November certainly had its adventures and developments. The Felon’s behavior continued to degenerate and now, to borrow the late Phil Ochs’ words, “The speeches of the president/Are the ravings of a clown.” Still, clownish or fascist, we made it through November with a significant part of our country still intact. Which means it’s time to…
Orange-fronted Parakeet is the most numerous parrot on the Pacific Slope of Central America, found from western Mexico south to Costa Rica. The orangish forehead and bold yellow eyeing makes this a very easy species to identify in the field. Within its range. the Orange-fronted Parrot is found from sea level to about 1,500 meters.…
Mike Simpson (R, Ultra-MAGAs) is nominally WC’s representative in Congress. He authored a screed in the Idaho Statesman recently which reminded WC that except for the issues of salmon and the Lower Snake River Dams, Rep. Simpson is a pretty despicable human being. Even for a politician. In the past, WC has tried to be…
Since he was just a pup, about 30-45 minutes after wolfing down a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, WC would be asleep on the couch. In the late 1970′s, a physiologist who was WC’s Thanksgiving guest explained it as a reaction to all of the tryptophan in turkey meat. Just before he dropped off to sleep. As…
WC isn’t being vulgar. It’s a direct quote from the Old Testament, Proverbs 26:11: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” The Felon, that man of many pardons, gave us a fine example in New Jersey fraudster Eliyahu Weinstein. Weinstein was sentenced to 24 years in prison this month for…
For a couple of decades now, WC has used chemtrail conspiracy theories as a litmus test for sanity. For those readers who have had better things to do with your time than read conspiracy theories, the chemtrail conspiracy proponents claim that academic researchers and federal agencies are engaged in a secret, gigantic conspiracy, spreading toxic…
If you are going to talk about 20th Century poetry, you can’t do so long without indulging in some Dylan Thomas. WC promises that Thomas’s most famous poem has an entirely different impact reading it at age 75 than it did at age 20. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — Dylan Thomas…
When the Felon’s latest government shutdown impacted essential federal services, U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R, MAGA-heads) knew what to do help his constituents and acted promptly. Does WC mean he immediately worked to restore SNAP to the 130,000 Idahoans who depend upon it for food? Nope. Does WC mean worked to get paychecks to the…
Parrotlets are one of the smaller members of the family Psittacidae, the Old and New World Parrots. Parrotlets include the nine members of the Forpus genus. One of those species, the Pacific Parrotlet is just 11–14 centimeters (4.3–5.5 in) long and typically weighs about 30 grams. This species is sexually dimorphic; the males have extensive blue…
Spurfowl are Old World members of the Phasianidae, cousins to North American species like the Ruffed Grouse and Greater Sage Grouse, and closer cousins still to introduced species like the Ring-necked Pheasant. Spurfowl are in the genus Pternistis, currently believed to have 23 species. Only six of those species commonly occur in East Africa, and…
State leaders in Idaho are trying to make the state a hub for private nuclear development. Governor Brad Little signed an executive order creating the Idaho Advanced Nuclear Energy Task Force. Governor Little issued something called a “Request for Information” addressing nuclear development incentives. Southeast Idaho hosts something called the Idaho National Lab, a nuclear…
Our senior year at Lathrop High School, classmate Riley Snell and WC felt strongly that another classmate’s highly public conduct towards a shy, sweet underclassman had been outrageous. Let’s call the objectionable classmate “Chris.” It wasn’t the kind of conduct that might result in school discipline back in the day, and involving the victim would…
Many of the Alaska Native villages threatened by climate change, including the villages so badly damaged in ex-tropical Typhoon Halong, are located where they are by action of the federal government. Until the late 19th century, the Yup’ik peoples were semi-nomadic, following the food: caribou, salmon, berries, bird eggs and small game. Very few Yup’ik…
WC got a lot of blowback after announcing the last of the Poetry Mondays. So Poetry Mondays are back, at least for a while. The Only Gods — Milton Ravenscroft Oceans inspire meMountains watch over meRivers flow with me Forests breathe with meStars and Moon calm meWinds come into me Sunshine upon meFire dances through…
O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in’t. — William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1 Shakespeare gave those lines to Miranda, possibly the most naive character in Western literature. Aldous Huxley lifted it to title his dystopian novel. The reality in which…
