WC had summer afternoons in Junior High School last longer than July 2022. Of course, that was partly because time always goes by too fast when you are having fun, and July had some fun trips. Never mind that the end of July was baking hot. Fun or not, hot or not, it’s time for…
This is another Catharus thrush, wintering in South America and breeding in the taiga and low Arctic shrub thickets from Newfoundland to the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. It has an unusual migration route; all the birds, even those breeding in far western Alaska and eastern Siberia, move through the eastern half of the Lower 48.…
All of the Southern Ocean’s South Georgia Island is spectacular, but Gold Harbor, near the southeastern end of the 106-mile long sub-Antarctic Island is a stunner. With the hanging icefall of Bertrab Glacier looming over the long arc of the gravel-shored bay, Gold Harbor teems with wildlife. Southern Fur Seals, like those in the foreground…
In response to less than two seconds of video played by the January 6 Committee at its July 21, 2022 meeting, no less than six different readers have suggested an additional candidate for the Wickersham’s Conscience 2022 Hypocrite of the Year. The video, of course, is of a U.S. Senator sprinting away from an approaching…
WC is huddled by an air conditioning vent, working through an endless list of busted software and failed data transfers attendant to upgrading to a new computer and a modern Mac operating system. It’s put WC in just the right mood to sort through the stockpile of email questions from kind readers, ignorant critics and…
There has been an endless stream of musicians who were supposed to be “the next B.B. King” or “the next Stevie Ray Vaughn.” Well, this time, they are right. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram is an immensely gifted, immensely talented kid who, at age 23 – that’s not a typo – is already one of the very…
Getting there was just a little . . . hairy. We flew in a small, twin engine commercial aircraft, refueling in Deadhorse, Alaska before flying east on the arctic coast to the Iñupiaq village of Kaktovik. There was pretty dense ground fog at Kaktovik, and it took three passes to find the end of the…
For WC and, WC suspects, most of his readers, these are not happy times. Between the lunatics running the asylum, the baking hot consequences of climate change, Putin’s vanity war in Ukraine and the latest surge of the pandemic, it might just be time to escape into a good book. WC has some recommendations, none…
From late spring to mid-summer across much of mainland Alaska, into the late twilight, you can listen to the upward-spiraling song of the Swainson’s Thrush, another haunting melody of the boreal forest. Other birds may sleep at night, or at least go silent; not the Swainson’s Thrush, which sings, seemingly, all night. Unlike most of…
Lunatic, Lunacy: late 13th century, “affected with periodic insanity dependent on the changes of the moon,” from Old French lunatique “insane,” or directly from Late Latin lunaticus “moon-struck,” from Latin luna “moon” Etymology Online It is a remarkable coincidence that the new Chair of the Idaho Republican Party, elected on the occasion of the most recent supermoon, is named Dorothy…
An essay by David James, of Fairbanks, Alaska, that is dead on. Morality is not simple. It’s easy to hold absolute positions in the abstract, but when human realities intrude, what seems straightforward becomes complex. For instance, the Ten Commandments state, “Thou shalt not kill.” No exceptions. Yet the Bible is littered with exceptions, because…
Imagine running one of the great American marathons. Or, if you are in the kind of shape I am in, imagine jogging, then walking, and in the end possibly crawling to the finish line of an American marathon. Whatever your condition, by the time you reach the finish line you’d be in dire need of…
During the Pleistocene, as recently as 12,000 years ago, central Oregon had a number of large lakes. One of them, Fossil Lake, located in south-central Oregon, in northern Lek County, was, at peak, about 30 miles wide and perhaps 250 feet deep. It’s vanished now. The last two ponds evaporated about 1877. But during the…
WARNING: Serious technogeekery ahead. Readers may recall WC is attempting to inventory the number of bird species he has photographed. Progress has been slow but steady. Some background: WC has been forced to abandon the software used to manage bird photos since 2005. That software, a product called Aperture from Apple, was “EOLed” – “End…
7,700 years go, give or take 1.5%, the 12,000 foot high stratovolcano Mt. Mazama catastrophically erupted, blasting so much ash and molten rock from its magma chamber that the whole edifice collapsed, creating an oblong caldera six miles long on the longer axis, four and a half on the shorter one, and nearly a mile…
