Woods & Water by Dick Herfindahl

 

Before the weather turned bitterly cold, I made sure that the bird feeders at the house were topped off. It always bothers me to see my feeders low or almost empty, so I always like to make sure that they have enough feed in them for those feathered little critters. The feeders are visited by the usual suspects on a regular basis and occasionally a cardinal or a bird that I don’t recognize and have to look up will make an appearance.

When I am up north at our cabin, I am always amazed by the numbers of birds that visit the feeders each day. Spring and summer are the busy times for these feathered visitors and the variety of birds almost seems endless. Some of the more colorful visitors are the blue jays, which were pretty skittish at first and would take off at the hint of movement. After a few visits, they seemed comfortable with my being there and they went about their business without as much as a flinch. The Blue Jays usually never ate from the feeders, but instead, did their foraging from the ground. On my last couple of visits to the north country the jays were eating from my suet feeder, which is my homemade version of a feeder.

There have been times when I have been filling the feeders and had nuthatches buzzing around my head trying to get to the feeder as I was hanging it up. Those had to be some hungry birds. I almost felt like old Grizzly Adams when that happened. That show was kind of corny, but I still liked it.

A couple of years ago, my son Brian and his family gave me a suet feeder that used round suet pegs that fit into 1-inch holes drilled into a 4×4 block of wood. That worked really well and the woodpeckers really took to it. One day we had gone to the store, which was a short distance away and upon our return I discovered that the suet feeder had been taken. As I looked around the cabin I discovered another feeder had been knocked down. That’s when I found what was left of that suet feeder lying on the ground chewed into splinters. I am no detective, but I came to the conclusion that it was a bear that had visited us while we were gone. The next day we found out that the bear was not as shy as it appeared. Later that day, it reappeared in front of our cabin looking to get another meal from our bird feeders. My wife, Jean, said she thought it would be kind of neat if the bear came up on the deck. Well, she had hardly gotten those words out of her mouth when the bear came up the steps and onto the deck. The critter snooped around a bit and then peered into our deck doors as if to say Hi! It was a pretty neat experience and all the time we never really felt threatened.

I caught that bear on my trail cam a couple of times after that initial visit, but its visits were only at night and it never did appear in the daylight again, at least not while we were there. That was a real thrill to behold and a memory that we will always have to share.

As for the suet feeder, I decided that I could make my own feeder out of a small piece of birch log using a 1-inch hole saw. I drilled about 8 holes in different places on the log and then put an eye screw on top to hold it and I was in business. The woodpeckers really liked it right away and the blue jays actually took to it also. We have a variety of woodpeckers feeding from that thing. There are downy, red headed and pileated woodpeckers all feeding from it. We can sit on the deck and the woodpeckers seem oblivious to our presence even though they are just a short distance away. Ahh, nature at its best!

I hate to harp on it but…When is ice safe?

There really is no sure answer. You can’t judge the strength of ice just by its appearance, age, thickness, temperature, or whether or not the ice is covered with snow. Strength is based on all these factors — plus the depth of water under the ice, size of the water body, water chemistry and currents, the distribution of the load on the ice, and local climatic conditions.

There is no such thing as 100 percent safe ice.

The DNR does not measure ice thickness on Minnesota lakes. Your safety is your responsibility. Check ice thickness at least every 150 feet.

Temperature, snow cover, currents, springs and rough fish all affect the relative safety of ice. Ice is seldom the same thickness over a single body of water. It can be two feet thick in one place and one-inch-thick a few yards away.

Cars, pickups or SUVs should be parked at least 50 feet apart and moved every two hours to prevent sinking.

Tip: Make a hole next to the car. If water starts to overflow the top of the hole — the ice is sinking and it’s time to move the vehicle.

 

Boat hosts needed for Governor’s Fishing Opener

Until next time, we have been getting good responses for our need of fishing hosts, but we still have a long way to go in reaching the number of hosts needed to make this event a success. I would like to encourage anyone who is a registered boat owner and would like to participate in the Governor’s Fishing Opener by being a boat host to sign up online. The easiest way to do that is by going to www.mngovernorsopener.com look for the search box and type in boat host, click on search glass and it will take you to the page. Select boat host information and follow the instructions. You may also stop by the CVB office to pick up a registration form or call me at 507-383-2231 for more information. This is our chance to showcase this great community that we choose to live in and one that we are proud to call home.

Please remember to keep our troops in your thoughts and prayers during the year 2019. They are the reason we are able to enjoy all of these wonderful freedoms we enjoy today.