We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Feel free to punch holes in his argument, but based on his examples it seems to work dramatically - watch his example in Mexico. A guy who exterminated 40,000 elephants by mistake deserves to be listened to.
On a micro, non-desertification level, I have noticed that the quality of the grasses on one of our 50-acre fields at the farm has deteriorated visibly since we have not had cattle there. Of course, our New England meadows are naturally woodlands and not natural grasslands.
It's not in as bad shape as Detroit, but Blue State and Blue (corrupt) local governance have driven most of the jobs away - along with vast numbers of middle- and working-class people. (The prosperous fled in the 50s and 60s.) Therefore, there is no "housing shortage." Housing is cheap, but they will kill you with the property taxes. Thus the old city has no vitality or appeal whatsoever except to urban explorers like us. Death spiral.
What does a pilot do in a death spiral?
The solution is not to bulldoze the city. It's to bulldoze the government. However, at this point the government is basically in the control of government unions and welfare recipients, all feeding on the dry bones of the cadaver. Thus, despite its amenities and opportunities, basically politically hopeless. It's sad.
If they appointed me Dictator of Bridgeport for a few years, I could begin to fix it. Change is good! The first thing I would do is to create a citywide enterprise zone with no corporate or business taxes. Second, I would cut property taxes in half. Might be tough going for a couple of years until markets react, and bankruptcy might have to happen because sometimes you need a fresh start. Third, I would eliminate all government housing. Rents are so low there, anybody can pay them on a welfare or disability check. Fourth, I would make government unions illegal. Fifth, I would prosecute the local Mob with vengeance, no mercy. Everybody knows who they are, and people claim they are in bed with the unions. Sixth, I would eliminate all zoning regulations. Seventh, I would make all schools charter schools - no government-controlled schools. Eighth, a cop or guard on every block, with stop-and-frisk. Well, I could go on and on, but the general idea would be to return such a city to the policies which existed when it became a thriving city, before the socialists, planners, and taxers took over when they realized they could tax and plan the place to death.
It would be an interesting experiment. If it failed (but how could it be worse?), I'd take the fall.
This row of old buildings appeared fully-occupied by Hispanic immigrants, neat, clean, and pleasant but nowhere to go except the abundant old churches, and no street life.
It's a month or two early to post about bird migration, particularly passerine migration, here in the northern hemisphere, but I did find this excellent review of the most recent science on the topic:
By 1880, New England had been almost completely deforested. Moose, Wolf, Black Bear, and Wild Turkey were gone or limited to tiny habitat islands. Deer were rare. Then profitable farming moved west to the rich plains of Ohio and Indiana. Good-bye to rocky New England.
With reforestation, Moose and Wild Turkey have rebounded, and Beaver, Bear, and White-Tailed Deer have become pests in some areas. So have the highly-adaptable coyotes, who moved into wolf territory (coyotes were never native to the Northeast) and are now considered pests in New England with generous hunting and trapping seasons for eastern coyotes, coydogs, and coy-wolves if any.
Those critters are all Wolf food, including coyotes. Maybe not the bears.
The new coyotes of the Northeast are larger than those of Western US and Canada, may have a few wolf genes, and a large male is easily mistaken for Wolf or German Shepherd.
There is only one species of Wolf in the world - Canis lupus. The species has - or had - a global reach, with all of its various subspecies (subspecies means races - of which the domesticated Dog is one. The Grey Wolf and the Eastern Wolf are probably the same subspecies, but there is much controversy about wolf subspecies genetics).
All domestic dogs in the world were genetically engineered from the Eurasian Grey Wolf subspecies, including African domestic dogs, beginning around 14,000 years ago. Wolves - dogs - were domesticated before any other animal but your average wild wolf cannot be civilized, even if raised from birth by man. Humans must have found the rare wolf individuals with civilizable genetic flaws as in photo below:
North America's Grey Wolf was an immigrant across the Bering Strait from Siberia and, along with the Cougar, were the dominant predators across the entire US and subarctic Canada.
