw and resulting loss of snow, combined with a growing case of cabin-fever, we decided on an exploration. We tracked to the creek, built a fire as a kind of central rallying point (quite a challenge in the soggy conditions!), and had a brief discussion about beavers and their habits. I set it up so that the children were in charge of locating evidence, and then building a case, that beavers actually were taking up residence in our gully. My what a ruckus... shrieking over here on the discovery of a Carpinus caroliniana all chewed up, whooping and hollering over there upon locating a perfectly preserved set of tracks. "Daddy, over here!" when the beginning of a damn was discovered, and also the holes in the bank that we all hypothesize serve as quarters for the new beaver family as they continue work on impounding our creek. What a blast.

It was interesting to me that the preferred food did seem to be Carpinus caroliniana, followed by Fagus grandifolia, despite the presence of poplar and willow relatively near by.


I have posted a few pictures, and will continue to update the status of our beavers.

Bluebird Day

We have had quite a thaw in the last few days... the ice on the lake is showing signs of its inevitable demise. The snow is losing its grip on our fields, our pastures, and today I heard, then saw, a blue bird. The most simple kind of hope is found in the song of a late winter bird on a sunny day.

New Imagery of Canoga Marsh Project

Before and after...

Winter Dawn

Seneca Saddle Club 4H Christmas Party

Muzzle-loader Fox

We've had a thaw here in the land of Canoga Creek. All the snow melted away in the last 24 hours and the creek is swollen and chocolaty. I thought perhaps the break in the weather would get the deer moving and slipped away from the toil of work to hunt the last few hours of daylight. The ground was moist and quiet, with that springy pungency not expected until April. There was an eerie mist in the gully, but no deer.

I amused myself by observing the squirrels on the hill beside me, chasing, and was just remarking to myself at how quiet their movements were in these damp conditions when a flash of yellow and a snarling sound interrupted my rodent reverie. What's this? A nice red bushy-tailed fox, and me with a loaded gun, albeit somewhat atavistic. How interesting...
















I shot the fox with my New England Firearms "Sidekick" .50 cal muzzle-loaded rifle.
I have big plans for the pelt, which is in perfect shape.

Thanksgiving 2008

We were blessed to have a crowd of good friends for Thanksgiving this year. The Tantillo/Tarlow family joined us, as did the Stedman/Nolen family, the Winchell/Perkins family, and the Parks family. We had 10 adults and 8 children for dinner! The menu and some pics below.

Pheasant Hunt

The Pheasant Hunt
By Victoria Tidball and Danielle Riegel

We were in a car riding toward the one and only pheasant field. We were very excited. Then we stopped and got our gear ready to go, and went. Miss, the dog, was also excited. The breeze was cold and the thorns scratched us terribly and in pain we went on. Right away our Dad shot one. It's head was blown off. Then we saw another across the field. We ran after it. Miss was ahead of the gang. We missed the shot. We went along and found a bird nest. It was too high. We kept walking. Our Dads were walking in the woods as we were walking in the field. We walked towards the car. And all of a sudden another pheasant came out of the bushes. Our dads tried to shoot it. Then we went home. That was our trip. The end.

Deer Opener (gun) 2008

An interesting 11 point buck. Just under 13 inch inside spread. My thought was that I had shot a 2 1/2 year old male who had some antler issues...he passed the 4 points on a side test, but turns out that, after DEC aging, he is only a 1 & 1/2 year old male! Shame...he would have been incredible as a 3 & 1/2. Still, a gift on a tough rainy opener, and memorable.

He will be tender and tasty.

We are officially "Bear Territory" now...

Southern Zone Bear Units Added

New regulations expand bear hunting to 13 additional Wildlife Management Units (WMUs), which include parts of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Wyoming, Genesee, Monroe, Livingston, Wayne, Ontario, Seneca, Yates, Steuben, Schuyler, Tompkins, Tioga, Cortland, Broome, Chenango, Madison, Onondaga, Oneida and Otsego counties.

The new regulations are effective immediately and will allow hunters to pursue bears in these areas during the bowhunting, regular, and muzzleloading bear seasons in the Southern Zone. An updated map of New York's bear hunting seasons is available on DEC's Black Bear Hunting Seasons web page. A map and boundary descriptions of WMU locations can be found on DEC's Wildlife Management Units web page. Details of the specific changes for the Southern Bear Range are included in the complete press release on this topic.

Bear hunting areas in the Southern Zone have been expanded to better manage the growing bear population in that area.

"In recent years, the bear population in central and western New York has grown in number and expanded in distribution," DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis said. "Hunting is an important component of a comprehensive bear-management program that also emphasizes safety, education efforts and responses to individual problem bears. Expanding the bear hunting area is a continuation of efforts to manage bear population growth and range expansion."

Fall Turkey

My daughter Charlotte, who is six years old, wanted her first hunt badly; so rather than chase squirrels, I opted for a fall turkey hunt, given Thanksgiving is just around the proverbial corner. We headed for our woods, down to "the gully," where a logging road cuts down one side of the gully and up the other, switch-backing on the western side. Many of the leaves from maples, tulip poplar, beech and oak are already down, which makes for crunchy walking. On the other hand, everything walking in the woods is crunching, so if one listens long and hard enough, one can eventually blend in and be relatively unnoticed. This is especially true if there are 3 foot berms on each side of the logging road.

