Fixing a Hole

I miss my blog, but there is always so much more to do. Bunnies are eating the flowers, my zinnia seeds are locked in clay/concrete soil, it's raining (again), and I have a ton of work. This website is under major reconstruction. So go here for a spell.

Friday bird blog

OK. I know I said I wasn’t going to post anything else here.

I subscribe to a list-serv for a bird enthusiasts’ group, and it’s fun for me to receive emails about various sightings in places I might not ever see again. At least they’re still there, and people still love the places I grew up knowing.

The other day someone sighted a snowy owl at a most auspicious place – where the St. Joseph River pours into Lake Michigan. It was there that I saw six American Avocets one autumn while accompanying Arthur on a walkabout. He couldn’t stand anything more unusual than he soliciting oo’s and ah’s from the madding crowd, so he was rude to them, and they flew. Avocets generally don’t generally come this far east, so it was a big deal for me, never having seen even one before, but I had to keep my enthusiasm in check. A pouting Corgi is a sorry sight.

The snowy owl has only one known breeding spot in the United States, that being Barrow, Alaska. They stay above the tree line unless their main menu choice, the lowly lemming, is in short supply. Lemmings reproduce early and often, but they are subject to boom and bust cycles like the oil well drillers who populate their breeding ground. Here and there on the Great Plains and Canada one can find a solitary snowy owl in winter. There have been notable incursions into the lower 48, but they still are a rare sight for most of us.

If, for example, someone like Arthur were to happen upon snowy owl young, the adults would give him a run for his money. The female, who is the larger of the sexes, weighs about five pounds and her wingspan is about six feet. Those talons are plenty sharp, and she is fearless, searching the wolf-dominated tundra for provisions, never straying far from the ground.

The blue skies photo here is from an Audubon chapter in the northeastern lower peninsula of Michigan, not far from Alpena. They’re also near the world’s only nesting territory for the Kirtland’s warbler, formerly known as the Jack Pine warbler.

http://kirtlandswarbleraudubon.org/

Friday Bird Blog

Being a 365 days per year walker of shores yields much bounty, most all of it pacifying and inspiring. Today, however, I have sad news to tell. Traveling along the expansive beach at Grand Mere State Park, I found two dead great blue herons, an adult and a juvenile. They had been shot.

The Great Blue is a magnificent bird, a friendly giant of the Great Lakes waterways, graceful and remarkable for its blue legs. The other giant is the Sand Hill Crane, which flies with its neck extended, where the Great Blue holds his close to its body in flight. That's the way I was taught to tell them apart at a distance.

Grand Mere is a wonderful 1200 acre reserve with giant dunes and woods and a passage to the shoreline which one can travel for several miles. The Cook nuclear plant is the southern-most limit. Unfortunately, hunting begins in late September, and as far as I can tell, hunters can shoot in any part of the park. You'd have to be pretty drunk or blind to mistake a heron for a duck, and killing a juvenile may be against the law. I do know that there is no open season on herons, and I'm pretty sure that shooting something along the Lake Michigan shoreline is verboten.

Some stupid kid or crazed testosterone poisoned jerk killed these birds. One day earlier this fall, I was entering the wooded part of one of the trails, and ahead of me was a fat, lumbering hunter with a shot gun slung over his shoulder, looking like Elmer Fudd, except he was wearing a neon orange stocking cap. I retreated and called the local police not realizing that it was A-OK for him to shoot at will. There were and are no signs advising mere walkers and bird watchers to wear red or orange clothing. It's nuts. but the Michigan DNR is very pre-occupied with revenue, and hunters' license fees must add up.

I discovered spent orange shotgun shells littering the woods. There are no park rangers present a lot of the time, as management is contracted out to local agencies it would appear. I intend to write to the state about my concerns, but no one gives a damn apparently, except the park lovers and eco-tourists. Michigan used to be a most intelligent state regarding its landscape and resources. When the right-wingers took over the state legislature, that all changed. So sad.

Food for the soul

About a year ago I posted a picture here and speculated that the land captured in the image would some day be turned into a mcmansion habitat. Little did I know …

I happen to think that the scenery here is beautiful and worthy of life. Too bad I’m not running things. Really affluent communities value places like this. Really affluent developers do not.

Yesterday I retrieved 10 golf balls and picked up a great quantity of trash from the park. I found a spot where campers had dumped what looks like a week’s worth, and I mean to go back and get it, but I didn’t have any gloves with me. I found some Speedo goggles and a pair of girl’s pink flip-flops. Last week I gathered a lot of beach toys which the fearsome wind had uncovered the night before.

The company spy was keeping track of what I was up to. Today I engaged him in conversation. He is very friendly. Possibly he is just stopping by for a break, but I am pretty sure he is not.

Parkinson's Disease is a death sentence

Every once in a while I pay attention to what Rush and O’Reilly and their backup chorus in the so-called mainstream media team are up to. No good, as a rule. But this latest is beyond pathetic.

Parkinson’s Disease is a terminal illness. Here’s what happens when someone lives to the final stages: no ability to speak, eat, or even breathe. Nice, huh? One becomes totally dependant, and the nursing home bills can be $8000. a month – until the money runs out and you are removed to a Medicaid facility. The fakers.

Two close relatives had Parkinson’s Disease, an uncle on my mother’s side and my father. Before the final stages a person can look forward to falling a lot, tremoring so badly he or she cannot hold a spoon or a coffee cup, lots of icky side effects from the medications, back pain, leg pain, out-of-control emotional reactions, especially depression. Wow. What freeloading attention-seekers, Katie Couric. What over-the-top nonsense, Matt Lauer.

The Nazis ridiculed “defective” people, and then they killed them. I don’t know too much about Michael Fox. He was in a cute movie where he played a physician stuck in Podunk – can’t remember the name of it – and a TV show, but I am the wrong one to look to for TV facts. Was he supporting a Democrat or something?

If Katie Couric’s husband had had Parkinson’s instead of cancer, would she have stooped this low? Well, for $15 million, … All in good fun, I’m sure, Sweetheart. Ugh!

Wild secluded scene

that thing sticking up in the right foreground of the top picture is a stake marking some feature of the golf course I've written about, that golf course which, according to the official line, will cause minimal impact to the dunes. A golf course feature referred to as a 'green' has turf grass. Lots of it.

Hawkeyes

Iowa City is a most pleasant place. Really. Its intelligence shows everywhere. The University boasts the largest teaching hospital in the United States. There is wonderful original art in all of the State facilities, including the University properties.

Today we drove to a University park which hosts a raptor safe habitat for injured birds who cannot survive in the wild. They have, as well, a rehabilitation center for those that can make it on their own after some TLC.

Here is Spirit, a bald eagle, who has been there for 16 years. She was found in Minnesota. Her house is cozy, with a great view.

A Saw whet owl was a resident, too. Oh, God. The cutest thing I've ever seen. Several hawks, other owls, including a bard owl named Cyprus have separate cabins. Even blind birds live there.

All have benefactor people or institutions.

If one had to get stuck in the Midwest outside of Chicago or Minneapolis, this would be the place to live. Madison is great, too. Ann Arbor is a touch snooty, believe it or not. God love our great state university systems.