Oh look! It’s yet another yellow, black and white flycatcher! WC warned you: there are a lot of flycatchers, and many of them look a lot alike. This is a Lesser Kiskadee, Philohydor lictor, a smaller cousin to the Great Kiskadee. The Lesser Kiskadee has the same basic coloration as the Rusty-margined Flycatcher and the Social…
Commentary / Contest / Polls
It’s time to exercise your franchise – such as it is – and vote for the 2018 Hypocrite of the Year. You get one vote, although it’s laughably easy to stuff the ballot box. Joe Miller can give you advice on that, if you feel like cheating. if you need refreshers on the three candidate…
As WC has noted before, there are bird feeders and then there are bird feeders. If you put out birdfeeders, and attract songbirds in any numbers, you are also going to attract critters that eat songbirds, like Cooper’s Hawks. This is a sub-adult by eye color and feather pattern; it’s a male by size (among…
Back in 2011 or so, WC ran a monthly nominee for the annual Hypocrisy Hall of Fame Award.1 But the hassle of picking the biggest hypocrite in any given month was too great, and WC’s notorious Magpie Sensibilities sent him off chasing other shiny blog subjects. But the Trump Era has brought political hypocrisy to…
11 December 2018 Governor Michael Dunleavy PO Box 110001 Juneau, AK 99811-0001 Re: Your Meeting with President Trump Dear Governor Dunleavy: The Anchorage Daily News reports that you have accepted an invitation to meeting with President Donald Trump. WC will share with you a cautionary story he shared with Senator Lisa Murkowski. Once upon a time…
Trump’s recent anti-Muller tweet storms have brought a whole new batch of words and phrases from President Trump that require translation or explication. New additions to this work in progress appear at the top of the list. Our President uses language in strange and unusual ways. Notably, he often uses the same words or phrases…
WC agrees that, at least in comparison to the current Republican president, the late George H. W. Bush was a pretty decent POTUS. But that’s damning with faint praise. And all the praise for his service following his death was largely earned. But it’s also another example of Americans habit of collective amnesia when interring…
Last week we looked at a Social Flycatcher, and WC warned that it could be tough to tell the Myiozetetes flycatchers apart. Meet the Rusty-margined Flycatcher. At first glance, they look identical, but note the slight cinnamon/rufous color along the edge of the wings, and the even fainter yellow-greenish coloration across the back. The black mask…
The Anchorage Daily News reports that Gov. Mike Dunleavy has named former state Sen. Ben Stevens as an adviser for transportation, legislation and fishing. Remember Ben Stevens? He’s the guy who was never charged with accepting the bribe that former Veco Vice President Rick Smith was convicted of paying him. Actually, that’s just a small part of…
In 1961, WC’s sixth grade teacher, the late Jerry Norum, told his students that “LASERs” were going to be the “next big thing.” He was right, of course; lasers are ubiquitous now, scanning groceries, transmitting data, playing music, performing surgery and serving hundreds of other tasks. They were, indeed, the “next big thing.”1 Is graphene…
K.T. McFarland was a Fox News commentator and strong, early supporter of candidate Donald Trump. Her loyalty seems to have earned her first a place on the Trump presidential transition team and later appointment as Deputy National Security Advisor to Michael Flynn. She didn’t last much longer in the position than Flynn did. But she…
The American Bird Conservancy is an international leader is the efforts to save the world’s bird populations, especially birds of the Western Hemisphere. Across the Western Hemisphere, 12 percent of the New World’s 4,230 bird species are declining in population and headed for extinction in our lifetimes without immediate conservation action.The Conservancy has published its…
