Clik here to view.
Banding station highlights are small and fuzzy
The sun rising behind the mist nets at the banding station. ‘Tis the season for year-end “Best of” lists, so I thought I’d do something of the sort for my 2017 banding station birds. Except it turns...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Banding station highlights are watching you
Northern Mockingbird When we catch a bird at the banding station, we look it over—and the bird eyeballs us right back. The pale eyes mean this Bushtit is female. They watch us as we extract them from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Young red-tailed hawk vs. the ice
It’s a bright, cold morning just after the first real snow of the season. The chill gives your hunger an edge, but you have a plan: sit on the trash can and wait for the squirrels to come to you. This...
View ArticleClik here to view.
North Carolina field work, part 2: vanishing
We head for the Smoky Mountains full of confidence: the Kentucky Warblers may have proved to be elusive, but every source suggests that our new quarry will be more forthcoming. The Canada Warbler is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
They fly at you, shrieking
A barn owl chick: fierce AND fluffy. The injured raptors at the wildlife rehabilitation hospital are kept in roomy metal cages lined with towels. There are pillow cases hung over the doors so that the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The best deer
My first thought was that the stag was badly injured. He trotted across the rural Wyoming highway wrong, dipping with every third step. Clipped by a car, maybe, I thought, mentally cringing at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is it debunked?
**This post brought to you by a recent attempt to change someone’s mind using solid scientific findings.** You, a well-trained and diligent scientist, have finally finished rigorously analyzing your...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New state, new science (and some old science too)
The early stages of a scientific career are designed to be unstable, slingshotting you from place to place as you acquire new skills. I bucked this paradigm somewhat in the first years after finishing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The space-for-time substitution
Recently I flew from a particularly dire version of Minnesota winter—periodic rain making no dent in the graying heaps of snow, while rendering the smooth ice-covered sidewalks puddle-pocked and slick,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Small
When people want a different perspective on the world, they may go to the mountains, or the ocean, or admire the endlessness of the night sky. Landscapes so vast as to approach incomprehensibility let...
View Article
