Trego's Mountain Ear

We’re still watching the latest hatch of geese – five goslings and two parents that haven’t gone into the flight training stage.  Very different from the old gander, who brings his (second) mate north, and makes certain the nest site is clear and ready before the ice goes out and the island becomes the safest place to nest.  He’s been mostly gone for over a month, taking his goslings and grand-goslings on flights to lakes and fields in the area.  The last time he stopped by there were 43 geese landing.  We expect an even larger entourage when he makes the final fall landing, impressing the concept of his home field on all of his followers.

Today, Saturday the 17th, the lone turkey hen showed up at lunch-time, accompanied by six day-old hatchlings.  She had lost her original three hatchlings – although we have good habitat for little birds, that habitat is also good for predators.  Probably the worst predator from the turkey perspective is the nest of ravens – but the coyote, the eagle, even the occasional feral cat all look for the smallest turkeys.  Hopefully, she’ll be successful with this late lot.

We’re getting ready to put the sign on the driveway.  We’ve had it a little less than 40 years, back when Renata won the gift certificate at some raffle, for Dave Clark to chainsaw carve a sign.  It moved to Libby with us, then to SDSU and home when we retired.  I’ve touched up the paint and varnish, and planned to use aluminum nails to put it on a tree next to the gate – under the theory that a sign that reads “Mike and Renata” essentially says the same thing as “Private Drive” but a whole lot more politely.

I got in the habit of using aluminum nails in trees when I surveyed for Cadastral – and getting my own mill has increased my bias against iron and steel in trees – my last encounter was in a blowdown alongside the old Fortine Creek Road where one of the insulators for the phone line between Ant Flat and the old dam had been placed.  Nearly a century of growth had well concealed the iron after the insulator and line were gone, and naturally it was an almost new band I ran into it.

So I went shopping for long aluminum nails.  Failed in Eureka.  Failed in Kalispell.  Got on the internet.  Found them at a hardware store in Ohio.  $9.00 gets me 10 5-inch aluminum nails delivered in about ten days.  Hopefully we’ll have the project up by the first of September.  As I approach 75, protecting the sign from the element seems increasingly less significant.