Two weeks of agent & publisher hell, slowly receding. Blogging may be light for a bit yet but here are some links, and there will be photoblogging of various creatures later. Nature and science. Carel blogs on an extremely odd, newly discovered snake that apparently has evolved a “lure” on the end of its tail. …
Category: Uncategorized
Dog Blog Comment (Spay/Neuter)
My friend Eric forwarded an interesting post by a Canadian dog trainer (not Gregg) who looks to the falconry permitting scheme as a possible answer for the mandatory spay/neuter situation in the dog breeding world. It reads in part: “How come the falconers have learned to control the breeding of falcons without spaying and neutering …
Mardi Gras Gumbo
When you were born elsewhere, raised elsewhere, trained as a world child and a globe trotter, how do you become a native of any one place? How do you finally find a home? In Louisiana, “first you make a roux.” Our local celebrity chef, John Folse, writes about the roux in his new game cookbook, …
Public Comment on Passage Peregrines
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comments on a draft environmental assessment for the taking of passage peregrine falcons (fledged juveniles on their first migration) for falconry. The comment period closes on 11 February, so there is still time to put your two cents in if you care to. The issue is …
Parabuteo domesticus
How a Harris quenches his thirst after the hunt.
On The Farm
One of my favorite hawking spots is a neighbor’s hayfield, which he saves for me as long as he can before cutting it or moving the cows in. I’ve been going there often and letting the hawk feed while there’s still something left to eat. Today, Jonathan Millican joined me and took some photos of …
Flock Protectors
We have been talking a lot on our private lists lately about another loose group of working dogs now being minutely divided into “breeds”, the great flock- protecting dogs of the middle east and Asia, with some historical extensions into parts of Europe that had the “transhumance” or flock migration. I have seen working examples …
The Dangers of Inbreeding
Patrick and I tend to go on about how the closed- studbook model of breeding and breeds, a relict of the 19th century’s imperfect understanding of genetics, is deleterious and dysfunctional, but I haven’t said much on it here. Reader Mike spies and I recently had an interesting discussion on this matter,and he gave me …
Links, Apologia…
If I can ever finish the saga of my completed but yet…unfulfilled?.. book, it will be a good one, or at least a lesson in the vagaries of contemporary publishing that would fulfill every cynical belief of Michael Blowhard. It has been that kind of month. Meanwhile, links and various photos. Science and nature: Paleoblog …
Field Survey
Our field survey methods are rather simple. We line up in skirmish lines at a regular interval – for this survey the transect interval is 15 meters. Then we walk systematically over the area to be surveyed and look for artifacts and features on the ground surface, in this case all 7400 acres of it. …