Double-crested Cormorant - Phala- crocorax auritus - if I'm not mistaken. I sighted this bird perched on a log in the lake behind the Kernsville Dam last week. I've never seen a cormorant before and this one appears to be immature, so the identification is a bit tentative, but Great Cormorant generally sticks to coastal areas.

 

Great Blue Heron - Ardea herodias - dipping a freshly-skewered catfish in the pond. I warched this behavior repeated several times, both at the spot where the fish was caught and when the bird moved across the bar to a spot farther from the road. Sometimes merely dipping it, sometimes dropping it and picking it up again, occasionally trying to swallow the fish. This went on for a quarter of an hour before the heron managed to cram this large meal down its throat. I have spent that much time watching herons several times and never even saw one catch anything before, at least nothing big enough for me to see what it was.

  Green Heron - Butorides virescens - in flight at the pond on Lowland Road beside the Tilden Industrial Park. For a relatively small pond adjoining a public road, this is a very good place for a variety of wading and swimming birds. Killdeer, Canada Goose, three sorts of herons and several species of ducks are among this year's sightings there. It remains the only place where I have seen an American Coot.

  One horse-power vehicles are not too uncommon around Lenharts- ville, but this is the only one I've seen with a shiny metal body.

  Country Living - One of the joys of living on a farm, as I have for about half my life, is that you sometimes get invited to go shopping. On this occasion, we were looking for a newer and larger manure spreader. I can't say that smelling what it spreads counts as one of the joys of country life, but after three decades in fairly close proximity to cattle, I'm used to it.