Bird Camp went on one of its periodic breaks (every nine days? eleven? can’t remember) last week, in which the crew decamps for two nights in Flagstaff: motel showers, restaurant dinners, check the email and otherwise get back on the grid for a while. A. stayed in camp with one of the grad students for [...]
This year is the 45th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, a book by Rachel Carson credited with starting the modern environmental movement. On the always-interesting Kottke.org this morning, there is a link to an article about one of the efforts to discredit this book, an article that is really worth a read for [...]
A. called briefly on Saturday to report a proud accomplishment. Remember the egg-probing process I described here? One reason that this is such a delicate process is because birds are notoriously picky about their eggs. Though the old legend about human smell being enough to cause birds to reject eggs/chicks (you know, the reason your [...]
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When last we left our hero and my wife, A., she was waiting for the last of her crew to report, looking forward to “probing [her] first eggs,” and worrying that she might have to shoot some squirrels. [...]
Sorry it’s been so long. Expect a new one in the next day or two.
A. called from the Rim yesterday, on her way back from “checking on a nest.” Her predecessor had just departed, meaning that A. is now in charge and can institute what she is calling “a new order” in the camp. This will involve having her crew cover their faces with chalky war paint and wear [...]
A. checked in from Flagstaff yesterday, the town closest to Bird Camp and where the crew gets “shore leave” every nine days or so for laundry, showers, square meals and the like. (The research project rents a block of motel rooms where everyone stays.) On top of the usual fun, this break also saw the [...]
…tiring (any night that involves a limo usually is), so I went easy on myself on Sunday. Merely staying awake all day would be an accomplishment worth celebrating, I decided. Then, out of nowhere, I decided to replace the shelf next to the counter in the kitchen. I think I got the idea when I [...]
…getting my head back in the game on Mondays was complicated by startlingly beautiful weather, weather better suited for strolling past well-tended Charles Village gardens or through a park, if you can find any in this green-space challenged city. Nonetheless, I finished making text edits to that immense paper I’ve been struggling with and left [...]
…month draws to a close. (If I threw in something about bangs and whimpers here, I could have an almost perfectly pretentious and lazy opening. What would make it a trifecta? Something about a shape with lion body and the head of a man?)
As it turned out, I did get some work done this [...]