A range flock of domestic sheep exits the mountains in the southern Wind River Range of western Wyoming. Before the flock begins its slow movement to lower elevations, herders needed a head count. But how do you count thousands of sheep with only two men? It’s fairly simple. Range sheep have strong flocking instincts, and …
Tag: Animal Behavior
What Birds Say
From John Wilson : Owes something to There’s a Hair in my Dirt I suspect… No water. TWO “meetings’ tonight for those of us who want to sit in irritable crowds in the heat and not be able to shower afterward.
Credit Due
Early last July, Stacia Novy, a young military career woman, biologist, and falconer, e-mailed me an excited message that she had just been instrumental in finding the nest of a very little known Neotropical raptor, the Solitary Eagle (Buteogallus solitarius), in Belize. She attached this picture. Unfortunately, since then, most published accounts have omitted her …
Fabre and Japan
This is not an analysis of the real importance, ignored these days except in Japan, of the pioneering ethologist of insects, the 19th century Provencal autodidact Jean Henri Fabre, who started life as a peasant kid herding sheep in the harsh hills of his home country, and later single- handedly invented the study of insect …
Seton on the partnership
I thought I might have read about the legendary partnership of badger and coyote, and went looking for it in my set of Ernest Thompson Seton’s wonderful seven volume illustrated work Lives of Game Animals, which he compiled in 1929 toward the end of his life. This work, by the way, is a lost classic, …
Birds of Paradise
Some marketers seemed to think that a fitting description of my last book’s subject, eagles, was “the most beautiful bird in the world”. To use a more polite word than I usually would, nonsense! There are many contenders; this pheasant has always been a favorite: Even more so when displaying But there are even better …
A little More from John Burchard
One of the wisest naturalists I know, Dr John Burchard, on the subjects below and more: I firmly support the right to keep “exotics” in captivity and/or partial or complete liberty (our wolf lived free in the desert on weekends, and our coatis mostly lived free in our very normal residential neighborhood, for example). Much …
Birds and Dogs on YouTube
Walter Hingley sent an interesting if rather relentless clip of a 40 ounce white gyr tiercel taking down a 15 pound Canada goose. The tenacity of the “little” falcon shows why eastern cultures, who appreciate a good fight as much as they do a good flight, prefer gyrs and sakers to peregrines. Browsing in the …
Occasional obligatory pigeon post
A pair of Cuban pouters I bred, at Mark’s in Iowa, tuning up for the season; a pair of old fashioned Scottish horsemen up a Tom’s on the Canadian prairie, strong enough to evade goshawks. Both are flying pouters, professional “thieves” and seducers; this video shows why, a bit (from Spain whence the game came).
Wanderer
Josh and Stella, neighbors a couple of houses south, came knocking last night as we were going to bed. Libby called me to the door to say they had a “strange bird”. In the dim light of the entry I thought (perfectly reasonable) snipe or dowitcher, but when I welcomed them in and turned on …