It’s been a while since WC wallowed in some serious technogeekery. You’ll need your geek on for this post… Galaxies like Andromeda and our own Milky Way spin more rapidly than should be possible. At the observed rotational speeds they exhibit, they should fly apart, centripetal force overcoming the gravity that holds them intact. It’s…
The mis-named Arizona Woodpecker is largely a Mexican species; its range barely extends into the sky islands of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, and even in those areas it’s uncommon. It’s in the genus Dryobates, with the more familiar Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, but unlike those species it has a brown back and brown…
WC grew up during the Cold War, and the Berlin Wall was as much a part of WC’s childhood as the “duck and cover” drills where we cowered from possible atomic bomb attacks under our grade school desks. The Berlin Wall, surrounding West Berlin and isolating it from the surrounding Communist East Germany was actually…
Readers will recall that rather than work through all the photos WC has of another family of birds, for the last few weeks WC has been updating bird families already explored, adding new species photographed since those earlier posts. WC started with his very favorite family, the Thraupidae, the Tanagers. We’ll move now to some…
WC regards Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R, Lunacy) as a media whore. A media whore is someone who will do or say anything, no matter how outrageous, to get attention from the national media and social media. Outrageous conduct is a media whore’s norm, because the media will always react to outrageous behavior. WC can…
This is a new, sometime feature, where WC will share with readers both an especially silly email and WC’s reaction to it. Here’s the email: I read in a Twitter thread that solar panels drain the sun’s energy. Is that true? Let’s think this through. The sun radiates energy in all directions, not just towards…
WC returned from Southeast Arizona with about 2,800 photos. They aren’t all processed yet, and won’t be for some time. But here’s a second sampler of the region’s species that WC was able to photograph. (Click on an image for a larger view.) . It will be weeks before WC can determine what the total…
Today is the 200th Anniversary of the premiere of Ludwig von Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. WC makes no pretension to classical musicology, but if you are not moved by the final movement of Beethoven’s masterwork, the first chorale in a symphony by a major composer, WC suspects you probably have no soul. For a lot of…
WC and Mrs. WC, with their Missouri birding buddies, spent about nine days birding in southeastern Arizona. There’s a double handful of bird species found there and nowhere else in the United States. While we didn’t find all the birds were were looking for, we did see enough to satisfy that spring birding itch. Photos…
There’s no easy way to summarize the geology of Southeastern Arizona except to describe it as a complex mess. WC doesn’t want and isn’t qualified to write the multi-volume treatise that would be required to begin to detail it. So here is the briefest possible summary of about 1.4 billion – that’s billion with a…
Another Cardinal that isn’t, like last week’s Red-crested Cardinal, the Yellow-billed Cardinal is another member of the genus Paroaria, and, like its cousin, is actually a tanager, a member family Thraupidae. In fact, there are six tanagers called “cardinals” in the genus Paroaria. Like Red-crested Cardinals, the Yellow-billed has been introduced in the Hawaiian Islands…
You’ve probably never heard of Changpeng Zhao, or CZ as he calls himself. He’s one of the richest persons in the world, with a net worth estimated by Reuters of $33 billion.1 He’s the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange. He’s also a scofflaw, and now a convicted felon. His…
One of the pleasures and attractions of birding away from your home patch is discovering the common birds at the places you visit. In Southeastern Arizona, a very common species is the photogenic and very intelligent Mexican Jay, a species whose range in the northern half of Mexico extends into the “sky island” mountain ranges…
Every birder has a target species, birds they would really like to see. For a lot of North American birders, that would be the Elegant Trogon. It’s a Central American species whose range extends into the very southeasterly corner of Arizona. It’s cryptic, present only in small numbers, and usually in difficult terrain. WC birding…
WC is on the road as April ends, looking for birds and ogling rocks. So this month end summary is a little shorter than it might be otherwise. But travel or not, it’s time to check what WC overlooked, mis-reported or didn’t rate a full post. Here’s a journalism-free look in the rearview mirror. Writing…
