Posted on

Common Pauraque

 Here is the sleeping common pauraque.  I don’t even have to zoom in on him, do I?     But I can…    Just in case…    But you don’t even need to scroll down…    If you’ve already got him…      
Posted on

Wild Kingdom

 Walking the shoreline of a remote lake, admiring the trail of coyote prints, I put a shoe print next to one for scale. I spooked a herd of Nilgai, a large Asian antelope that has established an exotic population in South Texas. They have a goofy stiff-legged run that is reminiscent of a hyena’s awkward gait.   Not a particularly graceful creature. The bull is blue-gray, with his tail raised in alarm. I searched the salty water and found the birds I was after: Snowy Plover, Ring-billed Gull, Wilson’s Phalarope, and headed back, stopping to admire an immense pile of deer poop;…a significant marking station no doubt. I found myself in the path of a small pack of feral hogs squealing and grunting their way obliviously toward me. I decided to announce my presence before they got all the way to me and it stopped them in their tracks. Wild hogs can be a problem, but these didn’t look too threatening. I picked up a good heavy hog-whacking stick anyway; just in case.  They stopped, looked at me, then ran away in great fear.  I continued on.  The problem was, no matter which way they ran, they managed to circle around and pop right out at me again and get alarmed even more. After several terrifying encounters, with much snorting and complaining (mostly from the hogs), they finally figured out a foolproof plan and burst out across the shallow lake to safety on the other side.  We all survived the adventure.  Some of us even enjoyed it. 
Posted on

Global capitalism

 It’s a logical extension of what has gone before.  If we follow the path of least resistance, this is where we end up.  But now, 50% of the world’s wealth is controlled by 1% of the people.  Does that seem like a good idea?  Is this a recipe for stability?  Is it fair?  If we could design a capital and social system from scratch, is this how we’d make it? Global capitalism is working mighty fine for the 1%.  It is working well for many of the other 99% that control the other half of the wealth.  But it is not working at all for the people on our planet that don’t have access to adequate food, shelter, or even clean water; not by their own fault but by the accident of their birth; people with no access to opportunity to participate in capitalism because of where and when they were born, or people who washed out of the system; they just weren’t able to compete, or people who were excluded; denied the opportunity to compete.  There are efforts at compassionate capitalism and global philanthropy, but the number of people left behind and the work to help them as yet undone, is evidence that unrestrained capitalism, with voluntary compassion, is not working out so well. I would like to say something clever about how to fix all this; how to make our world more fair; a better place, but I would have to know a lot more than I actually do to suggest anything constructive, so I’ll just send out a picture of some chachalacas on a deck rail instead.    
Posted on

There are a lot of dedicated birders in this county.

 I suspect many of them don’t have day-jobs. We’ve birded a lot on the weekends and at least a little bit each day starting January 1.  I’m tracking how we’re doing on the ebird list.  So far we’ve recorded 129 species.  We’re currently at number 7 in the county for most number of species. You didn’t know birding was a competitive challenge?  It’s a charming competition.  We all want to identify and record more birds than the other guy, but it’s also a very friendly cooperation.  If someone finds a rarity, they promptly tell everyone else where and when, often with directions on how to find it.  If we’re standing there looking at a screech owl hidden in a hole and someone else wanders by, we point it out to them.  Our competition could be better described as co-opetition. Today we found two burrowing owls.