It's that time of year. Keep a weather eye open for things like this.

Roaming? Oh heck, they are everywhere these days.

One of the many pleasures of returning to the Would-Be Farm is the ritual of checking the game cameras.

​As we have gotten to know the various gamey crossroads, we've added to the numbers of these nifty little devices. In fact, this time we forgot where we'd put that one for several days...

*Sidebar factoid: the term "paparazzi" comes from the name of a character in the 1960 Fellini film La Dolce Vita. That name (Paparazzo) also harks back to a kind of large Italian mosquito. 

A few highlights from October 2017 at the Farm.

It's less about watching birds than simply noticing them.

Couldn't ask for a more obvious identification of this attractive fellow: the Red-Shouldered Hawk.

​You can tell what kind because of his long yellow legs. <exits, snortling.>

But the other thing that doesn't lie? Scat.

(In the interest of kindness, know that the blog is going to take a bathroom-minded turn. With photos.)

​In July, I took a quick snap of what might be the product of an over-indulgence of berries for a big raccoon. 
​

In October, I took a photo of what's clearly the kind of thing a bear would do in the woods. 

As they say in scatological circles, "That is one big fecal coliform, baby."

Okay, maybe they don't –– turns out that "coliform" doesn't mean what I thought it meant. Huh. 

Still, anyone with an eye for such things would be given pause by the appearance of such a display of large-caliber dung in the middle of the trail. 

Let's hope it doesn't end in statistics and blood.

Like the Butterbean, the new Flying Scot boat is named for an obscure edible. In this case it's a kind of muscadine grape that can be found in the Carolinas, the Scuppernong.  

Scuppernongs taste like beefed-up Concord grapes. The skin is leathery and tannic, and it's riddled with seeds, but the meat is fragrant.

My favorite skipper claims that they are inedible, but I think he's wrong on this one.
​
A quick perusal of the interwebs shows a LOT of scuppernong-related music.  I cannot recommend any of it. 

On an earlier draft, I linked some YouTube Scuppernong highlights: experimental plonk-plonk music, an chaotic atonal jazz composition, an odd spoken-word performance, some only-for-serious-fans-of-high-and-lonesome bluegrass.  

​These were videos with maybe a couple of dozens of views and no comments after years of waiting in the ether.  Linking to them was akin to finding something in the fridge and offering to your buddy, saying, "Here, sniff this, it's awful!"  

You're welcome.