White Pelican

A week ago Saturday, Connie and I went up to Barr Lake State Park, a local birding hot spot. I thought you might enjoy this picture of a white pelican we saw there, one of the many who visit here in the summer. It seems every time I see them I am astonished anew at how big they are.

Passenger Pigeons Again...

Another little sample from my evolving proposal:
 

After the Ice

... I will draw on contemporary scholarship from Pielou to Paul Martin to paint a picture of the late glacial world – one with little place for the passenger pigeon as a major ecological actor. One keystone will be Australian ecologist Tim Flannery’s (The Eternal Frontier) hypothesis that the North American continent, by virtue of its shape, weather, and geology, has never had a stable environment, especially since the last glaciation.

Friends & Family, Music & Words, Past & Present

Everything seems to come around again. Last week, Tom Russell and his sideman Thad Beckmann played at Passim, a cellar room in Harvard square where I heard the likes of Ian Tyson as far back as 1966, when it was the legendary Club 47.

My sister Karen Graham, here with Tom, her husband George, and Tom's wife Nadine, remembers my going there when she was a child, and the little printed ad sheets I used to keep under the glass of my desktop when I was still in high school.

Bronwen Fullington, a friend since '68 or so,  saw the other pic and said "It hasn't  changed a bit since then!" Looks like the same old tiny cellar...

Tom may be as good a writer of words as songs. Buy his book, with all the lyrics and tons of anecdote and history.

Quotes

Courtesy of emeritus zoologist and Ice Age maven Valerius Geist:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

"The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

(All from H. L. Mencken).

Gun Quiz & Tease

What is this? I do not mean '95 Winchester; I will take it my readers know that-- but what caliber? Hint: more were made in it than all the others combined. Where are they now?

I know its owner knows, so I will ask him not to give it away. No fair WIKI- ing the answer either!

Gratuitous Pigeon Photos

Handsome birds, "Lebanons".  I saw their like in Turkey a few years ago. Anyone know where I can find a pair or two for less than $250? Stupid regs make all imported birds impossibly expensive for all but the rich, and cause hoarding and inbreeding depression in the tiny gene pools that exist in the US.  I'm no fan of closed studbook pedigrees-- I cross out and back again, until I have the "good' phenotype with a wider genetic palette...

From my friend Warren, who has some of my "granddogs",  I am getting some young of one of my favorite breeds, the wild, rugged old show bird called the English carrier. It no longer carries messages-- that job long ago taken over by its partial descendant, the racing homer, but is still a strong swift flier. It has too much character (is too odd/ ugly/ finicky) for modern tastes, but it was once known by the Scottish handle "King o' the Doo's" [doves]. Darwin bred ones that could win best in show today; there is a good illustration in his book on domestication, "Variations". Some of mine should come from the excellent pair in the first photo.

Poetry Quote for Reid

In response to his quote on geese below:

"Already now the clanging chains

Of geese are harnessed to the moon..."

- Roy Campbell,  Autumn

Science Links

I could publish a whole blog on that subject (as could Walter Hingley, who sends me many good ones, more than I have time to use). But then I could run one on books, or wildlife art or bird ancetsors or the Pleistocene-- and have NO time...

But some demand attention. I know, this short report from Science News looks like pure geekery, worse than my pigeon obsessions. Who cares about the "reassignment" of the jellyfish- like comb jellies? But look at the cladograms.

This may be the greatest rethinking of the family tree since "they'"separated Bacteria from Archaea. And yeah, that's big.

My other note comes with an apology-- three weeks or more ago, my Explorers Club associate Jut Wynne sent me this YouTube of his recent talk to science fiction writers comparing parasitoids to (the movie) Alien, and  taking his ideas to search for life on Mars and further. I finally read it this morning and wanted to race over to Flagstaff and badger him with questions...

Among other things, I need to ask him about Strepsipterans, strange insects with an even stranger sex life and cycle than his wasps... but that will be another post.

Light Blogging...

Emerging from a ton of writing as future investment, near cripppled from time in chair. Need to do our spring outdoor chores-- garden, pigeons ...

Back soon I hope.

Gratutous spring dog pix

Alex Schubert's lovely Minoo tormenting cur Ayla and alone; Vladimir's Bibigul
 (Nightingale) and laika Dinah; Tina Garfield's 10 month old baby Anatolian Gunny, recently returned to Magdalena area after wintering on the Texas coast.

