Aerie Report, October 29, 2009

The fog lifted--well, it didn't actually lift lift, it sorta just thinned out temporarily--to expose the windmills across the way and that crane must have been busy under the cloak of the clouds. All the blades are in place and I never got to see if they lift all three at once--which I suspect is the modus operandi--or if they do it one at a time. Guess I'll never know unless I hit one of the breakfast spots (or a gin mill) where the crews hang out.

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As I mentioned this morning, the weather.com folks said we would have a mere 10% chance of rain today and that it would be mostly cloudy. Well, truth be told it hasn't rained, but it's difficult for it to rain when you are either in or above the clouds. Thank goodness the temperature has been hovering between a low of 48 and a high of 52 degrees. If this had happened when the air was around 32 and the surfaces cooler, everything would be coated in ice.

I see that it's supposed to be around 50-55 degrees at Yankee Stadium tonight and no precipitation is expected. Looks like MLB has lucked out for one more night. I look forward to when the Brewers make the World Series and get to play in their new outdoor facility some brisk November evening. Or even for the Rockies to make it into the fall classic. Perhaps they can play it with baseballs colored orange or some other more visible shade. Certainly the fans in the stands will have an abundant supply of blue ones.

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That wasn't a backhoe on the flat bed as I suspected, it was a grader. I know this for a fact because it went to work grading the road in front of the Aerie just a short time ago. It was being followed by the sad sack of a flat bed that it came in on. Probably had to repair the damage to the road the flat bed created while it was spinning its wheels.

As long as the grader makes things flat again, the fleet of loaded dump trucks--which continue to move up and down the hill--will have it packed as hard as any steamroller could possibly ever hope to do.

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The little birds continue to hit the feeders on the deck hard. They were joined today by some Goldfinches, a couple of Purple Finches and a pair of Downy Woodpeckers. I watched the female Downy give the male a lesson in proper etiquette (ladies first, last and always, sucker! and don't you forget it!) and then settle down to wedge a sunflower seed in the cracks between the deck floorboards where she could comfortably peck it open for the kernel inside.

We even had a couple of gray squirrels come up on the deck for some sunflower seeds. This is a bit of a surprise because there's been one heck of a crop of acorns in the woods and I thought the squirrels would still be busy with that harvest. Perhaps they just wanted some variety.