March 29
Today is quite a contrast from Tuesday last week. It is warm and windy. I spent Monday and Tuesday morning whittling on the tree in the back yard felled by last week’s snow and wind. So far, all I’ve done is trim off the part that extends across the fence to the east. Luckily, the tree was propped up by the tree across the fence and a couple of stout limbs on the fallen tree so that it didn’t take out portion of the fence, which it very easily could have. In trimming the part on the other side of the fence, I’m trying to reduce the weight, the better to control the trunk so that neither the fence nor I get mashed in the process of getting the trunk on the ground. Next, I’ll trim what I can off the trunk on the backyard side of the fence before I try to trim the limbs that are holding the trunk up. I’m not sure how all that is going to play out. I may just have to keep cutting small pieces of the trunk, small enough that they aren’t likely to damage the fence if they fall on it, until I’m confident the trunk is short enough to miss the fence when I lay it on the ground.
Fruit trees are blooming around the place. A cold front is forecast but I don’t see any hard freezes precited. It would be nice to get some fruit, cherries, apricots, apples, peaches and plums are all possible. Oh, and the liriope is in bloom. Hope we get some rain out of this front. That would be a nice way to close out the month.
March 25
In 2019, I think it was, I entered a picture of a small worm-like snake I discovered while digging in the topsoil mound into the iNaturalist database. I identified it as a New Mexico blind snake (Rena dissecta) because my field guide of Texas snakes indicated that that species can be found in the Panhandle, generally north of the Canadian River. Other Texas species weren’t shown to be in our part of the state. Someone on iNaturalist committed a taxon swap affecting Rena dissecta. Seems they’ve decided what I submitted was actually a Texas blind snake (Rena dulcis). I’m glad to get that straightened out. I never felt good about calling it a New Mexico blind snake. Maybe it’s like the Texas brown tarantula, which is known as the Oklahoma brown tarantula in that state.
Kari is experimenting with various groundcovers. On Monday before the blizzard, she sprinkled seeds of several varieties on bare spots on the topsoil mound. It was pretty good timing since the snow that night gave it some good moisture. That will be the problem with planting things on the mounds. It would be a lot of work to get water to them so we’ll have to rely on snow and rain, which isn’t something we can rely on around here. It would be nice to have some nice ground cover on the bare areas of the mounds. The sides in particular could use something to reduce erosion.
March 22
It was Wylie Week here last week. The weather was nice a couple of days and we managed to hike the Bluff. Jill worked practically all week but took time out to visit with her Tversky cousins. Jill and I went to the grocery store after they arrived, and she helped lay in comestibles for the crew. Though the house took a beating with so many people crammed into it, it was tidy when they left while we were at church.
They got out of town just in time to miss a good old-fashioned High Plains blizzard. It was warm enough to work outside Monday morning, but the wind was blowing pretty good in the afternoon. The weather changed in the late afternoon, and it was raining by dinnertime. By dusk it was snowing. The flakes were large, fluffy and plentiful. Tuesday morning the snowing had stopped and there was some five to six inches of snow on the ground. It was wet, heavy snow and the trees were dragged to the withered bracken by it. Half of one of the junipers in the backyard succumbed to the wind and snow and will require chainsaws and trips to the brush site soon. I haven’t been out to see what other damage there might be, but I would be surprised if there weren’t plenty of limbs to clean up. We need the moisture so I’ll just grin and bear it. When I checked the gauge in the afternoon it contained 1.14 inches, a veritable bonanza for around here. A local weatherman said the snow was wet, five inches translated to one inch of moisture. That sounds about right to me, so we had something more than five inches of snow.
March 9
Just a couple of months ago I read The Falcon Thief, which I would recommend. It is a non-fiction account of a man who spent much of his adult life illegally collecting falcon eggs and selling them on the black market. The author goes into the black market quite a bit besides describing this fellow’s work. Coincidentally, our naturalist meeting program was a local man engaged in falconry as a hobby. He brought his peregrine falcon to help him, but the bird didn’t do much but perch on its roost or on the falconer’s arm and poop on the floor now and then. In the bird’s defense, it was mostly kept hooded, which has a sedating effect, and, well, if you can’t see, what’re you gonna do?

I’ve had a mild interest in falconry over the years and wondered how one got into it. Turns out that there are plenty of falconers in this part of the world and they have their own local club or organization. Our guest speaker acquired his bird by entering a state lottery which awarded licenses, or maybe stamps, anyway, access to trapping birds down on the coast during a specific time, or season. The permit allows trapping on a narrow strip of the beach. As it coincides with the migration south of many hawks and falcons from all over North America and the routes many of them take funnels them down to the Texas gulf coast, there are lots of falcons and hawks in that part of the beach then.
He trapped his current bird and has been hunting ducks with it for a couple of years, give or take. He talked about the process of training the bird based on rewards, not all that different from training, say, a dog. This particular bird was a quick study, and they go duck hunting during duck season. He has to get a hunting license just as he would if were hunting with a gun and is limited to the number of ducks, again, just like he was hunting with a gun.
The falconer uses GPS to track his bird and has had to collect it from as far away as 20 miles. Besides wanting to keep an excellent hunter, the falconer doesn’t want to lose the pricey GPS equipment he saddles it with when they go hunting. The hunter participates in the hunt by slipping up to a pond and flushing the ducks, sort of like a bird dog, after releasing the falcon. From there the hunt is on. If the falcon is successful in striking a duck, the falconer lets it have the head and other parts but keeps the prime meat form himself. He cooks the meat and serves it to his wife and two children. The pictures he showed of some of his cooking looked tasty, so I guess everyone but the duck benefits.
There is a saying among falconers that goes something like, “One or two birds and one wife: three birds and no wife.” Seems falconry is at least equivalent to a second job. Incidentally, the falcon we saw, having been wild, can easily revert to the wild. We are so dry in the Panhandle there might not be enough water around in the playas to attract ducks and he would have the option of turning the falcon loose knowing it would be no worse off than any other wild falcon.
It’s tax season and I’ve been wading through my return little by little. About an hour at a sitting is all I’m good for but I try to spend that hour daily. It usually takes me six or eight hours to come up with something TurboTax, in their infinite wisdom, will let me file. I’m glad to do it, though, knowing that I’m doing my part for the good of our nation and that the politicians and bureaucrats will be oh so frugal and wise in the investment of my meagre essence.
As predicted, we awoke to a couple of inches of snow Friday morning, which was mostly gone by late afternoon. It was pretty and we needed the little bit of moisture (.11 in the gauge). What we really need is a wet spell. One can hope.