Quote

I'd never seen or heard wild geese before. Have you ever? A fantastic noise, like a lot of women at a cocktail party in the sky, tumbling over each other for the best place in the air. The oddest & most impressive nature note for years.

- in a letter from Deborah Devonshire to Patrick Leigh Fermor, 17 November 1960

Big Guns

Like pigeons (which I will soon be writing about again) big bore shotguns are a constant recurring interest of mine shared by few contemporaries-- those mostly coastal wildfowlers who used tens in the US, something I was at least born into.

When it comes to Big Guns US shooting society tends to live in the state described in that ancient Firesign Theater skit: Everything you Know is Wrong. Bores larger than ten are not primarily poachers' or market hunters tools, and are by no means all crude; most English firms including Purdey's made them. The recoil of many is not particularry hard, because they are heavy enough-- some modern  four bores weigh 16 pounds, though of course you have to lift the huge thing. Fowlers rarely kill whole flocks of ducks-- more common to paddle in reach and flush them all before you can shoot. And no,  Mr. Buck, we were NOT "shooting eight bore loads" out of our big twelves; starting in the 1870's, long case (3 3/4 - 4 1/4  inch) eights like the one pictured below were shooting loads of three ounces of shot, more than any imaginable twelve, out of each barrel; "light eights" with 3 1/4 inch shells could still manage 2 1/2 ounces!

I had a muzzleloading double four with rather short barrels back in the eighties.

Recently the English wildfowling writer John Humphreys, who had rescued James Wentworth Day's legendary 8 bore "Roaring Emma" from the collection of a wealthy American, * placed the gun with the  Hull and East Riding Wildfowling Association, who will rent it out to hunters on the coast. It is an original and welcome concept and I would like to see it spread, or go to East Anglia, stay with "Johnny UK", see the field my father flew out of during the war, and rent that cannon.

Wentworth Day was a prolific writer and flamboyant character who survived into the Sixties but cut a figure from another age-- here he is with the 1870's Joe Lang magnum eight Roaring Emma and his retriever, Mr. Soapy Sponge. after the Surtees character.

I have books by Day on everything from waterfowl to sporting dogs to shooting in Egypt and I bet I don't have a fifth of what he wrote. Kipling could have made him up, or Conan Doyle. He may be prone to exaggeration, and I would not rely on him for sober history, but you can't fault him on old guns. I think his newest was built before the turn of the  (nineteenth) century.

English enthusiasts still build big guns. Walter Hingley, the Canadian scholar who is one of my best sources for both gun and scientific stuff, sent me the above  and enough material to research for a month, including another fascinating link about a new TWO bore. I had thought that fours were the biggest "shoulder"-- that is, non- punt-- guns, but some people are never satisfied. It shoots eight ounces of lead. They pattern it at seventy yards.

I am delighted there are still people crazy enough to do this, especially as everything old becomes commodified, costs too much, and disappears into collector's vaults.

*Remember, we are not allowed to hunt with these here. To quote from the article on "Emma": "The gun subsequently ended up in the USA, where many of our old big bores go even though they cannot be used, and was eventually bought and brought back to the UK by John Humphreys. Due to his ill health he decided to sell the gun but did not want it to go back to the USA or to sit unused in someone's collection. By selling the gun to HERWA he has ensured it remains in this country and that it will continue to be used for wildfowling. In an incredibly generous act a long standing member of the wildfowling club bought the gun and donated it to HERWA."

Quote

"There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real."

-James Salter

Poem

Troia


Ruined Troy lay promiscuous among

    findspot and tell, breastworks and ditches

Like nine gold bracelets at a Turkish wedding

        in twenty-two karats, mined outside Pergamum.

Schliemann’s trench was a wound through the whole thing:

    at the Scaean Gate he was off by twelve hundred years,



where the mourning doves sang compulsively,

    vulgar-throated. In the music’s pause

near two stone griffins, a feral tabby

        warmed herself on a broken plinth, almond blossom

made a blizzard in the orchard nearby,

    and the spokes of wild fennel crossed with the sun’s rays.



The Scamander River was nowhere to be seen,

    having wandered off across

the rich alluvial plain. Nothing more would happen,

        that was the spirit and the sum:

nothing would happen here ever again –

    that, a taste of fennel, and the goat bells’ tinnitus.



