Birds Be About

      It’s that marvelous time of the year. Grouse season opened a little over a week ago and we’ve been out almost every day. The dogs pointed like champs and a few birds have fallen to the gun. We are working on consistency.

      Apple trees, hawthorn, high bush cranberries, and mountain ash are all so loaded with fruit that their branches sag. Choke cherries are almost black by now. Birches and maples are loaded with seeds. Every creature of the forest is gorging on the smorgasbord. Any hunter trying to use bait to lure in game is suffering an uphill battle.

      We have found the ruffed grouse up high in the hills and down at the edges of the farmland in the valleys. Woodcock are wherever the ground is damp and not crowded with weeds. Our daily averages are slightly above the long term normal.

      Our old girl Colby doesn’t cover a lot of ground, but she never bumps a bird. Maggie, at three and a half years of age, still lets her enthusiasm get ahead of her wisdom and occasionally bumps a bird, but she finds a half dozen birds to her older sibling’s one. Watching them develop is at least half of the fun. 

     It is the most wonderful time of the year.