This year’s Boletes

Not a great year– the southern San Mateos, our main source, were a bit drier than we’d like– but we got a gallon of dried, first adequate harvest in 8 years. The photos span the trip down and back up the Plains of St Augustin  by the VLA; flowers, like the white poppies, show we …

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Carl Rungius painting

An unusual one, from the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, for “our” exhibition (be patient!), courtesy of the Museum and Kevin Sharp. Also the locked skulls that inspired Rungius. I found this letter from Rungius in a book I bought, unmentioned…

Countdown

As many of you know, at 6 AM on Monday, Agust 10,  I go “under the knife”  for the Direct Brain Stimulation operation— well, more like the drill, sitting up, awake if not wide awake (6 AM at University Hospital in Albuquerque means leaving here before 4 AM, and I don’t think that will be …

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In the Hawk Pasture

What I call the “hawk pasture” is an open hay meadow tucked into the foothills of Wyoming’s southern Wind River Mountains. Irrigation water and a water gap for cattle provide a draw for a variety of wildlife, but this year the birds that have taken over, including sandhill cranes, sage grouse, a pair of Northern …

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Murmuration

Actually not the right collective noun exactly though it appears to have become the “meme”– that word again– the one that you can use to find all kinds of bird “herd mind” videos on YouTube. HT to my old bird hunting friend Jeff Ball in Bozeman…

Big Feet

The trail camera Guy Boyd bought me caught these rather alarming images in the Wilson’s yard up Muleshoe south of town last week. Perhaps, if only for the peace of mind of their old Lab Aero, they had best not fill the Raven feeders for a while…