Zea mays

“Do you feel like going to Dead Creek?” I was asked over breakfast on Sunday.

Sometimes I need an hour or two to decide if I’m up for long excursions but if we were going, it needed to be soon and I couldn’t think of any reason to say no, so before long we were heading north on good old route 22.

A couple of days earlier, I’d seen photographs that someone posted of ospreys in that area.

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The sky looked a little ify, but a few sprinkles wouldn’t bother us.

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Even for a Sunday – it was eerily quiet!

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We had visited Dead Creek in late Fall, in Winter and in early Spring, but this was our first trip in high Summer. As we progressed further north, the sky cleared.

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Until I came to live Upstate New York, I’d never really thought about corn, or maize, that I had first encountered in Asia where it was cooked two ways, charred over a charcoal fire, or boiled in its husk. I had no preference, enjoying it either way.

In England, I remembered having been given sweetened popcorn occasionally, but it was not the same thing at all. I’d never heard of corn on the cob.

“Corn” was something different in England. (Wheat, barley or oats)

Noticing the variety in local corn fields, I decided to look up some information.

Field corn, which grows to 10-14 feet is used for animal feed or processed into ethanol, industrial products or food ingredients like fructose.

Sweet corn, which grows to 6-8 feet is used for human consumption.

Flint corn comes in 3 varieties, the short growing to 3 to 5 feet, standard to 6 to 8 feet and the towering variety reaching 8 to 10 feet. It is used for cornmeal or polenta.

White flint which is a short variety is “nutrient dense”.

Popcorn is its own variety known as Zea mays everta. It grows to 6 to 8 feet.

Additionally, there are many regional varieties.

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Corn fields seem to stretch forever and New York is the largest producer in the Northeast, however overall it produces only 0.5% of the total grown in the USA.

Iowa, which produces the most, 16-17% of the US total, grows 99% field corn.

Which is probably more than you ever needed to know about corn!

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It was nice to be back at Dead Creek under this enormous sky on such a great day.

And not shivering in a chill wind!

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Arriving at the viewing platform, we found that it was completely overgrown. Whether this is normally the case in summer, or a result of recent government cut-backs, I don’t know, however it did not present a problem.

Pushing through those weeds, I believed it was knotweed, but my app identifies it as kochia and it seems there are other possibilities. I think it does not matter. It was taller than me.

At this location, we only saw one osprey, but I got a little carried away:

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The osprey circled, calling out.

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We thought there was a junior osprey in the nest but looking through his binoculars, Grant decided it was not.

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It’s not possible to tell from the photographs…

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…but I think that was a junior.

In part judging from the behaviour of the other bird.

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You guessed it – I am very keen on ospreys.

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Although we were some distance away, the osprey was keenly aware of us and screeched its discomfort, so we left it in peace, driving on to see what else we might find.

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