WC has exhausted his even marginally decent photos of Central American and South American thrushes. Let’s have a look now at the North American thrushes, starting with the Varied Thrush. The Varied Thrush is very much a bird of the west, and mostly a bird of the northern Boreal forests. Its beautiful, haunting song, a…
Idaho is a thoroughly Republican state. Both U.S. Senators, both U.S. Representatives, a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and nearly every elected ministerial office. Those elected officials seemingly vie with each other to see who can be the most conservative. But they aren’t conservative enough for Mike Lindell,…
Because they are so common, WC thinks that Killdeer are under-appreciated. A handsome member of the plover genus Charadius, the Latin root that gives us “charade,” they are an adaptable, ubiquitous, noisy and even entertaining bird species. The species name is vociferus, another Latin root meaning “clamorous or noisy.” Sometimes around the clock. The “charade”…
“In like Flynn” is a phrase associated with the late actor Errol Flynn. He had a well-deserved reputation for womanizing, consumption of alcohol, and brawling. In November 1942, two underage girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, accused him of statutory rape. The trial took place in January and February 1943, and Flynn was acquitted of the charges.…
As noted earlier, WC spent the 4th of July holiday in the mountains of Central Idaho, at a campground off of the South Fork of the Payette River. The Ponderosa Pines there aren’t especially birdy, and WC’s limited mobility made finding birds a bit more challenging, but there were a few birds to be found…
This post continues a new semi-regular series, Most Memorable Moments, featuring some of the most memorable natural history experiences that WC has been lucky enough to enjoy. Sometimes nature can be magical and memorable, and, yes, it’s still magical even when you know how and why it works. Links to prior Most Memorable Moments are…
Bill Allen has died. Good riddance. The King of Corruption, Betrayer of Friends, the Prince of Disastrous Deals, he made most of his money off one of Alaska’s biggest disasters and he earns one of WC’s rare Do Not Rest in Peace obituaries. Bill Allen bought Wayne Veltri’s Veltri Co. from from Veltri in 1970.…
What, again? Yep. Blog posts will continue at least for a while as WC is away; a few are pre-written. But WC will be off the web for a few days, and it’s uncertain where, when and what quality access WC will have to the internet. So comments won’t be immediately approved and feedback will…
Sometimes in WC’s process of labelling bird photos, determining the species, mistakes get made. In a typical day in Central or South America, WC might take as many as 3,000 photos. Each evening, no matter how tired WC’s group of birders might be, we make an effort to list the species seen that day. Even…
WC cautions readers that this post is mostly WC’s speculation, geology ex cathedra WC’s bellybutton, as it were. But it is at least slightly informed speculation. Let’s talk about stream courses in the Idaho Batholith. Anyone unfamiliar with Idaho who tries to trace the course of the Salmon River on a map will find the task immensely…
Reader JER, with an assist from Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, offers the first nominee for the Wickersham’s Conscience 2022 Hypocrite of the Year: U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R, Wisconsin), who is JER’s senator. Reminder: You can suggest candidates for Hypocrite of the Year. WC will select from among your suggestions the worst of the…
Boondoggle: Futile or useless work. The word is of uncertain origin. cording to one account, it was invented in the 1930s by an American scoutmaster, Robert H. Link, for a type of braided lanyard. This took time and trouble to make, to no useful purpose; hence, the word passed to a futile task in general.…
WC hopes this doesn’t come as a shock to readers, but not all publicly traded businesses are honest about their products, their conduct or their profitability. In an effort to keep them somewhat honest, companies with publicly traded shares are required to have audits performed by an outside auditor. Admittedly, the audits aren’t as detailed…
WC proudly flies the colors. Be safe. Enjoy your holiday.
Bruce MacKinnon is the political cartoonist for the Canadian newspaper The Halifax Chronicle. MacKinnon created this cartoon following the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, where Christine Blasey Ford described an alleged sexual assault by Kavanaugh in 1982. Ms. Ford described Kavanaugh’s sexual assault, in which Kavanaugh had one of…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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