A photo taken on top of the hill in Shutesbury Mass, ca 1974, of me with my redtail tiercel Cinnamon (still one of the best gamehawks I ever had and oddly, like one of the more recent best birds, stolen after years with me), and a friend who is holding my intact rather huge albino …
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Breeder Issues
No; though there will be fun stuff today, I will not stop beating this drum, because it needs saying/ beating. Jess from DesertWindhounds, in a comment at Retrieverman’s on why “can’t we just all get along?” “Tell you what. When I stop getting harassed by total strangers for my breeding decisions, we’ll all get along. …
Tiger Reading
John Vaillant did a reading last night at Riverrun Books in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for his wonderful new book on Amur tigers, poachers, and rangers. I had participated in part by reviewing The Tiger here. I’ll let him configure the whole tale for you, but Dr Hypercube was the pivotal figure, and blogged it here. …
New Look
Well we bit the bullet and updated the Q-blog template to the very apropos bookshelf theme you see here. We may make more changes, adding little gadgets and widgets and whatnot, mainly because now we can. Happy Monday!
Eevil Eagles
When I announced Darren’s new book (Tetrapod Zoology 1) I mentioned a Darren drawing that contained, among other things, an Australopithecine and a Socorro County calf in mortal danger. Here is the proof, in the form of his 2004 Christmas card (click on it to enlarge):The hominid is the (documented– look up recent material on …
Autumn Poems
An exchange between blogger- neighbor Anna Lear and me (go to her Laughing Raven for exquisite photos of our country, often focused on the small rather than the large), starting with her reaction to the photo below, prompted me to reprint my favorite Autumn poems. Campbell’s was written when he lived in Provence near Marseilles …
Why I miss New England in the fall…
Ruffed grouse and woodcock, in the oven as well as in the field, or rather woods. We have no substitute for the second west of the Mississippi… Photo by Tim Gallagher, on opening day– really near Ithaca NY but I bet it smells and feels the same…
Two quick links
Tim Gallagher just sent this link to a new study of passenger pigeon genetics.It is NOT a big mourning dove, and is closer despite its long tail to New World Columba like the bandtail. This might give more weight to some of my speculations in A Feathered Tempest (developed more succinctly in my recent Living …
A journey to Portugal
Porto was rainy and beautiful, an ancient coastal city home to the port industry and 270,000 residents. Just as we had dreamed, Porto felt both historic and comfortable. Stone buildings lined the brick and cobble streets, with balconies overflowing with plants and flowers. It seemed every home on each narrow street had a backyard vineyard, …
Bird Nerd Review Post
Heavy (bird) science warning! John Burchard asked me recently about the current evolutionary status of New World Vultures, and I realized my answer “reviewed” a book I had been meaning to. So consider the following to be my semi- official review of the amazing book The Inner Bird by Gary Kaiser. The very latest– this …