- Karl Kirchwey

First Thunderstorm of the Season

We had quite a storm here night before last. It made so much racket the dogs decided they needed to go hang out in the basement. It also knocked out our electricity for almost three hours.

I wasn't able to get any lightning pictures, but it did have some interesting turbulent clouds. And as always, we can certainly use the water.

Not Happy

I guess this must be bird week for me. I couldn't resist posting this picture of a rather disgruntled looking scrub jay I took during one of the many spring snow storms we had last month. Looks like he's thinking, "When is this winter stuff going to stop?"

House Finches

Here is a yellow variant house finch with his lady friend out at our feeders a few days ago. From what I understand, these aren't all that rare, but this was the first time I had ever seen one.

Here is one of his more "normal" colored cousins by way of comparison - actually from the same flock. Wish I could have gotten a side-by-side picture.

TV Formation

A few days ago I was photographing birds in Castlewood Canyon State Park and was buzzed by seven turkey vultures. These two decided to fly in formation for a while.

Stubborn

Drinkable.... MAUSER?

When I got to the last wrapping of an anonymous package last week, the outline of my last unfulfilled firearm desideratum appeared: the unmistakable profile of a '96 Mauser "Broomhandle". Could some anonymous admirer have sent me (illegally, but I wasn't worried-- it had passed inspection)  the gun used by Winston Churchill in the "River War", the sidearm of T. E. Lawrence, of  Karamojo Bell (he shot down a German plane with one in the Great War);  of ornithologist Salim Ali, and of two fictional heroes: Geofffrey Household's Charles Dennim (in Watcher in the shadows),  and Michael Gruber's Jane Doe  (in Tropic of Night)?

It was a bottle of Vodka!

Sent by the ever- stylish adventurer and firearms scholar Bruce Douglas, here seen with liquid AND steel broomhandles.

Good concept

Thoughts on AR from the letter column of the Wall St Journal by one George Price. It will never happen of course.

"If the animal rights who attack laboratories to "liberate" the animals... had the courage of their convictions, they would each carry a little card (like an organ- donor card) reading 'If I am found sick or injured, do not give me any treatment developed or tested by animal experimentation. My life is worth no more than an animal's, and I refuse to live at the cost of animal's life. Just let me die.' "

Blast from the Past

Here is a picture of Connie and 18 month-old Lauren at the excavation of a rock shelter at Ken Caryl Ranch in Jefferson County, just west of Denver. The work was conducted by the Colorado Archaeological Society in 1983 and we were there volunteering. I can't recall the name of the young man standing by the table. 

Cannibalism at Jamestown

The Smithsonian Institution had a press release yesterday that was picked up the the New York Times today concerning the discovery of evidence of cannibalism in the early years of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. To anyone familiar with the story of Jamestown, this is hardly a surprise, as a number of accounts of the "starving time" that almost wiped out the colony in the winter of 1609-10, mention that corpses were exhumed from graves and butchered.

The archaeology team led by Bill Kelso, who I mentioned in a post last year is the discoverer of the original James Fort, found the butchered remains of a 14 year-old girl in a trash deposit that also contained the remains of horses, dogs, and other animals that had been butchered for food. You can see the cut marks in the picture of her jaw at top. The cranium had been hacked, presumably to remove the brain. It is believed that the girl was already dead when she was butchered.

 Analysis of the remains was conducted by physical anthropologist Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution, who is perhaps best known for his work on the Kennewick Man skeleton. One of the results of his work is this affecting reconstruction of the facial features of the girl. It is amazing to me what physical anthropologists are able to figure out these days when they have time to work. Isotope analysis of her bones showed that she had grown up in the southern coastal region of England, that her diet contained English rye and barley, and that overall, her diet had been rich in protein, indicating that she was most likely the daughter of a high-status member of the colony. 

Christina's Blog

Another post I have been kicking down the road: my friend Christina Nealson's blog. I kept trying to think of original ways to describe her vivid writing and books, her nomadic life, her heterodox feminism and her support of the Second Amendment...

Finally I thought: why not just let her describe her visit? Come back soon, Christina! Her blog is now officially on the roll.

Pigeons vs Humaniacs

Chris Landauer of Border Wars sent me a note a couple of weeks ago on the ARista's war on pigeon racing. Since then I have been roaming the Internet, too busy and too pissed off to to write a calm essay on the kind of people who would persecute old men, some of them who have made real connections to youngsters of different cultures, for being "racketeers" for betting on races. They claim it is cruel because some don't make it home (they don't know most ferals are more homer than not), and that some substandard birds are "culled" (and eaten), a practice and term that they seem to think unique to pigeon keepers....

