Cold. A little snow. The cottontail is out between flurries, nibbling on the pale grass. She looks up when I turn the car down the drive, with an expression that can only be described as woeful. Someone on Facebook, of course, will be summiting a mountain; a friend will post a picture with people you …
Category: Animalia
Migratory Thrush
When I was a boy, robins were plump little things with cranberry-red breasts. They usually came with a sprig of English Holly. My experience of them was confined to the graphical: they were on Christmas cards from Gran or Auntie Millie, almost every year, and they were European Robins — not the big-bodied thrush of …
Strange birds
Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in …
In a rut III, the chase
A mini photo essay of sorts. As I arrived home this evening, the road was blocked by a fine-looking stag and two young does. I’ve mentioned the scientific name for mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus, but I haven’t really said what it means, nor have I made much of a distinction between the word stag and …
In a rut II, the Brunftzeit
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the writer, having the very sensible name Bardh Godwyn, passed down over generations by a hard-working and entirely believable family of Celtic forest dwellers, and certainly not a convenient pseudonym, instead had been given the unfortunate surname Brunst. It’s a peculiar enough thing to call someone, but …
In a rut
The deer have started to return. Mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus. A word about binomials first. I use them a fair bit, and there are two reasons: one, they’re much more reliable than common names — Pandion haliaetus is always an osprey, whereas “fish hawks” or “seahawks” can be any number of birds, or football teams, …
You’re sitting on them
There’s a light snow falling in the ravine, with temperatures likely to drop further this evening, so we’re going inside today. When Jane and I lived in Vancouver, we answered a local ad about worm composting. Someone was interested in forming a group to promote it. It sounded like a good idea, but felt a …
Mountain Cottontail
Everyone should have their own cottontail. Not the tail per se — though that would make business meetings a lot more interesting— but the rabbit with the tail. Luckily we have one, the Mountain Cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii), one of nine cottontail species found in the U.S. and Canada. They occupy a range in the intermountain …
The Year Begins
Spiders own the workshop at Alban Elfed and I don’t pick fights with them, nor even dispossess them. Far more than it will ever be mine, it is theirs. If you walk down to the shop in early August there’s a disquieting feel about the place, as though you’ve interrupted someone, letting yourself into a …
Red Cedar Wright 