Didn’t know if you had seen this interesting item last week about an injured bald eagle in a sanctuary in Idaho that is being fitted with a prosthetic beak. The final version will be made of titanium.
Month: June 2008
More on Isolated Tribes
John Noble Wilford has an expanded treatment on isolated primitive tribal groups that I briefly posted on last week. Apparently there are about 100 left, half of which are in Amazonia. Many of the rest are in Papua New Guinea. As I said said before, it’s astonishing to me that there are this many left …
More Pretties
I keep forgetting to put in a better pic of the Stephen Grant sidelever. So: ancient (1889) English Best gun, resting on a relatively modern kilim I picked up in Sanliurfa on the Kurdish tazi expedition,
Sunday Pix
On Sunday this time of the year we do a lot of stuff around the house, garden, with birds etc. Patrick Porter of the Pigeon list (also a bird hunter, botanist, horticulturist, and damned good writer), sent Libby a bunch of huge Dahlia tubers. (Wish I had thought to show scale– some of these are …
Third Anniversary
Rebecca’s post about the fifth anniversary of her blog just reminded me to check that yesterday was the third anniversary of Querencia.
Marked-up Birds become Sexier
I was intrigued by this story in USA Today earlier this week and Chas beat me to getting a post up about it. “Using a $5.99 marker, scientists darkened the rust-colored breast feathers of male New Jersey barn swallows, turning lighter birds to the level of those naturally darkest. They had already found, in a …
Hidalgo Under My Skin
I found this article fascinating: a series of tourism ads that feature pictures of famous prehistoric ruins body-painted on the torso of a beautiful actress, has been found in violation of Mexican law. “The country’s anthropology institute, based in Mexico City, does more than just serve as Mexico’s monument police. It oversees a vast collection …
Peter Rabbit Must Die
I thought you’d all enjoy this unintentionally hilarious NYT piece on city folk who have moved to the country to bond with nature. But once they find out that wildlife treats their gardens as convenience stores they snap and turn into bloodthirsty killers. Some choice examples: “The homeowner, a city-boy artist and illustrator who had …
Friday Feeder Friend
I’m halfway cheating with this picture of a Gambel’s quail. I took it at a feeder in the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge in California. It reminded me of this quail petroglyph from El Morro National Monument in New Mexico.
Mongol Tazi
Andrew Campbell of The Regal Viszla just sent this ink drawing of a Mongolian hunter with a tazi– reinforcing once more that they are most anciently an Asian dog.