Month: March 2022
Better Bamboo
this new durable hybrid bamboo/woven glass fiber/polypropylene composite, treated with the plastination technique has a promising future.
Will this lead to better fly rods?
Maybe, if the purists can hold down their gorge over the plastination reference. A lot of them are already ‘impregnated‘. If they can use that term anything is possible.
Woodcock Nesting Now!
Scolopax minor, the Woodcock. Back on March 22nd. I found this nest of 3 woodcock eggs. The hen apparently took off as I walked by working on pruning some young oaks. I took my picture and decided to stay away from this end of the property so as not to disturb her further.Today, as I was working the back part of this property, I happened to see an eye watching me in the grass. It was a hen woodcock on another nest! I took these 2 pictures. Look closely on how well the hen is camouflaged in the grass and leaves. This is very early nesting for birds and this hen has been on the nest while temperatures have dipped down to 20 degrees 2 of the last 3 nights. What a devoted mother! I backed off quietly to not disturb her while she was keeping those eggs warm. Marshall County, Indiana latitude 41 degrees.
I saw this Facebook post and couldn’t believe it. I never heard of nesting this early. When I find nests here it is in June.
New Yorker Wendell Berry Profile
New Yorker Wendell Berry Profile
I know of him but little else. A kind of traditional agricultural guru. I can’t remember reading much about him but he is a BFD to some.
It occured to me that I thought I had seen him mentioned on the blog before.
A search showed a great deal more than expected including this dust up over his ideas and influence.
Quantum Birds, Squeezing Snakes
This is pretty dramatic stuff with evolution creating quantum level structures. It is a new level for biology. There is likely a lot more of it going on. Photosynthesis, and even human thought, have been proposed as being quantum. It will be interesting to see how the field develops.
Ice Age Corridor, boats not ground
As early as 18,500 years ago, the Americas’ first peoples spread south from Beringia but how.
Moral Dilemmas
Funding conservation through gun sales questions.
Data also shows that firearms sales are motivated by fears of violence and social unrest. Gun sales have increased following mass shootings and racial justice protests and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that over the past two years, some African Americans and Asian Americans purchased their first guns out of fears of rising anti-Black and anti-Asian violence.
Wildlife conservation is benefiting from the fear, racism and sustained social conflict that drive gun sales. This raises a moral question: Is this the right way to fund conservation?
Not something you want to see.