Pygmy nuthatch. We’ve had a pair hanging around the last week or so. Some mountain chickadees have just showed back up as well.
Month: February 2009
We Must Have Come to the Right Place
USA Today reports on a public opinion poll that finds almost half of all Americans would rather be living somewhere else. The most popular pick of where they would like to move – Denver. I don’t know if this is good news.
Cacao in Chaco
Archaeologists spend lots of time studying (or trying to study) prehistoric trade. One of the first things we do when assessing the artifacts from a site is to try to identify the “exotic” materials that must have been traded in or carried in from out of the area. We are operating under a sizable handicap …
Sssssss!
Walter Hingley sent in a Canadian article on the newly- discovered giant snake Titanoboa cerrojohnensis. He was swiftly followed by Reid, who sent this NYT link (Peculiar commented “Leave it to today’s media to tie it immediately to global warming, though. I guess 42-foot snakes aren’t interesting if they don’t relate to Obama.”) Best treatment …
Honored
Prairie Mary has just written a post that mentions us most favorably. I’m blushing. As we try to see through the fog to what will happen in publishing, we need such thought. BTW Penelope Reedy once printed my essay- with- recipe “Private Reconciliation Chile”, which also appears in On The Edge of the Wild.
Querencia?
Walter Hingley found an ad for Querencia- the- book that… well, you have to see it in its entirety: “Bodio, Stephen: “Querencia” 1990 (1996) Clark City Press, 2nd Printing (1st Hardcover printing), Fine in Fine DJ, Signed by the Author. “Querencia” — the Zen-like Spanish term means something like the tiny pocket of one’s inner …
Not- so serious links
Dr Hypercube has three great links from English Russia which you should also visit, on reindeer races, Ukrainian Amazons, and wildly implausible airplanes, some of which actually existed (see here.) The charm of the first is partially linguistic: “People bring their best deers and race, race, race. The looser deers are being eaten then, like, …
Serious Links
Frequent commentor Matt Miller is blogging for The Nature Conservancy. Here he is on falconry. And here are his other posts to date. Holly at NorCal Cazadora has the first original essay on why we love to hunt that I have seen in a long time. A hint, from a quote from Temple Grandin: “Wild …
New Pups!
I have hinted here and there but today our new pups arrived and are looking good.(At about 4 AM– we had to carry the doghouse inside and move the first pup to the whelping box, with all the other dogs leaping up to get a look and Lashyn growling through the door, because she wanted …
What the definition of “Species” is…
Therese, who knows about and studies such things, left a long comment on the last post that I think deserves to be up front. “I’ve got some insight into these questions. I apologize in advance for both these long rants, I’m currently working on some species redescriptions and its not progressing as fast as it …