It would of course be easy to sue the sport out of existence, of course; though the Queen of England and some wealthy Belgians fly birds,  the old working class cartoon character Andy Capp on the other side of the channel and ancient ethnics like my late grandfather in the US are more typical, as are young blacks and city Hispanos. And given its nature as a HOMING sport, its targets are stationary, unable to go underground. Add irrational fears of diseases that pigeons don't even carry, the latest being bird flu...

And then I thought, to hell with reasoned arguments; better to go with my initial reaction. So here are some of the calmer parts of my reaction to Chris...

"God, Chris, I get so sick of it all.

" 'It's so crooool, but they are all old and they're going to die soon so we'll LET them'...

"And another human- animal hybrid culture, another meme, another selected association of unique genes goes back into the undifferentiated pond; another joy is taken from us, there is one less thing to distract the young from the all- flattening difference- ending locale- killing biophobic Almighty Screen. How many youths in how many places once took baskets of pigeons miles to 'toss' and raced them home, as I did? No more pigeons, hunting dogs, ferrets, horses but for the rich, ratting, snake catching. Oddly my grandson probably WILL do many of these, but will he be a social outcast for it? And WHERE will he do it?

"And me- my salukimorphs are wanted, and my hawks. But who will pick up my unique genetic stream and crosses when I am gone, my wild hawk- evading homers, my crossbred and reconstructed old Spanish pouter breeds? Eli is too young, and his parents still live in the city; US cities are banning them outright by name (Chicago, Bozeman) or just making it  virtually impossible to keep or God help us FLY them.

"No answers but... Pigeon racing CRUEL? What absolute bullshit. The only beings that never suffer are-- DEAD."

A last thought: vegetarian and fine writer Sy Montgomery, who wrote beautifully about them in Birdology, knows better, and has more wise biophilia in her little finger than all of HSUS...

Photos from Scotland and Turkey, where pigeon culture still not only exists but thrives. The last pix including the cupboard loft are in the restaurant in Urfa where I used to eat lunch.

Guadalupe

Tom Russell's song from "Blood and Candle Smoke", sung by Gretchen Peters, and Guadalupe herself, painted by Tom. You can see his paintings, including I believe the original of this print, at Rainbow Man gallery in Santa Fe. He began last week's show with this haunting song.

We do have an oddly eclectic "collection"-- she is flanked by Gorbatov's painting of quail on Lee Henderson's ranch, just east of town, and Jonathan Kingdon's aardwolf, with photos of Eli and Betsy and a bronze of a harrier by Loffler below-- not to mention our metal dachshund.

True Biologist Cartoon

Courtesy of John Wilson... double or right click to enlarge.

Blast from the past

Picture of Lib and dog Ruch in the Escalante in '73, when she used to walk to Everest Base Camp...

Wilson Photos

Relative newcomers John and Carolyn Wilson are becoming serious documenters of the phenology of local wildlife and photographers of same (with real lenses). They supply constant water on their forest- edge holding 12 miles from town, which has already paid off in photos of bandtail pigeon and goshawk. Now John has gotten a good portrait of a Lewis's woodpecker. They are odd birds, not very common and living an un- woodpecker- like "lifestyle" between that of a flicker and a flycatcher; I have mostly seen them in pasture country, sitting on wires and hawking flying insects.

The other interesting recent one needs explanation. Our favorite town birding spot or at least the most productive is what we call "Lake Magdalena", the sewage pond just to our north. Every water- loving migrant that passes seems to find it; I have seen white pelicans among other things. It is especially attractive to ducks; the late Floyd Mansell once drove me out to see something but would not tell me what until I had seen for myself. On the pond were about ten black scoters, salt- water ducks I had last seen in the winter surf off Duxbury Beach in Massachusetts. "I didn't want to tell you because if they had left you might not have believed it".

On this photo the old Magdalena Cemetery, where Floyd and other friends rest, is at the top, the "lake" below, graced with a flock of white- faced glassy ibises. Double or right- click to enlarge.

George Jones: 1933- 2013

A great country singer died today. This photo of him in the 70's in NYC pre- dates photoshop.

Andy Warhol, George, Tom Russell:

George Jones, R.I.P.