Last post, I wrote about fish crows, a bird of very few words. A pair of them will be flying along and one says, “krokk;” and after a bit, the other says “krokk” and maybe adds another “krokk” or not; and that’s it, end of conversation. Fish crows are, like all crows, famously social. And […]
Animals
On a spring day three years ago, the river climbed out of its banks. Unseasonable heat and heavy rain had hit the snowpack high in the mountains, sending a winter’s worth of meltwater in a pulse down the tributaries, into the mainstem, and spilling across the valley floor. Work seemed unlikely under these circumstances, so […]
Caribou collar compilation provided by the National Park Service. Last week I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska, for work. Though the melt had begun, plenty of snow still blanketed the ground and thick rafts of ice clotted the rivers. It had been a big winter in the area, the coldest on record, with 31 days at […]
Look at this worm. Behold it! Is it not the most spectacular worm you have ever seen? If you’re a loyal reader of this space, you saw this exact worm a week or so ago, in my post about Japanese botanist Tomitaro Makino and some of the plants he grew up around. That was the […]
When I was a kid, I pretended I was a bird, and I did it in front of anyone in early elementary school, winging around with my arms outstretched. Around fourth grade I started learning modesty and only soared when no one was watching. The ground, I imagined, was far away, ants the size of […]
Update: I just found out that I’m talking about two different kinds of crows: I was hearing fish crows — which go krokk, then maybe another krokk, then that’s it — and thinking they were American crows which go caw caw caw and never shut up. Never mind because we’re still presented with the mystery […]
I. One autumn evening several years ago I was driving—I should admit it, I was flying—north on New York state’s Taconic Parkway when I spotted a white tailed deer at the side of the road. It isn’t unusual to see them along the Taconic, especially in the fall, when the rut makes them a little […]