So Charlotte and I were still-hunting along the logging road in the gully, and before too long, we could hear rustling in the leaves that sounded too big and vigorous to be a squirrel. We stopped and knelt, conferencing in a whisper about the sounds. Could it be turkeys digging through the leaves looking for beech nuts and acorns? Charlotte thought "maybe." So, we scratched the leaves ourselves and I did my best vocal imitation of a hen turkey. Lo and behold, a turkey answered, and we had confirmation...they were close, and it sounded like a lot of them.

I glanced at my watch after noticing the low sun casting beautiful slant-y golden light on the tops of the trees, 5:15 PM. I whispered to Charlotte that I surmised that the turkeys were headed to one of their roosting areas, a draw with big old beech trees at the bottom. I asked if she wanted to try to intercept them. She was game, so we crept along the berm, me calling, Charlotte scratching leaves.

We got to a point where the logging road was about to crest and we were going to lose our berm. We knelt again to conference, but just then, we heard a cluck, looked up , and there was turkey poking its head over the berm briefly. The rest, as they say, is history.

We hope to see the Stedman et al. family, the Tantillo et al. family, and the Winchell et al. family at Thanksgiving.

Lake Friendly Farm Award

Wineries win Lake Friendly Farm Award

by Debra J. Groom / The Post-Standard

Monday September 29, 2008, 12:09 PM

Hosmer Winery, Long Point Winery, Canoga Creek Farms and Switzer Farm have received 2008 Lake Friendly Farm Award.

Farmers receive this special award when they incorporate practices that conserve and protect their local water resources. Lake-friendly farming can include tree planting along streams, conservation of wetlands and manure handling practices.

These four wineries are all located within the Cayuga Lake Watershed area -- where agriculture is very important to the community culturally, economically and ecologically.

A Midsummer Night's Eve: Cayuga Cat!

My friend and colleague Jeremy Dietrich recently asked me to take his younger brother Wade and his friend and fellow graduate student Laura out on a fishing trip on the north end of Cayuga Lake. So, the crew met me at 5 pm Sunday evening for a 4 hour excursion on the "Rough Draft."

We tried a bit of trolling, but the recreational boating of the weekend had chopped up so much vegetation that it was nearly impossible. We switched to drifting and casting. Before long, Wade had boated a perch and a nice chain pickerel. Within an hour, Laura had boated a nice pickerel also, and a smaller "hammer handle."

We were drifting the navigation channel, out in front of the state park and working our way south towards Canoga Creek. Wade hooked a nicer perch, a keeper. I boated a couple of pickerel. And then, Laura hooked into a bruiser.


We watched her fight this fish. Both Jeremy and I quickly ascertained that we were clearly out of the 3-4 lb pickerel class. The tension rose, instructions were helpfully peppered at Laura...drag settings, reeling instructions, etc. Then we saw a flash of the huge fish as it bulled under the boat. She fought for long minutes more until it began to tire. Slowly she horsed it to the side of my boat. Jeremy was leaning over the edge, ready to help land it...he looked over his shoulder with a surprised look and exclaimed "Its a huge catfish!" He reached for it and it dove again. Now we were all quite engaged and invested in boating this strange and unusual Cayuga Lake trophy. After a few valiant misses, Jeremy finally managed to gill it, and hoisted above decks. It was a leviathan.

Congrats Laura and Wade! Come back fishin' any time.




































After picture taking and all of the fun, we fished a bit more in the channel, and then headed for the mouth of Canoga Creek for a large mouth Bass or two. But the group was pretty satiated with having caught the Channel Cat, (According to Wikipedia, realistically, a channel catfish over 20 pounds (9 kg) is a spectacular specimen, and most catfish anglers view a 10 pound (4.5 kg) fish as a very admirable catch. Furthermore the average size channel catfish an angler could expect to find in most waterways would be between 2 and 4 pounds) and our bass fishing resulted in just on beefy Rock bass, along with enjoying a good summer's eve sunset over Canoga Creek Farm and Conservancy. Stats? 5 pickerel, 2 perch, 1 rock bass, and one 30 inch, 12 pound Channel Catfish.

The Cayuga Flora

I was recently contacted by Robert Meadows of the State of Delaware's Division of Fish and Wildlife. Robert is an environmental scientist who has lots of experience with wetland restoration, and also, coincidentally, some family roots in the area. He is interested in at least two very cool things...1) unraveling the mysteries of whether or not cattails are native, and 2) the study of a native Phragmites species, which I will cover shortly.

But first, Robert turned me on to this little gem:

The Cayuga Flora Part I: A Catalogue of the Phaenogamia Growing Without Cultivation in the Cayuga Lake Basin By William Russel Dudley: ""


Now, to the Phragmites... Robert inquired as to whether he could do a survey of my portion of the Canoga Marsh. He was intrigued by the fact that the above referenced Flora accounting hints that Phragmites were "abundant" in the Canoga Marsh at the time of the survey, whereas now it is a pretty mono-typical cattail marsh...what happened?

Stay tuned...