| Author |
Message |
mudfork
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 22, 2002 - 5:14 pm: | |
I made a little walk around the place this afternoon and saw some disappointing sights. My first observation is that this cold weather has been brutal. Monday morning it was 28 degrees here in the SWVA mountains. This was not just a frost, but a true killing freeze, the first I can remember after so many trees had leaved out. The sassafras and poplars are black, grapevines,forget about it, and worst of all the oaks seem to have taken it pretty bad. Many are wilted. The small apples look like prunes on the trees. This could be very bad come fall. Definately going to have to do some extra work for some fall/winter food plots. I've been wondering how this cold weather and flooding we've had has affected the nests, and my next sight wasn't reassuring. I came upon a hen wondering a road with no little ones in sight. I can only hope she was taking an afternoon break from the nest. I continued on to check on some of my food plots. Good news here is they are growing and deer are loving them. While checking one plot, I found broken eggshells lying about. Now I've raised enough chickens, pheasants, ducks, geese, and quail in my life to know that the contents did not leave on their own doing. It looked like the work of crows, but hard to tell. Then the edge of the plot shook and I knew mamma was nearby. She took flight and left me looking at 6 eggs that appeared to be in good shape. She only went about 40 yards, so I'm hopeful that she will return soon. All in all, the news from the walk is not that great, but at least I've got 6 little round reasons to be optimistic. I'll tell ya, it's rough. When you live right in among'st 'em, you really get wrapped up in their life and death struggles. It will be a sad summer if we don't have some poults running around here to watch. |
GN
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 22, 2002 - 9:04 pm: | |
MF- I would say whatever hatched i n the last week will be very lucky to be alive tonight. Nature can turn on unususal circumstances and this piece of weather in this season is highly unusual. We would expect our mid to higher elevation birds to be hatching around June 1 down here...the lower elevation birds may have taken a lick this week. |
mudfork
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 22, 2002 - 10:24 pm: | |
GN--I hope you are right as far different hatching times. The problem in my immediate area is there is not a real big difference in relief from the upper to lower elevations. I'm not giving up hope yet. I usually don't see any poults here until about the first to second week of June. I wish I would have looked closer at the broken eggs I found today to see if I could find any evidence of blood vessel development, at least that would have indicated that she has been incubating. Won't know now as I am definately going to avoid the area. However, my feeling is she is in trouble, as whatever got into the nest is almost sure to return. |
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