Vodka from our Mongolian “Home Town”

Lauren brought among other things (like eagle tack I have never seen– be patient!) a bottle of new vodka named after the capitol of Mongolia’s Kazakh “Aimag” or state, therefore the de facto “Berkutchi” capitol. The back is attractive enough, with a Berkutchi painted on it (all photos enlarge if clicked on): But the front …

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New Bird

After all the hints, he’s here– my “shotgun range” falcon! Yesterday we drove down to Bill Meeker’s breeding facility east of El Paso (and general animal friendly house– Ataika nearly went nuts trying to get to know –I hope only that!– their totally intact skunk through the bedroom door) to pick up a chamber raised …

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Beginnings and Endings in Mongolia

Lauren is coming home next week, visiting us soon, and will doubtless be blogging for herself. In addition to training her eagle, she has done a lot of research,and to my envy got to meet the chronicler of the Gyrfalcon, Eugene Potapov, author of my favorite ornithological monograph (see link two posts down): ” I …

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“Big Black Nemesis”; or, what is an Altai Falcon anyway?

A while ago, LabRat at Atomic Nerds started a series of posts on the evolution of sex among other things. The first was appropriately called “Shuffling Your Cards: Why Sex?” Since in science we are both mad nerds obsessed with evolutionarily odd strategies like parthenogenesis in local lizards (and the hybridization that may have started …

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Pursuit Hawking

Terence Wright was kind enough to send two splendid photos of the kind of hawking that I can probably no longer do– coursing with dog and pursuit falcon, sometimes over miles. I’ll still try with others this fall, but suspect I just can’t keep up. It was a good run! The dog, lurcher Percy, has …

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5000 Year-Old Scammer?

David Z (see below) sent us the latest on Hari Scam and and, amazingly, it is even more ridiculous than what has gone before. “Among the mixed-bag films at Tribeca this year, Thorkell Hardarson and Örn Marino Arnason’s Feathered Cocaine was arguably the most mixed. Alan Howell Parrott, an American Sikh convert, introduced falconry to …

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