You don’t have to eat junk food in hunting camp. From my fellow New Mexico hunter MDMNM at Sometimes Far Afield: “The best bottle of wine I had last year was uncorked on a grouse hunt (it was a Casa Rodena 1998 Cabernet Franc, if you were wondering). On this last trip, dinner the first …
Month: May 2007
Wondrous Feathers
Reader, falconer, and birder Stacia Novy, in the military in Honduras, sent a photo of herself with the central tail feathers of a motmot that she picked up. She wrote: “I found this pair of molted, central tail (deck) feathers from a Turquoise-browed Motmot the other day while hiking along a stream bed on base. …
Ancestry and Reversion
Lots of good thinking about the evolution of domestic animals this week. Odious started out with a post on Heck cattle, the Hagenbeck brothers’ attempt in pre- WW II Germany to breed a reconstructed aurochs. Comments came in from Chas and Doc Hypercube, who was also interested enough to post on Darren’s theories about dog …
Duck Sex Evolution
Lots of good bio stuff this week. Annie Pearse and Reid both sent me this NYT piece on the evolution of duck sex organs. A teaser: “When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is …
Good Alcohol and Unconventional Greens
But there is still a lot of spirit, in every sense, out there to combat those who would control our every move. Brit blogger Raedwald muses on anti- drinking activists who would not allow us to teach our children to drink sanely (Peculiar? Odious? Would that not have jailed Libby and I for many joyous …
Penn Gun Proposal
This seems to be a big week for nanny- state regs. From Hunting Life: “This misguided proposal would require every gun in Pennsylvania to be registered with the state, and each firearm would have to be re-registered annually. The registration would cost law-abiding gun owners $10 per gun each year. Of course, criminals won’t pay …
More AR Follies
The California compulsory spay- neuter bill should be on everybody’s radar. Blue Dog State puts it pungently, with some not- so- fantastic scenarios: “Enforcement of the King of the Nanny-Staters Lloyd Levine’s modest proposal to castrate every pet dog and cat in the state of California was left up to local enforcement personnel. “Things might …