You don’t have to eat junk food in hunting camp. From my fellow New Mexico hunter MDMNM at Sometimes Far Afield: “The best bottle of wine I had last year was uncorked on a grouse hunt (it was a Casa Rodena 1998 Cabernet Franc, if you were wondering). On this last trip, dinner the first …
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Wondrous Feathers
Reader, falconer, and birder Stacia Novy, in the military in Honduras, sent a photo of herself with the central tail feathers of a motmot that she picked up. She wrote: “I found this pair of molted, central tail (deck) feathers from a Turquoise-browed Motmot the other day while hiking along a stream bed on base. …
Ancestry and Reversion
Lots of good thinking about the evolution of domestic animals this week. Odious started out with a post on Heck cattle, the Hagenbeck brothers’ attempt in pre- WW II Germany to breed a reconstructed aurochs. Comments came in from Chas and Doc Hypercube, who was also interested enough to post on Darren’s theories about dog …
Duck Sex Evolution
Lots of good bio stuff this week. Annie Pearse and Reid both sent me this NYT piece on the evolution of duck sex organs. A teaser: “When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is …
Good Alcohol and Unconventional Greens
But there is still a lot of spirit, in every sense, out there to combat those who would control our every move. Brit blogger Raedwald muses on anti- drinking activists who would not allow us to teach our children to drink sanely (Peculiar? Odious? Would that not have jailed Libby and I for many joyous …
Penn Gun Proposal
This seems to be a big week for nanny- state regs. From Hunting Life: “This misguided proposal would require every gun in Pennsylvania to be registered with the state, and each firearm would have to be re-registered annually. The registration would cost law-abiding gun owners $10 per gun each year. Of course, criminals won’t pay …
More AR Follies
The California compulsory spay- neuter bill should be on everybody’s radar. Blue Dog State puts it pungently, with some not- so- fantastic scenarios: “Enforcement of the King of the Nanny-Staters Lloyd Levine’s modest proposal to castrate every pet dog and cat in the state of California was left up to local enforcement personnel. “Things might …
Sand Creek and Glorieta Pass
The LA Times carries the story of the dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in southeastern Colorado. It tells of the sad story of how Col. John Chivington and his regiment, the First Colorado Volunteers, attacked a peaceful and unprepared village of Cheyenne and Arapahoe under Chief Black Kettle on November 29, …
Bee Crisis
.. and a little barking lunacy just for fun. As anyone environmentally concerned knows, domestic honeybees are disappearing. Here is a detailed and balanced view of the problem. While I agree that Africanized bees– present here– are overhyped as a danger (and may well be a source of mite- resistant genes) the native pollinators may …
Ignorance
I hate to dwell on this kind of thing but… From the LAT: “One, of course, is the change in the potency of weaponry. Before 1966, the best weapons available to most would-be killers were pistols, rifles, maybe a shotgun. That is no longer the case; today, semiautomatics are all too easily accessible.” The (semiautomatic) …