I am sure that everyone is enthralled with learning how the mind of the blogger works- what are the steps that lead to a given post. Well today (Saturday March 6), I started out on a post about red-tailed hawks, three of which came to my attention this week in interesting circumstances. As I began [...]
We have hit March, yet little suggests that we are not still in deep winter. One’s mind can escape by either heading farther north or slinking south. This is in the way of passenger pigeons- you ignore the date and aim for the forage. So this week’s blog will tell of a trip I made [...]
This starts out somewhat convoluted. Last fall during a field trip, my camera was left in the car of a couple who live on the north side of Chicago. They further indicated that there was no place they could leave the camera at their residence so that I could pick it up during the day. [...]
The world of folklore is fascinating and provides an interesting lens through which to observe the events around us. Spouse Cindy Kerchmar, who has a graduate degree in the field and was a practitioner for a while, introduced me to the discipline and I now keep my eyes open for examples. I find it pretty [...]
Continue reading about Masochistic Eagles and Bogus Passenger Pigeon Slaughter: Avian Urban Legends
Before (on left) and after (on right) photos showing the effects wrought by the earth quake.
On February 10 at 4am, an earthquake measuring 3.8 on the Richter scale rocked (ok nudged) the Chicago region. It was horrifying: I was laying awake in my chair thinking about passenger pigeons when I felt the house shake once. [...]
Last week, Josh Engel gave a dynamite talk on the natural history of Madagascar to the Evanston North Shore Bird Club. (As program chairman, I was amazed that 70 people turned out. I usually have to bribe people with food to get that kind of crowd.) As I heard Josh talk, I could not help [...]
When I started blogging last May, I feared that inevitable moment when nothing I had done over the week warranted a blog posting. I knew this would arrive sometime in the winter and by golly here we are. I have been working almost exclusively on my passenger pigeon book the past month, which limits being [...]
Earlier I wrote of my trip to Saginaw to examine the papers of William Butts Mershon, who among many other things was the first great historian of the passenger pigeon. He loved the out of doors, and pursued hunting and fishing with all the vast resources at his disposal. He was a self-admitted “game hog”, [...]
Frank Abderholden of the Waukegan News just sent me these amazing photos of a black-billed magpie, golden eagle, and red fox, purportedly taken by a hunter in Montana using a camera phone. The photographer is unidentified.
Continue reading about Things Are Tough All Over (A Ruckus Among Us)
My last surviving parent died last January. I talk occasionally to my sister in Arizona and I keep in touch with one cousin who lives locally. Otherwise, the longest continuous thread in my life is as a birder and particularly my participation in Christmas Bird Counts. I went on my first CBC in 1967, a [...]
Continue reading about Reflections in a Yellowing Checklist: CBCs Past and Present