Public Comment on Passage Peregrines

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comments on a draft environmental assessment for the taking of passage peregrine falcons (fledged juveniles on their first migration) for falconry. The comment period closes on 11 February, so there is still time to put your two cents in if you care to. The issue is …

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On The Farm

One of my favorite hawking spots is a neighbor’s hayfield, which he saves for me as long as he can before cutting it or moving the cows in. I’ve been going there often and letting the hawk feed while there’s still something left to eat. Today, Jonathan Millican joined me and took some photos of …

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Flock Protectors

We have been talking a lot on our private lists lately about another loose group of working dogs now being minutely divided into “breeds”, the great flock- protecting dogs of the middle east and Asia, with some historical extensions into parts of Europe that had the “transhumance” or flock migration. I have seen working examples …

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The Dangers of Inbreeding

Patrick and I tend to go on about how the closed- studbook model of breeding and breeds, a relict of the 19th century’s imperfect understanding of genetics, is deleterious and dysfunctional, but I haven’t said much on it here. Reader Mike spies and I recently had an interesting discussion on this matter,and he gave me …

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Links, Apologia…

If I can ever finish the saga of my completed but yet…unfulfilled?.. book, it will be a good one, or at least a lesson in the vagaries of contemporary publishing that would fulfill every cynical belief of Michael Blowhard. It has been that kind of month. Meanwhile, links and various photos. Science and nature: Paleoblog …

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Field Survey

Our field survey methods are rather simple. We line up in skirmish lines at a regular interval – for this survey the transect interval is 15 meters. Then we walk systematically over the area to be surveyed and look for artifacts and features on the ground surface, in this case all 7400 acres of it. …

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Pot Drop

Sometime between AD 1000 and probably 1700 a Native American traveling through our project area somehow dropped and broke this ceramic jar. The climate being what it is in this desert, artifact distributions like this can remain undisturbed for hundreds of years. We refer to situations where the broken sherds stay together on the ground …

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Work Intrudes

I must apologize for radio silence, as this is the longest I’ve gone without posting since Steve invited me on board here. I am currently in Imperial County, California running a large archaeological survey. Between the Christmas Holidays and all the work involved in getting into the field I really haven’t had any time to …

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Falcon and the Snowjob

Relating to the recent pics of GWB hanging out in the Saudi weathering yard, Anne found this post by “BWildered” at the liberal blogsite Daily Kos: “Were you, like me, treated to an Abu Dhabi photo-op? Abu Dhabi royals introducing George W Bush to the arts and sciences of falconry. Where are the sharp-eyed falcons …

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