I owe my father for, at a minimum, a love of reading, art, and natural history, and for the practice of keeping pigeons. But as regulars know he also passed on a love for sport and a taste for barely affordable expensive shotguns (I have published his 1954 pic with his Winchester Model 21 “Heavy …
Month: August 2011
Gopnik on Dogs
Adam Gopnik’s piece “Dog Story” in the New Yorker for 11 August (available online only for subscribers I think) is full of nuggets, observations, and pointers to good books including Derr’s forthcoming one which should be essential. Meanwhile there are good “detachable quotes”: “She does a better impersonation of a person than we do as …
Jackson Hole– more photos
Wyoming photos from long time friends Matt Wells and Tina Cole (they variously are or were teachers, Outward Bound, and guides, as well as parents of a fine son; Matt was a commercial fisherman and a Mongolia hand, and Tina was the one who suggested to Russ Chatham that he hire Lib to cater the …
Goats and grazing
Jim and I camped out on a beautiful private ranch at the based of Devil’s Tower last week. We were in the area learning about how a herd of goats is used to control a leafy spurge infestation on a cattle ranch. It’s for a children’s book about goats that I’m working on. My friend …
Devil’s Tower fauna
Husband Jim and I were able to spend a night out under the stars at Devil’s Tower, Wyoming last week. We laughed when we drove into Devil’s Tower National Monument and saw the sign above. But then we turned the corner and saw why. These are black-tailed prairie dogs, which are very unlike the white-tailed …
“Endemics”
Writer Tom McIntyre has been in Argentina, not just shooting doves but hunting birds behind pointing dogs and fishing. What caught my attention (and what he, an informed naturalist- hunter, knows well) was the unique identity of some of his quarry. Europeans often name local species after familiar things, but folk taxonomy is unreliable. South …
Links, Pix, & Assorted Phenomena…
Long overdue, especially the New Improved Version 3 of Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology, now hosted by Scientific American. I hope this means that Darren is finally making some money of what was and still is the best zoological blog on the Net. New data on ancient dog origins in SE Asia? They seem to think …
Sagebrush
Cat had me out on the mesas looking at natural and local history. I saw any number of golden eagles and literally hundreds of antelope– I thought I lived in antelope country– but the p & s made the raptors into dots and only this antelope, one of several bucks who stood his ground, was …
Wyoming
Back from Wyoming, exhausted, behind, but happy we went. Lib cooked for a wedding in Jackson , for the daughter of one of many old climbers and Outward Bound guides who she knew in her days there, when as they say “the billionaires hadn’t kicked out the millionaires.” In her day it was more a …
Raptor conflict
Driving down a western Wyoming highway yesterday, Jim and I noticed four hawks (of two different species) that were tag-team harassing an immature golden eagle. I didn’t have a big lens, but did manage to capture a few images of the conflict. This is a Swainson’s hawk harassing the golden eagle.