Gettysburg Barn

I shot this photo last September at Gettysburg. Memorial Day was first observed to honor the Civil War dead, and so it seemed an appropriate barn photo for today. If you visit Gettysburg you will see many barns on the battlefields of Gettysburg that were standing during the Civil War. The heaviest fighting took place around the buildings and in the fields and orchards of the area's farms. The lives of the people who lived there at the time were changed forever by the Civil War's bloodiest battle.

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Click on the barn below to see more old barns at Tricia's Barn Charm.

Garden Help

The summers are short in Fairbanks, but gardening is taken very seriously. With our long hours of sunlight vegetables and flowers grow at a fantastic rate. June 1st is considered the safe planting date, and Memorial Day weekend is the time to get your plants in the ground. Today and yesterday our high temp was 85 degrees, so all those little plants require lots of water to keep them going. Fortunately, my granddaughter Sydney helped out with the watering chores. I plant mostly flowers, and the majority of those need to be started well before they can be put outside. I started a few things this year, but I also have made quite a few visits to the local nurseries. They are slowly getting planted, mostly in containers, but I am also adding to my perennial beds.

In the meantime they are waiting on the shady side of the house. Still with the warm weather they require lots of water. It's good to have help.

Sydney was quite serious and worked hard to make sure all the plants got the water they needed.

But, she is just two, and so she also made sure the rocks got watered too!

Then nap time approached and she went home. Tomorrow I'll have to take care of the watering myself, and somehow in the next few days I've got to get all that planting done......

Approaching Sunset

The sky last night a bit before sunset was beautiful. I took these photos shortly after 11:00 p.m. as the sun dipped behind the hill near our house. Sunset today is at 11:45 p.m. and sunrise at 3:51 a.m. with twilight in between.

We are gaining almost seven minutes of daylight a day as we approach the longest day of the year. Spring was a little slow coming this year, with the first 60 degree day of the year on May 15th, about two weeks later than normal. Two days later though we hit 70 degrees, and today we hit 80 degrees. The trees have all turned green and a few early wildflowers are blooming. Summer has come quite dramatically!

Barn Rehab

I saw this beautiful red barn on a rainy day in January when we were in the Skagit Valley in Washington. The sign on the front of the barn says it was built in 1906. Washington State established the Heritage Barn Register in 2007 and a grant program to support the preservation of historic barns across Washington State. Several barns in the Valley have signs showing they are registered and work is being done to preserve them. It's amazing what a new roof and a coat of paint can do!

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Hop on over to Tricia's Barn Charm to see more old barns.

Reindeer

Here a few shots of some of the reindeer at the experimental farm. The first is a female, and yes, she has only one antler. She will probably lose that one soon too. Cows retain their antlers throughout pregnancy, giving them an advantage during the winter feeding as the large bulls shed their antlers in October. So, those reindeer that pull Santa's sleigh--yup, they've got to be all female. That little black spot to the left is her new calf.

The guys were hanging out in the shade, I'm sure swapping stories.

Life seems to be pretty easy at the farm, much easier than it is for the wild caribou.

In the Backyard

Spring has definitely arrived in Fairbanks and is rushing headlong into summer as it usually does. Yesterday and today hit 70 degrees, and the forecast is to be in the mid 70s by Saturday and for the next week. Songbirds have arrived , one of the most noticeable the Robins. The first shot I took out the kitchen window this evening. Then a little later the pair that has claimed our yard as their territory were feeding and appeared to be searching for nesting material.

They don't seem to be too concerned when I'm in the yard, and allowed me to be quite close to them.

I also saw a White-crowned Sparrow who darted under the deck after the seeds that had been scattered this winter from the feeders. I've also spotted Juncos heading under the deck, but so far no photos.

I have been hearing and seeing a number of Yellow-rumped Warblers all week, but they tend to be high in the trees and are not cooperating for my photo sessions. For a small bird they have a very large voice, and although I can hear them I can't always see them. I like the photo that I took yesterday of one singing up in a tree as they spend a lot of time doing just that.

That photo was taken at 11:30 in the morning, and you can see the leaves were just starting to peek out. With the temperature warmer yesterday afternoon and today the leaves are really starting to pop. They are not open fully yet, but things are beginning to look green. This shot was taken about 8:00 tonight.

Things grow at a phenomenal rate with our long hours of daylight. Sunrise today was 4:18 a.m. and sunset was 11:17 p.m. and we are gaining 7 minutes of daylight a day. Of course, civil twilight ends at 2:23 a.m. and begins at 2:23 a.m. You've got it, it's not getting completely dark now. We'll keep getting more sunshine until June 21st, and then we'll begin the long downhill slide. For now, though, we're going to be cramming as much as possible into every day!

Red Barn at the Experiment Farm

This red barn is part on the University of Alaska campus here in Fairbanks.
The USDA established the Fairbanks Experiment Farm in 1906. The land was transferred in 1915 to establish the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines. The first student graduated in 1923 and in 1931 the experiment station was transferred from federal ownership to the college, and in 1935 the college was renamed the University of Alaska. The farm includes 260 acres of cropland and 50 acres of forest land for research and demonstration purposes.

Past research focused on swine, sled dogs, sheep, and beef cattle. The current research is primarily with reindeer nutrition and production. So in the pens around the barn you see reindeer instead of the usual cows or sheep. Each spring a calf watch is set up online. So far this year there have been 15 male and 8 female calves born. Suggestions for names for the calves are solicited from the public, so if you'd like to suggest a name you can go to Calf Watch and submit your idea.

