Patrick Porter’s survival kit for Sandy, in Natick, MA: Cole Brooks, Malcolm’s* son, takes his first elk in Montana: “… kid drew a lottery cow elk tag for this week. Second day out at 3 in the afternoon we hiked up the side of a ridge where we’d spotted cows the evening before. I walked …
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Links: Good and Bad News for Falcons
The tundra subspecies and other high- latitude migrating Peregrines are in very good shape. Peregrines are one of those capital- C “Charismatic” species who always get press (whether the label “endangered”, once attached in the popular collective mind, will ever be removed is matter for a long essay). Meanwhile, the obscure and beautiful little Amur …
Gun Books for Boys, Parents, and Girls…
Silvio Calabi and his team released the amazing Gun Book for Boys a couple of weeks ago. I opened it with interest; Silvio has been a fine editor and writer (last year’s Hemingway’s Guns, reviewed here, is a favorite) and good correspondent for years, and he was the somewhat unlikely advisor who recommended I take …
Art, Science, Insect Hunting, and Nabokov
John Wilson’s butterfly photos remind me of one of the great neglected stories of 20th century intellectual life; that Vladimir Nabokov was not just a writer and teacher but a great taxonomist, this despite being denigrated as a dilettante in his time. Joseph Conrad is legitimately revered for becoming a great English novelist in his …
Upland season
Reader and friend Kirk Hogan from Wisconsin evokes the essence of a northern upland season in a few terse sentences… 14 – hours hunted in 2 days (losing light) 8 – small Brittanies, 3 probably from Herve’s original lines 43 – flushes per 5 minute rule (5 minutes between flushes, so probably not re-flushes of …
First (belated) Snow
Weeks overdue but welcome. Blogging resumes… South Baldy 4 miles south, our highest (nearly 11,000 foot) peak, by John Wilson
Another Eulogy
[Phil’s grandfather Johnny Foard was the other friend we lost this week. He was nearly ninety, a fine country musician, fiddler, and former professional hunter. Phil is in South America but sent this eulogy–SB.] I’m sorry I’m not there. Selfishly, I’m sorry I’m not there. I’m sorry I can’t see the outpouring of respect for …
Two old (or old- fashioned) naturalists, and new photo series
Two old farts in the bar courtyard. John Wilson is an old style bug catching (or photographing) “stamp collector” naturalist like me, an Ohioan who retired from an Audubon sanctuary there to a remote homestead in the Mags– somebody I can talk bugs, birds, and taxonomy with! Luckily he likes beer too. I am starting …
James Trujillo, RIP
My friend James “Viejo” Trujillo died today after a long struggle with diabetes. I’ll have a proper bio and memorial later, and a few stories. Raise a glass… Update 8 November: his card. Normal service to resume after (still another) funeral… (A happy Viejo story, previously blogged but worth repeating…) … for a while almost …
“Wasn’t it a mighty storm?”
Our readers, perhaps sharing Matt’s resilient spirit as below, seem to have survived the storm. But despite my early thought that it was overhyped, it was a STORM; maybe not the Great Galveston Flood as in the song, but one to remember. Stuart Hancock’s photo below, from near NYC, reminds me of the two great …