Dominant predators require large ranges of undeveloped land, preferably without roads and cars. The Cougars will have a tough time repopulating the Northeast, but the Wolves can come down from Quebec. In dribs and drabs, they have been doing so. Probably lone wolves. Visual reports are not reliable, but DNA testing is so the animal has to be shot or trapped to be tested to distinguish the animal from a coydog, a coy-wolf, etc. I don't know why coyotes and wolves can interbreed if they are separate species.
There are no records of confirmed Wolf breeding or pack-forming yet in New England, but these occurences would not be surprising, and would be welcome to many. Wolves remain common enough in Canada to have popular hunting seasons for them. Wolves leave people alone, unlike foolish Cougars who sometimes confuse a jogger with a deer and eat them up.
I read in Mayflower about how the Pilgrims were astonished by the woodland autumn blaze of color. Europe doesn't have this. The storm will probably remove this year's magnificent display prematurely.
He also mentioned that America has 30 million Mayflower descendants. Not an exclusive club.
I have eaten Rocky Mountain Elk steaks. Tastes like Elk, ie, similar to Moose. I have friends who hunt them. Bow, not rifle. Good stories, good adventures.
Took this lousy pic of a majestic White Oak on Saturday, growing on the edge of the marsh, on Constitution Island.
White Oaks are happy to grow near wetlands, and their acorns feed all sorts of wildlife. They are said to live 600 years. I have seen some huge ones surviving in woods where there had been pasture 100 years ago.
Kayaked down the choppy and windy Hudson a piece from the charming, granola-feeling old river hamlet of Cold Spring, NY (which was packed with cheerful strolling, shopping, and eating people) then snuck under the Metro North Hudson Line bridge into Constitution Marsh just before the tide got too high to get under it.
They rent kayaks on the river. We rent kayaks. Kayaking on ordinary waters is easy for anybody. We did a good 4 hours. The rental guy said "Use your core, not your arms, and find your core rhythm." We are not proficient yet, but we sure enjoy it. The pros give the same advice for tennis, but I still use my arms. I have no core rhythm for anything.
Those hills are the Hudson Highlands, on the other (west) side of the river. Storm King. Dramatic. The Hudson there is still tidal, but low salinity. Can barely taste salt when you splash yourself.
Did not see a lot of migrants - no Teal yet. A migrant Harrier, Osprey, and some Spotted Sandpipers, a Sharpie, plus the resident Bald Eagles, Cormorants, Black Ducks, Mallards and herons (Great Blue and American).
A recurrent thought was that this must have been great for October and November duck hunting before the Audubon Society took it over. Good for Rail shooting too. The marsh is full of Wild Rice and Cattails. In the 1830s, some guy tried to make it a Wild Rice farm, hence the kayak routes and the abundance of Wild Rice.
No powerboats allowed. You could get lost in there if they did not have water-trail markers because it is a water maze. Good fun. We kayaked down to the southern lake, and visited the Audubon lodge there (and grabbed a coffee, chatted with the naturalist, and used their facilities).
If you kayak down the marsh around 40 minutes, you turn a corner and what do you see, across the marsh, across Constitution Island, and on the other side of the Hudson?
As I recall, George Washington picked that location. The big river is narrow and defensible there, due to Constitution Island poking into it.
I know two places on Cape Cod where you can see these big snakes in numbers on a sandy bank on a warm day in early Spring, trying to warm up from their hibernation by lounging lazily in the sun and looking for mating partners.
When it's still cool, they don't move much and do not display their lightning speed: they just glare at you and maybe twitch their tail.
It is indeed startling to encounter ten of these guys together, some 5-6' long, as you are walking along a sandy trail in early Springtime. They like edges, with some cover nearby, like water nearby whether salt or fresh, and they will climb trees if they feel like it. Entirely harmless (unless you are a small animal or a small snake: like Kronos, they will eat their young), but big - and always a wonder to see a big one and the average wife will jump to you for protection. That's always a good thing.