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Hop on over to Tricia's Barn Charm to see more old barns.

More Sandhill Cranes

These are some more shots I took of the Sandhill Cranes Tuesday evening. If you watch a group of Sandhill Cranes for a while you'll see a lot of different behaviors.Ruffled feathers is fairly common, and could be grooming to get rid of dust. It is often done after pair dancing. It could also be communicating a threat after a defense of territory.

Then after the ruffling a bow.

Although the photo below isn't as sharp as I would like, I'm including it because I saw this happen several times while I was watching. The Crane in the middle is nipping at the Crane on the left. The Crane getting nipped didn't do anything other than flapping its wings a bit. It reminds me of a couple of bickering kids.

One of the clearest indicators of how a Crane is feeling is the red patch on the top of the head. The skin on the forehead has no feathers, and when the Crane is relaxed the red skin ends just behind the eye. An aroused or excited Crane flashes more bare skin by increasing the blood flow and by contracting facial muscles to pull the red patch backward along the top of the head. You can see the difference in the photo below.

One of the more interesting behaviors is unison-calling. The male and female pair stand side-by-side with necks upright. The male's head is held straight up as he calls and the female lifts her head to a 45 degree angle. The duet is quite loud. Click HERE to go to the International Crane Foundation website and hear the unison-calling.

It's very interesting to watch a group of Cranes interact. They definitely have a lot of character!

Crane Dance

Yesterday evening on our way home we stopped at the front viewing field at Creamer's Field. There were a few dozen Sandhill Cranes and a bit of dancing was going on. Cranes dance as part of pair bonding, but dancing also allows rivals to assess one another. Parents teach their young to dance, and they practice dancing for years before they select a mate.

They will dance alone or in pairs or in groups.

They can leap quite high in the air and with their huge wingspan it is quite impressive.

Sometimes one Crane will circle around a stationary partner and sometimes both partners are rotating.

The dance may be for courtship or competition or it may just reflect high spirits or play.

You can be sure there will be a display of the wings.

The dance sequence of this pair lasted maybe a minute.

Finally the dance came a little too close to a pair of Canada Geese that were close by, and they had had enough.

Off they went, putting some distance between themselves and the Cranes. For myself, I am always fascinated when the dancing begins.

Cupolas All In A Row

While I was at Creamer's Field a few days ago, I took this shot of the cupolas on the barns. No matter which angle you are looking at the barns the cupolas are a prominent feature, and I liked seeing them all lined up. The photo in the header is the view from the front of the barns, and this view is looking at the barns from the right side of the barns. Click HERE to see more photos of Creamer's Dairy Barns from my previous posts.

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Hop over to Tricia's Barn Charm to see more old barns.

Alaskan Roadtrip Views

On Friday we took a roadtrip down the Alaska Highway to the Northway area, almost to the Canadian border. Marty is in the process of restoring his '56 Ford Crown Victoria, and had talked to a fellow near Northway who had a grill and possibly some other pieces that would fit. Friday was a sunny day and a good day for a drive, so we headed out about 7:30 in the morning. The trip there was five hours, and then of course five hours back, so we only stopped a few times for photo-taking. Mostly I took shots out the windshield and side window, and so some are not as clear as I would like. The first photo is a shot of the Tanana River near Salcha. The ice had just broken a channel through a couple of days ago, but a good portion is still frozen over. Shortly past Delta we say at least 15 flocks of birds circling high above us. We were pretty sure they were Sandhill Cranes, but they were too far up to be sure until I got home and was able to enlarge the photos on the computer. The Cranes have been dribbling into the Fairbanks area over the last few weeks, but we'll see more shortly. The Cranes that fly through Interior Alaska winter in Mexico and the southern states and migrate north using the Central Flyway through the Platte River Valley in Nebraska. An estimated 500,000 Cranes fly through the Platte River Valley each spring.

A bit further down the road we spotted a group of five caribou Although we stopped, of necessity because they were on the road, there was not time to get out, so the photos were shot through the windshield.

The road offers some spectacular views of the Alaska Range. This is the same range of mountains that Mt. McKinley is in.

When we stopped at a rest area shortly after we drove through Tok and before we arrived at our destination, there was a beautiful view over the valley.

We were about 30 miles from the Canadian border when we arrived at the place we were headed for. We knew we were at the right place because there were numerous old cars, trucks, snowmachines, etc., scattered over the property. The house set on the top of the bluff with a view very similar to the one above. Marty found many pieces to fit Vicky, from a trunk to chrome pieces, even a transmission. But that's a story for another day. By the time we were done it was getting close to 2:00 and time to head home.

Along the way you cross many rivers, some very wide, like the Robertson River in the photo below. The bridge across the river is very long and narrow, and the photo only shows a portion of the river. It still had a lot of ice, but there was a channel flowing.

A few minutes down the road we saw our second moose of the day, but he quickly trotted into the trees, and again I was left with a windshield shot.

Fifteen minutes later a couple of caribou needed to cross the road in front of us. You've got it, more windshield shots. If you take the time to get out, more than likely you will not have any shot at all. Unfortunately by this time of day the windshield was not very clean!

I guess they looked both ways before crossing, but I don't think there was any question that they were crossing in front of us.

And then they were quickly down in the trees.

We stopped for a late lunch at Fast Eddie's in Tok, but we were home by 7:00. We had a beautiful drive and Marty came back with a lot of Crown pieces. It was a good day!