The sandhill cranes are nesting now. The arrival of these birds is a true indication of spring’s arrival. Usually we hear them before we see them, and the sound always brings a gladness to my heart. Crane fossils about 10 million years old have been discovered in Nebraska, indicating that cranes are our oldest surviving …
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Web Miscellany
I predicted it here several months ago: the NY Times discovers the deep freeze! Also that manure can be good for your garden! In a work of staggering genius, an Australian invents a process to make paper from wombat poop. In barbeque-mad Memphis (my old home town), the Italian community has accomodated local tastes by …
FOD and Bird Strikes
A concept I became intimately familiar with during my aerospace days was foreign object damage, commonly known as FOD. Objects such as rocks, tools, garbage, etc. left on the runway can be ingested into a jet engine and cause damage. In the common way we have in English, FOD has become the term for the …
Farmer – Wilson Wedding
My participation here has been a bit light lately, due to all the activity involved with our daughter Lauren’s wedding which took place last Saturday in Long Beach, California. Here she is with new husband Zachary Wilson. Embarrassingly enough, I don’t have my hands on a decent picture of the ceremony, but will post one …
Paradox of Localism
Localism, not a new idea, seems to be gathering steam. I think it’s fair to describe Querencia (the blog) as somewhat ahead of this bandwagon on the Internet, and Steve well forward the main group since Querencia (the book) and before. Writer Rod Dreher of my generation has helped advance a notion of localism in …
Smart Corvids
And for pleasure: A BBC feature on the always- amazing abilities of Corvids, with videos. HT Jonathan Hanson.
Felony Duck Shooting
There is still ANOTHER House bill, HR 2188, which increase penalty for illegally taking a migratory bird (duck, dove etc.)to a felony with up to $50,000 and two years in prison. This seems draconian to say the least, and especially worrying to falconers who cannot always MAKE their hawk take the “correct” bird. (HT David …
Guns, Freedom, threats to…
According to David at Never Yet Melted the last elections had one mighty ironic effect: “Americans responded to the election of a democrat-dominated federal government by buying enough guns in 3 months to outfit the entire Chinese and Indian Armies. We also bought 1,529,635,000 rounds of ammunition in the month of December 2008 alone.” That’s …
New Carel Video
Carel Brest van Kempen has a new time lapse YouTube here,, of a painting of a brown anole. I love these things. You are supposed to vote but I can’t figure out how. If you can, please do– not everyone is as cybernetically inept as I am. Update: here is a link to vote.
New Rabies
I seem to be visible again. Dr Gail Goodman and Teddy Moritz sent this biologically fascinating but scary link to a National Geographic story about a mutated version of rabies in the Flagstaff, Arizona area. It apparently originated in bats, which is not unusual, and has manifested in skunks and foxes. What is frightening is …