March: a Time for Coffee, Go Carts, and Sandhill Cranes

We have had really beautiful weather this March. Karen and I have been able to get out to some of our favorite spots and spend some time together. Some times we even stopped to have coffee and just enjoyed being outside.

There is an old farm for sale not too far from our place. Blake knew the owner and got permission to walk the property. Since it was a really nice day we went out for an extended hike and covered most of the farm acreage, hills, woods, fields, old barns etc.

It is a nice property and fun to see it up close. I have passed by this farm for years on my jogs and bike rides, but had never walk on it.

Last Saturday Blake made arrangement to have access to an indoor go-cart track for a couple of hours.

Karen and I got invited to go along. In addition to go-carts they had sprint cars that could be taken out as well. Karen really enjoyed it once we convinced her to give it a try. We all have fun.

You can see the track beyond the pit area where Trae and Skyler were getting ready to take off.

On Sunday Blake, Apryl and the boys came over for a while and Skyler as usual was knee deep in crawdad catching.

I have been doing quite a bit of bike riding for the past few months. I have logged over 1200 miles from March 2011 to March 2012. With the mild winter I rode almost every week all winter. Since March has been so mild I have spend several evenings riding out toward Pisgah Marsh. There are several large fields that seemed to have attracted large numbers of Sandhill Crane and Canada Geese. Both have been nesting in the marsh and feeding in the fields.

Sandhill Cranes are about the same size as Great Blue Herons. They seem to feed on grain rather than marsh critters like frogs, fish and little ducks (but that's a story for another time). Sandhill crane are very vocal and really make a racket when anything disturbs them. They used to be fairly rare around here but now they seem to be starting to nest around here much more.

One evening I came across a group of at least 100 birds. I started carrying a small camera with me and tried to get close enough to take some decent pictures, but each time they were either too far off the road or just weren't in the fields, or it was too late in the day and the lighting was poor. One day last week I came riding by, without a camera, of course, and spotted a fairly large group. It was still light enough for me to hurry home and grab my regular camera drive back and get a few good shots before the birds got too wary and wandered our of range.