WC will return now to New World Parrots, and specifically the Black-headed Parrot. It’s a bit of a misnomer; it’s more like a Black-crowned Parrot. It’s found in Amazonia, from the eastern slopes of the Ecuador and Peruvian Andes east to the Guinanas, throughout Northern Brazil and a bit of Colombia and Venezuela. Within that…
Ada County’s off-year election results aren’t certified yet, but there’s not much question: the City of Boise remains a bright blue spot in Idaho’s sea of red. It was a concern because a number of Californians have migrated to Boise in the last few years, selling homes there for absurd amounts of money and relocating…
He was the co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, the chromosome-building molecule. The discovery included the insight that DNA was formed by four chemical bases — adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Adenine always paired up with thymine, and guanine always paired up with cytosine. It changed biology forever, every bit as much…
Patricia Lopez, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, writing about Des Moines Public School Superintendent Ian Roberts, an alleged fraudster and illegal immigrant, drew some conclusions: There are at least three other lessons, too. The first is that the vital business of enforcing the law is sometimes unpleasant. The second is that, when it becomes clear that a public…
WC’s father was born on Armistice Day, the day World War I ended. What’s now called Veteran’s Day. This would have been his 107th Birthday. He died in 1987, not even 70 years old, killed by his bad habits – smoking, excessive drinking, overweight and a stubborn refusal to deal with serious hypertension. His two…
WC got a lot of blowback after announcing the last of the Poetry Mondays. And, by sheer coincidence – yes, really – WC stumbled across a very nice poem from Mary Oliver, something that may please the birders among WC’s readers. And those who love Rainier Marie Rilke. It was Rilke who said, “Poems are…
For a moment this morning, WC thought Idaho State Attorney General had actually done something useful. Perhaps in a break from promoting all manner of legal stupidity and far right wing hate and discrimination. Labrador trumpeted (sorry) a recent settlement that voids predatory contracts MV Realty tricked Idaho homeowners into signing. MV Realty is an…
Here’s a final Old World Parrot, actually a Lorikeet, one of the 22 species in the genus Trichoglossus, cousins to Parrots but still a member of the order Psittaciformes. The Rainbow Lorikeet is native to the eastern coast of Australia. WC has not yet been to Australia, but the cage bird trade brought them to…
Near the end if his life, former Vice President Dick Cheney publicly opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump, announcing he would vote for Kamala Harris. He was publicly embraced by many Democrats who had earlier, correctly, called Cheney a war criminal. While his opposition to the Felon is laudatory, it doesn’t wash off the stains…
It’s an instantly identifiable bird species, a brilliant red and black bird hawking bugs. The Vermillion Flycatcher is a favorite everywhere across its extensive range which extends from the southern United States to southern Argentina. It’s a sit-and-wait predator, foraging from an exposed perch and taking a variety of aerial and terrestrial arthropods including butterflies,…
This is what happens to your head if you watch too much Fox News Entertainment. Your head, and especially your brain, shrinks dramatically, as your critical thinking skills, empathy and judgment go unused. The atrophy of those higher cerebral functions causes profound contraction of the cerebellum and skull, and your head ends up looking like…
Shrikes are songbirds gone bad. They are passerines that have evolved to become diurnal (daylight) birds of prey. Shrikes’ appearance and behavior generally have converged with that of small raptors in many respects: their plumages of black, gray, white and often earth tones; their large-shouldered, short-necked, large-headed appearance; and, except for a few cooperatively breeding…
This will probably be the last poem, at least for a while. But we’ll close the current run with a new poem, not even a year old, that hits very close to a couple of WC’s passions. In celebration of World Curlew Day, April 21, 2025, Curlew Action, a European conservation NGO, sponsored a Curlew…
Warning: If you depend on padlocks for security, this blog post may cause insecurity. Former US Marine Staff Sergeant Trevor McNally has some 7 million internet followers and has amassed more than 2 billion views — that’s Billion with a “b” – just by showing how easy it is to open many common locks by…
Before moving back to New World Parrots, WC wants to complete the very limited number of additional Psittaculidae species that WC has photographed from the Old World. It won’t take long. Just two more weeks, in fact, and one of those species is kind of cheating. But WC is getting ahead of himself. The one…
Wickersham's Conscience 