Hawk Roosting I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth’s face upward …
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Feathers
Bird and Moon knows “raptors” have feathers… (HT Annie Davidson). Apparently, Stephen Spielberg does not.
Book Note
I believe that some of you might enjoy Marilyn Johnson’s new book, Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble. It’s a book written by an objective outsider looking in at archaeologists, their interests, motivations, and careers. Johnson has written two previous books on other “odd” professions, This Book is Overdue! about librarians …
Stand Up And More
A couple of years ago, our daughter Lauren decided that she would like to try doing stand up comedy. Between then and now she has gone from working for free on open-mike nights in clubs to paid work. I put up this poster for an appearance she is making next month. This summer, she and …
When Man Becomes Prey
Cat Urbigkit’s newest, When Man Becomes Prey, is extremely relevant to the matter of the home- invader coyote below.* I rather thoughtlessly quipped “Ask Val Geist” because I have been corresponding with him on such matters for years, and the old zoologist’s theories about too- bold urban predators are bedrock. But Cat is a pastoralist …
Winter
Last moonrise out our front door. I don’t know why coastal people think this is Phoenix… Right or double click to enlarge…
Ataika and her mother in Almaty; Almaty life
Could it be ten years ago? More? Ataika at 6 weeks, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in Konstantin and Anna Plakhov’s back yard, the day we met her, with mother Oska. A month in our apartment, with days riding around in Askar Raybaev’s (Mitsubishi!) stretch limo; visiting museums and supermarkets and restaurants and archaeologists; then to New …
Happy New Year Hunt
I try to hunt at least a little on New Year’s Day, which is a bit superstitious (Thanksgiving too, another story). I have been worried that Ataika, best of all dogs, was getting depressed from lack of activity; hell, I was, beleagured by, first, lack of feedback and misleading written advice from the new Rheumatology …
“A Hundred Sorrows”
Old Year news, which I didn’t want to make anyone sad about during the Holidays. In the kind of coincidence weirdly common in falconry– see the quote referenced above and quoted in full below– good friends (and good falconers) lost both my birds in one December week. Rio/ Guero had been brought to the point …
More Doggage
Daniel Riviera’s younger pointer is not as well- mannered as Boone (see below). Meanwhile, in Laramie, Carlos and his dogs take a walk and a nap: “They ran up the trail and came back, laughing the contagious laughter of dogs in snow…”