Impressions from a dinner party

The Hellenic and Latinate ornateness of the names, "raven-vulture cloaked in black" and "golden purifier", so at odds with western perceptions of the birds...

The Serengeti politics of the proceedings... The utter self-assurance of the BVs as they stride up to assume possession of the carcass, the calm resignation of the TVs as they stand aside to relinquish the same, for what bird could be more inclined to fatalism than a turkey vulture...

The heat, the stench, the clouds of flies, the indifference of the birds to all of these...

The intimacy and apparent gentleness of the feeding, a bill nuzzling into the hair to snip a morsel of sustenance from the body, a sort of communion...

Intimacy and communion of another sort, too, that only occurs when the living confront the dead. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well...

Above all, the ordinariness of the scene, for as dramatic as it may seem to us mortals, and as final as it may seem for the deer, the reality is that this happens every day, that it will happen every day, that the birds are rightly confident in its happening every day...

Eastern chipmunks

Tamias striatus, as photographed by Jessa.

Chickarees: known aliases include...

Tamiasciurus hudsonicus are known variously as American red squirrels, pine squirrels, boomers, and chickarees. I don't especially care for the first, as "red squirrel" is often used to refer to other species; I've seen Eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in Ireland, and even our neighbourhood fox squirrels (S. niger) are often colloquially referred to as "red squirrels".

[Okay, so yes, red...]

"Pine squirrel" is nicely descriptive of their habitat, but applies equally well to other Tamiasciurus species, as well as certain fox squirrel populations—in the Deep South and on the Delmarva peninsula, fox squirrels are habitat specialists associated closely with longleaf and loblolly pine.

[This is hemlock, not pine, but you get the general idea...]

The other two names, boomer and chickaree, are both based on vocalisation, but "boomer" gives the misleading impression that their voices are deep. "Chickaree", on the other hand, is based on a common call, so I guess we should go with that...

In practice, though, I usually end up resorting to "piney". Or, "Look, Jessa, there's another squirrel."

[I don't think any of these are on pine trees, either...]

[A few more just for cuteness.]

Swallow Falls and Muddy Creek Falls

Both of the above-named are located within Swallow Falls State Park near Oakland, Maryland. The park's namesake, Swallow Falls, is actually two chutes (Upper and Lower) on the Youghiogheny River.

[Upper Swallow Falls]

[Lower Swallow Falls]

More impressive, and more frequently depicted, is Muddy Creek Falls, near the confluence of said creek with the Yough.

The roots of the big stick

My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older he made us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. With great love and patience, and the most understanding sympathy and consideration, he combined insistence on discipline. He never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid. I do not mean that it was a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him.

—President Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

Pied

Leucistic robin at Neligh, Nebraska. The bill appears to be slightly deformed, but this may or may not be related to the unusual plumage; indeed, it's possible that the bill deformation is developmental rather than genetic. In any case, the bird seemed quite healthy, so the anomaly doesn't seem to be debilitating.

Photos by Mark & Jessica Farrell-Churchill.

Pebbles full o' birds

Killdeer nest on shoulder of gravel road, Antelope County, Nebraska.

#LivingDangerously

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A beauty and a Sweetheart

The rainbow is a stocker from the Fremont Lakes. The rod is an Eagle Claw (Wright & McGill) Sweetheart, my first venture into fiberglass. I like it.

Not too bad for a flip-phone photo, I think...

Cattails in spring

Photos by Jessa.

Our enemy, our beloved

As far as I know, C.S. Lewis was never a hunter—there is an anecdote, in fact, about his misdirecting a fox hunt—but this passage from Out of the Silent Planet certainly captures the mindset of a good dangerous-game hunter; apart from the evidently aquatic habitat, this could be a Maasai speaking of the lion:

I long to kill this hnakra as he also longs to kill me. I hope that my ship will be the first and I first in my ship with my straight spear when the black jaws snap. And if he kills me, my people will mourn and my brothers will desire still more to kill him. But they will not wish that there were no hnéraki; nor do I. How can I make you understand, when you do not understand the poets? The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved. We feel in our hearts his joy as he looks down from the mountain of water in the north where he was born; we leap with him when he jumps the falls; and when winter comes, and the lake smokes higher than our heads, it is with his eyes that we see it and know that his roaming time has come. We hang images of him in our houses, and the sign of all the hrossa is a hnakra. In him the spirit of the valley lives; and our young play at being hnéraki as soon as they can splash in the shallows.