Snipe Hunt

To tie up the last loose end, ComEd came Wednesday to swap the old meter for a new one. We are live! The only sunny day we’ve had was yesterday, generating 57 kWh. The cloudy days have generated half that or less—today was dreary indeed with a total of only 7 kWh. The coming week should be better.

The inverter measuring electrical output. The manual says that from left to right the numbers are the AC being generated, the DC used, and the total AC for the day. I'm not sure what that all means.

Like many or maybe even most children, I grew up thinking that snipes were mythical creatures, similar to unicorns except meaner. The snipe hunt was a way for older kids to lure uninitiated younger kids out into the woods in the dark to scare them.

Two weeks ago, I was thrilled to pieces when I walked out to our prairie restoration area (which at present is a wet meadow) and saw a bird with a long bill that resembled a woodcock. Then I saw another, and then a group of three. I looked up woodcocks in Sibley and found that there were several things wrong with my tentative identification. 1) Woodcocks have no flight call. The birds I saw definitely made a noise when they took off. Not a pretty noise, nor a long one, but a noise nevertheless. 2) Woodcocks live in the woods, not in wet meadows. But guess what! Snipes are real. On the very next page was a picture of the common snipe, Gallinago gallinago. They look a lot like woodcocks, but are a little smaller. Sibley described the flight call as “a dry, harsh, scraping, scresh or kesh,” and they inhabit wet meadows.

Last week, I saw them again. When I got home from GardenFest yesterday, I put the telephoto lens on my camera and went out to see if I could get a picture. I scared up a dozen or so in four bursts. Snipes fly fast and erratically. It was not easy to get a photo. In my snipe research, I discovered that the term “sniper” originally referred to someone sufficiently skilled with a gun to shoot snipes, and that’s saying something. Like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, my picture of the snipe is appropriately grainy and out of focus. The “boldly striped back,” white belly, and black wedge on the wing are characters that separate it from the woodcock.

Grainy, out-of-focus picture of the not-mythical snipe

Six snipes flying away after I disturbed them

I suspect the snipes are feasting on chorus frogs, which I have yet to see. I even poked around under the water looking for eggs, but all I found was filamentous algae. Some of the algae is forming mats on the water’s surface. No eggs, no tadpoles. Still plenty of noise from the chorus frogs. When will they get down to business? That six inches of standing water won’t last forever!

Mat of filamentous algae in the stagnant water of the wet meadow

The upside of the cloudy weather has been a slight downtick in the box elder bug and ladybug populations. As soon as the sun comes out, however, they’re back. Here’s a congregation of box elder bugs on the patio.

A congregation of box elder bugs

The turkeys are back too. I saw a tom displaying to five hens today. I was in the middle of kitchen work and didn’t take a picture. The hens were uninterested.

One of the silver crested chickens has laid three tiny eggs over the last two weeks. (I guess they could both be doing it.) The two eggs I have opened both have nothing but white and what looks like yolk membrane. It’s gross. I have thrown them out. I had so hoped there would be perfect tiny yolks inside. It turns out that the eggs are only cute while in the shell.

A cute little white egg

Not so cute on the inside