I am lately returned from Punta Tombo, the Magellanic penguin breeding colony in Argentina where I spend several weeks each year. One of my tasks there is to open the field season in late October, which means I spend a lot of the early days stumping around our designated study areas looking for study penguins. […]
conservation
Autumn always makes the woods feel emptyThough I know strictly speakingThis isn’t true Bears prowl orchardsChuff through oak grovesStuff themselves before a slumberThat grows shorter every yearDeer, too, are bolder now and dumberHaunting the edges of highwaysRunning to or from the rutEven many insects remainHidden in soil or bark Unnamed under leavesOr within the spongy […]
Caribou of Alaska’s Western Arctic Herd travel the shore of the Kobuk River. Author video.— Most of the time, caribou are conservative. They tend not to try new things unless they really have to. They don’t like to wander far from their preferred migration routes, except in preiods of unusual weather, or extreme duress. While […]
Hillary Rosner is a science journalist and editor who teaches journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is also a friend and fellow member of Scilance, a network of 30+ science writers that has been meeting up online for 20 years. Over the years, I’ve loved following Hillary’s thoughtful, adventurous reporting on wildlife conservation, […]
Our neighbors of ten years moved away about a month ago. They were an older couple; L., the husband, was the one we interacted with the most. He was a commercial contractor and drove a big black pickup, but he also made sure to let my wife and me know he had never once voted […]
A few weeks ago, I was out on my morning trot when I saw a small piece of paper stapled to a wooden bollard at an intersection. It was one of those Lost Cat signs that go up in the neighborhood every so often. This particular sign brought me up short, though, because I recognized […]
Rockets used to be fun. There was a time when, if we heard there was going to be a launch at Vandenberg Space Force Base—about 50 miles away—we’d head outside with binoculars and cheer when the rocket crossed the sky overhead. Last year, there were 51 launches. During most of them, we were shaking our […]
I need your help. I’m trying to find a phrase to describe an important phenomenon and maybe help people recognize it more easily. The phenomenon is this: When we fix a problem, we forget it. I don’t mean you and me in “we” — we, of course, remember. But pop culture forgets, and the mass […]