Subspecies of these handsome snakes are found across America, mainly east of the Rockies. You can read more about the Black Racer here.
We could use some more of them around here to eat the damn Norway Rats, but they'd eat our cute Chipmunks too. I noticed that you can buy them on the internets in case you want some around your place. With a little luck, they will eat the kittens too.
Seen a Black Snake lately? They are daytime hunters and no rat can outrun them. Wonderful critters which usually startle you when you encounter them. Most of the time, you don't see them because they stay out of your way.
Great Whites inhabit all of the oceans of the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Despite the really, really scary crisis of climate change, New England has seen a huge increase in the seal population over the past couple of decades. The last time I swam in the ocean beach in Wellfleet, there were large Gray Seals all around us, gamboling in the surf. Quite amusing.
Seals attract the Great White Sharks which like to feed on them. They are shark bait. Can a shark distinguish a person from a seal - and why should it care anyway? Food is food. Great white sharks send Cape swimmers running.
My theory: get out there and have fun in the chilly water. The odds are strongly on your side.
I saw a Killdeer with three teensy, just-hatched miniature Killdeer chicks running around a large gravel parking lot during my morning walk today.
That was a sight which gladdened my heart and sweetened my soul.
The Killdeer is found, either breeding or wintering, in all states of the US. It's a plover of open ground, and not particularly associated with water like most plovers.
You will never find them in tall grass or woodlands, but you can occasionally see them doing their run-and-pause bug-hunting technique on pebbly shorelines.
Their "killdeer" call, sometimes heard at night, and the rusty flash of tail, are distinctive.
You can read about this not-uncommon bird here. Every good person loves the Killdeer.
Heath Hens were extremely common in their habitat during Colonial times, but being a gallinaceous bird, they were hunted by settlers extensively for food. In fact, many have speculated that the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving dinner featured Heath Hens and not wild turkey. By the late 18th century, the heath hen had a reputation as poor man's food for being so cheap and plentiful; Thomas Winthrop related that they could be found on the Boston Common and that servants would sometimes bargain with a new employer for not being given Heath Hen for food more often than 2 or 3 days a week.
As the beavers becomes more common, the wonderful habitats they create - marshes and ponds, Alder and willow thickets, -proliferate. Wood Ducks, Black Ducks, herons, amphibians, snakes, turtles, songbirds, swallows, bugs. Everybody likes a beaver marsh. You can barely see one of their series of dams in the foreground.
Factory fishing, aided by helos, has crushed the population of Bunker. An excellent and thorough review of the politics of the plankton-eating Menhaden which, like the Herring, is the preeminent fish of the lower end of the Atlantic food chain:
A Fish Story - How an angler and two government bureaucrats may have saved the Atlantic Ocean.
The warblers are on the move up from South and Central America, and pass through hearabouts in May, on their way north to breed as soon as the buds begin to pop on the trees and the bugs wake up. Girls might like diamonds but the warblers are God's real living jewels.
The Yellow is the yellowest, and maybe most abundant warbler, with a distinctive "sweet sweeet sweet" call. Found throughout the US during migration. They like to be near wet areas - willows, etc., but they will be everywhere soon.
Gwynnie emails me that he saw a pair of these this morning.
A colorful, not uncommon finch-like, sparrow-sized bird often seen in the Eastern US during migration - which is right now. During breeding season, the male is dramatically-pigmented but, depending on the light, they can appear black.
When I was a kid, we referred to the Upland Sandpiper as a "snipe." They used to be officially named "Upland Plover." It's been a long time since I have seen an Upland Sandpiper in New England. (They are listed as threatened in the Eastern US). They were more plentiful in the past, when Yankeeland was covered with pastures and hayfields.
As with the Bobolink and the Meadowlark, reforestation and suburbanization have taken their toll on these fine meadow dwellers in the northeastern US. The Upland Sandpiper also had to deal with heavy market hunting (as a substitute for the hunted-to-extinction Passenger Pigeon).