The word “grosbeak” traces to the late 17th century: from French grosbec, from gros ‘big, fat’ + bec ‘beak’. A Grosbeak’s bill is indisputably big and fat in appearance. Including the Black-headed Grosbeak’s bill. Many bird species, not all of them closely related, have evolved this tool to mash hard seeds. It’s evolved in cardinals, finches and several Old World…
Birds of the World says, Fighting begins with mutual threat and progresses to striking with wings and kicking. Eventually one bird grabs the other’s beak or snood and birds entwine necks, pushing against each other with breasts. Fights usually end by one bird gaining advantage and getting beak hold on skin of back of opponent’s…
Not all tanagers are called “Tanagers,” and, for that matter, not all birds called “Cardinals” are in fact cardinals. Common names don’t always fit well to the systematics of birds. The Red-crested Cardinal is, in fact, a member of the family Thraupidae, along with all those tanagers. Earlier classifications, based upon appearance, had it as…
WC didn’t just photograph rocks on that recent trip to Owhyee Reservoir. Although the birding was sketchy and spring birds hadn’t yet arrived, photos of birds (and porto-birds) were taken. Here’s quick sampler. We saw several pair of Killdeer, as you’d expect in an area with lots of gravel surfaces, parking lots and sandbars. They…
There’s something about humans, and Americans in particular, that yearns for simplicity, for good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, where you can always tell your friends from your enemies, and right from wrong. The chart at the top of this post, from Slate magazine back in July 2014, demonstrates that despite…
A few readers have criticized WC and the Magpie Principle because, by definition, the Magpie Principle rarely involves doing any in-depth analysis on the potpourri of topics WC writes about. Mostly, that’s fair criticism, but occasionally an issue gets WC worked up enough that, after WC calms down enough to write coherently – to the…
WC if off birding. Again. Internet access will be only intermittent. There may be delay in approving comments or responding to emails. There’s some very interesting geology in Oregon; unfortunately, it’s all buried under 2,000 feet of basalt. – Eldridge Moores Moores was being ironic when he said that to WC’s geology class in 1971.…
The etymology of the place name “Owhyee” is improbable. As it turns out, about a third of Donald MacKenzie‘s Snake Country Expeditions of 1819–1820 were native Hawaiians. “Owyhee” was then the standard spelling of the islands’ name, a proper spelling of the Hawaiian language name for the islands, hawai’i. The modern spelling then was otherwise unused. Three…
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy isn’t just stupid, although he has long since retired the Sean Parnell Award for Pig-headed Ignorance. He’s also corrupt, in the sense that even when he knows something is illegal, he’ll proceed with it and defend it. While pretty much everything about his disastrous terms in office has demonstrated both the…
Some tanager species are unusually uncooperative, skulking back in the bushes and never giving a birder or a bird photographer a clear view. That’s certainly WC’s experience with the Black-backed Tanager; the handful of photos WC was able to get aren’t very good. On the other hand, this is a beautiful species, and endemic to…
Lonesome George (1910± – 2012) was a Pinta Island species of saddleback tortoise, and the very last of his kind. The ecology of Pinta Island was devastated by introduced goats, which consumed much the available vegetation on the remote island. Including the vegetation upon which the tortoises relied. Lonesome George was the last surviving tortoise…
The closest WC ever got to O.J. Simpson was on November 2, 1968; WC was on the floor of Autzen Stadium, lugging an out-sized camera, trying to photograph the Oregon Duck football team playing the number one-ranked University of Southern California Trojans. Happily, it was the Oregon Daily Emerald‘s camera, because the ancient, manual focus,…
There are a lot of valuable resources embedded in a computer hard disk drive: stainless steel, circuit board pieces and, or course, the powerful rare earth magnets in the drive’s read/write head. Currently, only about 20-25% of discarded hard drives get any kind of recycling, and those are usually simply ground to tiny pieces and…
After the Space Shuttle launch vehicle retired in 2011, The Delta IV Heavy was the biggest, baddest rocket ship in the world. It had a lift capacity of 29 metric tons. Unfortunately it cost tons of money – $400 million per – to launch so its principle customer was the Department of Defense, launching big…
It’s April 15. Tax Day. There’s nothing funny about it, although the late Jeff MacNelly’s great cartoon from 48 (!) years ago comes pretty close. It’s worth close study. A federal individual tax return is like a colonoscopy: nauseating, painful, tedious, highly invasive and disgusting. Except that when a colonoscopy is over, it’s over. When…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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