Most (maybe all) of his contemporaries are dead. Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Albert King; all gone. Seven-time Grammy winner Buddy Guy is still standing. He’s 81 years old and can still rock the house down, make his guitar weep and make you laugh out loud. He’s the living spirit of…
A smaller member of the albatross family, the Light-manted Sooty Albatross (sometimes called the Light-mantled Albatross) is another circumpolar species. The species is “small” only in relation to other albatrosses. With a wingspan of six to seven feet and a weight of as much as eight pounds, the bird is larger than Golden Eagle and…
If your list of things to worry about isn’t long enough, let WC introduce you to Thrip. Thrip is the name assigned to a group of China-based hackers. They use a mix of legitimate tools that are a part of most computer operating systems and hacking tools. They’ve been in action since at least 2013.…
R.I.P. Koko, 1971-2018.
Bald Eagles get all the press, but if there is a bird you’d call the most elegant raptor in North America, it’s the Golden Eagle, Aquila chrysaetos. It’s the largest North American raptor, with a wingspan that can run to 76 inches. A full-grown female – among raptors, females are generally larger – can weigh 14 pounds.…
Alaska’s senior U.S. Senator, Lisa Murkowski, has finally issued a statement on the Trump Administration’s child abuse on our borders. The time is now for the White House to end the cruel, tragic separations of families. They are not consistent with our values. The thousands of children taken from their parents and families must be…
When WC moved to Idaho a few years ago, WC knew it was a state that has an extensive basin and range province. “Basin and range,” for non-geologists, is a patter of alternating steep mountains and broad, mostly flat valleys. The mountains and valleys all extend northwesterly, mostly parallel, and are major geoform of the…
WC spent a few days in the Pahsimeroi Valley, a fairly obscure tributary of the Salmon River, in east central Idaho. With a couple for friends, we spent some time exploring the Pahsimeroi and the Lost River Range, the mountains that bound the Pahsimeroi Valley on the westerly side. One of the highlights of the…
So we go from a few weeks of birds that cannot fly, to birds that can only barely land, the albatrosses. The Black-browed is a medium-sized member of the albatross family, with a wing span of seven to eight feet. This bird lives in the air, landing on the ocean only when the wind dies,…
How bad is the politics getting at Secretary’s Ryan Zinke’s Interior Department? So bad that a faceless political appointee, a non-scientist, is in charge of deciding what grants get awarded and what don’t. His name is Steven Howke. He’s a school classmate of Zinke, also from Whitefish, Montana. Before joining the Department of Interior, he ran…
Mountain Bluebirds are in trouble. While in some of their range, populations are stable after years of decline, in other areas the Mountain Bluebird numbers are still declining. One of the reasons for the decline is that bluebirds, which nest in cavities, are being out-competed by Eurasian Starlings, an invasive species. A classic scene: a…
Reagan Martz is in jail on $50,000 bail. He is charged with killing one person and injuring two others. He is alleged to have been drunk, seriously drunk, while operating a boat on Flat Lake near Big Lake. He struck three women on a float tube. There were plenty of signs that this could happen.…
