I’d never seen or heard wild geese before. Have you ever? A fantastic noise, like a lot of women at a cocktail party in the sky, tumbling over each other for the best place in the air. The oddest & most impressive nature note for years. – in a letter from Deborah Devonshire to Patrick …
Month: May 2013
Big Guns
Like pigeons (which I will soon be writing about again) big bore shotguns are a constant recurring interest of mine shared by few contemporaries– those mostly coastal wildfowlers who used tens in the US, something I was at least born into. When it comes to Big Guns US shooting society tends to live in the …
Quote
“There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.” -James Salter
Poem
Troia Ruined Troy lay promiscuous among findspot and tell, breastworks and ditches Like nine gold bracelets at a Turkish wedding in twenty-two karats, mined outside Pergamum. Schliemann’s trench was a wound through the whole thing: at the Scaean Gate he was off by twelve hundred years, where the mourning doves sang compulsively, …
First Thunderstorm of the Season
We had quite a storm here night before last. It made so much racket the dogs decided they needed to go hang out in the basement. It also knocked out our electricity for almost three hours. I wasn’t able to get any lightning pictures, but it did have some interesting turbulent clouds. And as always, …
Not Happy
I guess this must be bird week for me. I couldn’t resist posting this picture of a rather disgruntled looking scrub jay I took during one of the many spring snow storms we had last month. Looks like he’s thinking, “When is this winter stuff going to stop?”
House Finches
Here is a yellow variant house finch with his lady friend out at our feeders a few days ago. From what I understand, these aren’t all that rare, but this was the first time I had ever seen one. Here is one of his more “normal” colored cousins by way of comparison – actually from …
TV Formation
A few days ago I was photographing birds in Castlewood Canyon State Park and was buzzed by seven turkey vultures. These two decided to fly in formation for a while.
Stubborn
Drinkable…. MAUSER?
When I got to the last wrapping of an anonymous package last week, the outline of my last unfulfilled firearm desideratum appeared: the unmistakable profile of a ’96 Mauser “Broomhandle”. Could some anonymous admirer have sent me (illegally, but I wasn’t worried– it had passed inspection) the gun used by Winston Churchill in the “River …