Bird Watching at Coal Creek Farm

It’s cloudy and overcast this morning at Coal Creek Farm. The rain will roll in around lunchtime, so we need a quick start this morning. It’s another good day for the cattle operation as we have eight newborn calves looking happy and healthy. We ran out of time with the Bush Hog yesterday, so today, we will finish the lower field before the rain and then complete the job by doing preventative maintenance on the equipment: topping up the fluids and greasing all the fittings. Our land has a thick layer of topsoil, so when it rains, we stop running machines over the fields. The ruts that occur in the wet soil can take more than a decade to fade away, so it’s an excellent time to maintain equipment 

The highlight of my day was a bald eagle flying overhead land in a field. It was hunting, or maybe it was a stick for a nest. I couldn’t tell from so far away. I need to always carry my binoculars with me as our area of East Tennessee (the Cumberland Plateau) is one of the most species-rich/diverse in the country. The sighting reminded me to refill the bird feeders for whatever is migrating through. Coal Creek Farm is directly in the migration path for so many types of birds. In 2020, we documented about seventy different bird types with a camera or sound recordings. It was a fantastic project for me and my kids. We learned the names and calls of so many birds. And the short (two or three weeks) migration season always leaves us wishing for more time and more birds.