The Upland, like our Wilson's Snipe, Woodcock, and Europe's Jacksnipe are all members of the shorebird family Scolopacidae who abandoned the coasts and found a home in the uplands. These birds are still hunted, much as all shorebirds were in the past. However, they are difficult to find these days.
Our Upland Sandpipers winter on the Argentinian pampas. You can read more about the Upland Sandpiper here.
Here's a male Bobolink in breeding plumage, aka Ricebird. They do breed in one of our largest pastures. I still remember the first one I heard calling.
Spent a couple of hours on the Connecticut coast this weekend. A vast swath of Common Slipper Shells had washed up during winter storms, a couple of feet deep. People don't eat this mollusc.
(These limpets are different from the European Common Limpet.)
They attach themselves to rocks and other hard objects. Also, to eachother. They move, extremely slowly, if they want to. I tried to figure out whether they have any predators. Supposedly some crabs can eat them, and some of those little snails can bore holes into them. I wonder whether diving ducks can pry them off their attachments, as they do with mussels.
I've seen some migrating Ospreys in the past couple of days. Heading up along the lakes, rivers, and coasts to their summer cottages.
Ospreys are Fish Hawks. They can handle a big fish once they get to carrying it aerodynamically, but they have been known to be drowned by latching onto really big ones.
My blackbirds - mostly Red-wings, Cowbirds, and Grackles - arrived yesterday. It's always between March 12 and March 15. They empty out the bird-feeders and move on. Do they remember my feeders from last fall?
People are annoyed with Grackles because they like to poop in swimming pools. They don't bother me at all.
Here's an autumn migratory flock in Sipp's previous back yard:
I think of them as the nighttime version of the Marsh Hawk, because they like the wide open spaces, grasslands, fields, and marsh edges. They are not woodland birds.
I know we do not have them at the farm, because we have a hundred acres of meadow and a perfect barn loft open for them to use, and they have never used it. Plus there are hundreds more acres of horse field and cow pasture nearby. I think we're at the northern edge of their range. For owls, we have only Great Horned, Barred, and Screech as far as I know. Probably Saw-Whet in winter, but I haven't seen one there.
The last time I saw a Barn Owl was when one flew across the road in front of me at night in the headlights, between a marsh and some large estate fields in lovely Lloyd Harbor, Long Island. Lloyd Neck, actually.
In Scientific American, The Wipeout Gene - A new breed of genetically modified mosquitoes carries a gene that cripples its own offspring. They could crush native mosquito populations and block the spread of disease. And they are already in the air—though that's been a secret.
Good, bad, or indifferent? It's a little creepy to me, like Ice-9.
It's a month or two early to post about bird migration, particularly passerine migration, here in the northern hemisphere, but I did find this excellent review of the most recent science on the topic:
By 1880, New England had been almost completely deforested. Moose, Wolf, Black Bear, and Wild Turkey were gone or limited to tiny habitat islands. Deer were rare. Then profitable farming moved west to the rich plains of Ohio and Indiana. Good-bye to rocky New England.
I know two places on Cape Cod where you can see these big snakes in numbers on a sandy bank on a warm day in early Spring, trying to warm up from their hibernation by lounging lazily in the sun and looking for mating partners. 
I saw a Killdeer with three teensy, just-hatched miniature Killdeer chicks running around a large gravel parking lot during my morning walk today.
My Mom, an avid gardener and an avid reader, recommends Richard Mabey's 
Once a common bird in New England and the Eastern seaboard but now gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon. 
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Gwynnie emails me that he saw a pair of these this morning.
When I was a kid, we referred to the Upland Sandpiper as a "snipe." They used to be officially named "Upland Plover." It's been a long time since I have seen an Upland Sandpiper in New England. (They are 
I think of them as the nighttime version of the Marsh Hawk, because they like the wide open spaces, grasslands, fields, and marsh edges. They are not woodland birds.