A while back – actually, a considerable while back – a couple of readers asked what the weirdest bird was that WC had photographed. “Weird” is pretty subjective. So subjective that WC has dragged his feet in responding. But here are a few birds that WC, for one reason or another, WC regards as weird.…
The title to this post is a line from one of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s best known poems, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” The poem is best known in the United States from the early Walt Disney cartoon, Fantasia, when Mickey Mouse, as the sorcerer’s apprentice, has a magic spell get out of control. The title is…
A very good friend of WC’s recently offered some mild criticism of collective nouns, specifically “a murder of crows.” WC’s friend offered the criticism in the context of his excellent photos of American Crows with shadows suggesting prison bars. WC determined to respond with a discussion of the definitive treatment of collective nouns, James Lipton’s…
Okay, technically this is a matter of geomorphology, but however you style it, arctic ponds and lakes are vanishing and it’s a real concern. As anyone who has tried to walk across arctic and subarctic tundra can tell you, it a sloppy wet business. In fact, ponds and lakes constitute 20–40% of Arctic lowlands, the…
After a delightful hot springs soak, WC and Mrs. WC wandered up the Middle Fork of the Payette River, past Crouch, Idaho, looking for birds, mammals and critters of that ilk. Birding was a little slow, although we did see a small flock of Clark’s Nutcrackers. But the most notable success was elk. Elk are…
A reader asked why some of the gulls currently being featured in recent Return of Bird of the Week series have a red spot on their bill. More recently, Mrs. WC reminded WC of a classic avian behavioral study closely related to the reader’s question. So, what’s up with the red spot? It’s not blood,…
When WC was younger, you could drink from a stream in Alaska without worrying about giardia, “beaver fever.” In another lamentable change for the worse in WC’s lifetime, you really, really don’t want to do that any more. It seems to be a European disease. It was first reported in the United States in Colorado…
WC was in Denali National Park in early spring, 2012, en route via shuttle bus to Camp Denali for a meeting. On the flood plain of the Toklat River, just before the bridge, we encountered a grizzly bear sow with a second year cub foraging for Eskimo Potato quite close to the road.1 We pulled…
October is Bat Appreciation Month, so WC is here with a selection of the other flying vertebrates. There are at least 1,400 species of bats world wide, filling a number of ecological niches, almost all of them nocturnal. Photographing them is a real challenge. But here’s a sampler. At higher altitudes, where it cools down…
Pronghorn were an unexpected treat when WC started hanging around the Intermountain West. And WC still cannot resist photographing them when there’s an opportunity. Here are a few shots from this year. Because you can never have too many photos of Turbo Speed Goats. Remember, they are not antelopes, and are only distantly related to…
Some Most Memorable Moments last three days. And it should have been four. In this two part post, WC describes his 1995 visit to the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. WC has reported on parts of the trip before, and a few of the photos have appeared earlier, but many photos are new and this…
Some Most Memorable Moments last three days. And it should have been four. In this two part post, WC describes his 1995 visit to the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. WC has reported on parts of the trip before, and a few of the photos have appeared earlier, but many photos are new and this…
In response to WC’s earlier post on Humpback Whales, a reader asked, “What’s the biggest whale you’ve photographed.?” The would be Balaenoptera musculus, the Blue Whale, the biggest animal known to have lived on our planet. In the North Atlantic and North Pacific, blue whales can grow up to about 90 feet and weigh over…
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…
WC isn’t talking about Willis Alan Ramsey’s odious song, although WC will really have to do a blog post about Ramsey some day, and his (in)famous second album. “Muskrat Love,” originally “Muskrat Candlelight,” was covered by a lot of folks but made a hit by The Captain and Tensile back in 1976. Ars non disputanden…
“Megaptera” is Latin for “big-winged” and “novaeangliae” means “New England.” The name is nearly nonsensical. Whales don’t have “wings,” although these do have the largest pectoral fins of all cetaceans, and while they may or may not have first been seen in New England, in fact the species’ fourteen diverse population segments (“DPS”) are scattered around…
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…
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…
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”…
The systematics of Northern and Tropical Parulas, small, brightly colored wood-warblers, have a long, twisted history. Presently, ornithologists treat the two Parulas as a part of the genus Setophaga, along with some 32 other species. Formerly, they had a genus of their own. The Northern Parula breeds across the eastern United States, as far north…
It’s been a while since WC wrote about a BUCIP – a Big, Ugly, Complicated and Intractable Problem. The typical BUCIP is complicated, with multiple sides, entrenched stakeholders and packed with emotional positions. The problem of wild horses in the West is a classic BUCIP. Wild horses1 are an introduced species, not native to North…
It’s not a desert, although the area only gets about seven inches of precipitation a year, on average. It’s a playa, the dry bed of a former lake, and it’s about 8 miles wide and 70 miles long. The surface of the dry lake bottom is absolutely, unnervingly flat, and bare of any visible trace…
WC suspects some readers are getting tired of birds. So today WC will switch to mammals. Specifically flying mammals: Mexican Free-tailed Bats. The cave itself is an unprepossessing hole in the ground, about 20 feet wide and perhaps six feet tall. It’s home to 10-12 million Mexican Free-tailed Bats, as well as a colony of…
The late Dave Carter wrote “The Gentle Arms of Eden” more than 20 years ago. Carter died much too young, in 2002, just 49 years old, in the arms of his partner and collaborator, Tracy Grammer. Grammer and Jim Henry live-streamed a memorial concert featuring Carter’s songs recently, and closed the two hour set with…
This is an adult Yellow-bellied Marmot, photographed in the rock gardens (“Petrified watermelons here!”) near the floor of the Snake River Canyon in the Thousand Springs area. He or she – it’s hard to tell with marmots – kept a close eye on WC, the three kids and a Bald Eagle perched in a tree…
If you are a birder, and have birded in Costa Rica, you will recognize the name Alexander Skutch. Maybe you’ve even been lucky enough to visit his home, Los Cusingos. If you are a Costa Rican, he’s something of a national hero, even though he was an ex-pat American. Otherwise, the name of this pioneer…
The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick! Darwin, C. (3 April 1860). “Darwin Project letter 2743”. Letter to Asa Gray. When WC was taught about evolution in high school biology, back in the late Pliocene, the focus was exclusively on natural selection. That’s likely because the other important…
Pig-tailed Macaques, that is. This is the dominant male, who walks with a swagger that makes his gonads swing back and forth, banging the inside of his legs. Ma Pigtail may be looking sweet, but she’s a Bad Girl, as you will see in a moment. Quicker than you can say “Pig-tailed Macaque,” Ma Pigtail…
WC’s recent post on Brandt’s Cormorant mentioned and photographed Humpback Whales engaged in a form of cooperative feeding called bubble net feeding. Humpbacks and Bryde’s Whales – a species WC has never seen – are the only whales known to engage in this fishing technique. In Humpbacks, one to fifteen whales swim around a school…
Alligators have been around a really, really long time. Fossils of Alligator prenalis date to the late Eocene; call it 35 million years ago. They are nearly indistinguishable from modern Alligator mississippiensis. And their reptilian ancestors, of course, trace back to the Jurassic. Humankind has been around about 300,000 years, less than a hundredth of…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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