Summer?

Lloyd Carney was up with us this week and took a number of pictures of birds and dogs. I have included some of them here. The first is Trash pointing what I think was a grouse. We had so much bird work this past week it's hard to keep it straight. The second one is Wild Apple Jack pointing a woodcock. That's followed by the best picture of the week taken Friday while I was at the doctor's. It's a full clutch of woodcock eggs that should hatch at latest during the first week of May. The 10 day forecast calls for unseasonably warm weather (70 plus today mid-80s tomorrow, 60s & 70s for the rest of the forecast period) which should help the success rate of the nesting. The last picture has a woodcock in it. Their camouflage is pretty amazing.

Today was like a lazy summer day with temperatures climbing to the mid-70s with sunny skies and relatively calm winds. It was not a good day for working birds although we moved at leas one bird in each cover with a total of 1 grouse and 4 woodcock for the day. This will be the last week of our spring training in covers that are known to hold nesting birds. They are a far to valuable resource come summer when we are breaking fall derbies and tuning up shooting dogs to risk chasing them off nest or harassing newly born chicks. We have a few places to work dogs that don't have birds, I'll start bikejoring, there's also yardwork, and finally the birdfield. None of it is as much fun as running on wild birds but all of has value and needs to be done.

The last weekend of the month Tony and I are headed over to the Mid-Coast Maine trial to run Jack and the puppies. There new grounds are really and nice and we are looking forward to a good weekend.