Barred Owl Glimpses

 Daylight glimpses of our nesting pair of barred owls are rare. They come up out of the hole in the hickory and head for the timber, where they first go to an eastern red-cedar and disappear. It was raining the other day and they showed themselves more, but they are darn near invisible in gray light against gray trees. The one that parked in the tree was watching my every move, and I was just shooting video from a door that was cracked open. They don't hide so much at night. They will sit in trees over our head and talk to us at night, but of course we can't get pictures then. 

Here's John McCormack,

 to make it officially St. Patrick's Day!

Annual Dam Fire 2022

You have to fight the trees every year to keep them off the dam. The easy part of woody vegetation control is annual burning to knock little trees back to the ground. We will be applying herbicide on trees out here after everything greens up.

See Good Trees, An Easy Method To Thin Your Timber

 Working in timber is good for you. I did this type of work for thirty five years and still have good knees, and I enjoyed all but one day in the woods. In this instance we are working in large sapling and pole timber. Using a spacing for 40 to 50 crop trees per acre will have your timber in good shape. A spacing of 33' by 33' will give you 40 trees per acre. A spacing of 30' by 30' will yield 48 crop trees per acre. You will be pacing the distances and selecting good trees close to your distance, so the actual number of crop trees will vary. Shoot for opening your crop trees on three side, and some on four sides. Trees along the edges you can leave alone, or open them on two sides, because the ones on the edge are wide open on two sides already, and will be low quality because of limbs hanging on.