Q&A

Question:  Why does a dog lick his balls?

Answer:  Because he can.

Same for whitetail deer.

Follow me for more critical wildlife biology answers.....

  

 

Drone

I haven't had much of a reason to write about an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), colloquially known as a drone.  Nevertheless, they're becoming more common at outdoor events like ball games, car shows, church picnics, Kermiss and Belgian Days.  Photographing large events from a couple hundred feet is easy and still something of a novelty.  They also have practical uses in agriculture, wildfire response, search and rescue and such.

So I purchased one; basically for fun.  

It's a DJI Neo, a small drone that I will use for photography and scouting that doesn't require a pilot license.  Over the weekend the winds died-back enough for me to get some flight time under my belt.  

I previously was restricted to flying the dang thing in the house and up and down the staircase.  That's OK for figuring out the preflight checklist and the joystick controllers; but it's really an outdoor toy.

The firmware on my little drone automatically limits my altitude to 120 meters: just under 400 feet.  Because I’m a rank amateur and don’t have a pilot’s license that’s my limit.  Which is fine because the lowest-flying aircraft around here is air ambulance Eagle III which generally comes screaming over the house at about 600 to 1000 feet.  The altitude restriction is designed to keep hobbyists out of trouble.

 

Anyway, this ingenious quadcopter might be the answer to some (certainly not all) photography limitations.  One being altitude.  As the forest has grown up around the west side of the house it has become more difficult to catch an easy sunset photo.

 

No longer.

 

As a trial run I flew my drone up to max altitude and took some photos. 

 

View North

View South - Farm in center is exactly a mile distant

 

Including my first sunset.  If you look carefully there is a little band of blue on the horizon. That is Green Bay. 

 

 

I have a sliver-sized view of the water at a fraction of the price of the real estate and property taxes!

 

This mechanical, digital, aerial technology is going to be fun.  Wouldn't it be in cool to catch the northern lights at altitude?  Or view a shallow coastal shipwreck from above?  Falls colors?  And outdoor events?  I suppose if I really get sucked-into the possibilities I might just jump thru the hoops and get certified for more sophisticated flight opportunities; and naturally, spring for a larger, better-equipped aircraft.

 

Stay-tuned..... 

 

 

Leftovers

Periodically we like a good pork chop; typically bone-in for flavor.  Although a boneless loin chop works too as long as all your chops are cut thick so as to have a nice pink, juicy center.  Not like the thin chops of my youth which always seemed to be cooked to the consistency of army boots.  Anyway, grilling season is upon us and I found myself with a leftover loin chop recently along with enough leftover brown rice and frozen veggies to whip-up a batch of pork fried rice.

 

Easy directions if you follow the pics: 

 

Cooking with flame, a nonstick Calphalon wok, some olive oil and the pork along with sliced scallions (green tops reserved). 

 

Add the leftover rice and veggies and continue frying giving a stir and a flip every coupla minutes

  

When it's got some nice crispiness to it add in a couple of locally-sourced eggs and scramble

 

 

Finish with a couple splashes of Thai fish sauce for umami and serve-it-up in a bowl and garnish with sliced green scallions tops

 

Pretty good chow if you can get it

 

Pro Tip:  Since it is grilling season if you're smoking BBQ ribs now you have a way to repurpose any leftovers. 

Taco Tuesday

For any of you deer hunters out there consider donating an extra deer or three to Wisconsin’s Hunt For The Hungry program.  Since 2000, hunters have donated over 100,000 deer, yielding more than 4 million pounds of wholesome meat for families facing food insecurity.

Venison burger is the foundation of everything from chili, to sloppy joes, to spaghetti sauce.  In our household tacos are a crowd-pleaser.   We dine on deer weekly. 

Clockwise from 12 o'clock:  traditional frijoles, chips, crumbled cotija queso, soft taco, homemade guacamole topped with lettuce, tomato and sweet onion.

Forgot a dollop of sour cream on top of the guacamole salad.  Nuts!

Anyway, pretty good chow if you can get it….

Standing Watch

Since it opened in 1922 the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been an ideal incubator for algae growth.

It is filled with tidal water (not chlorinated city water), wildlife defecate in the pool, it is shallow, stagnant and warms-up in the summer sunshine.  Since Mr. Trump had it painted a darker American Flag Blue, it now heats-up faster and warmer.  

The Trump administration has reached the stage of its Reflecting Pool saga where soldiers now stand guard over a pond full of scum and the internet has decided that image needs no embellishment to be devastating. 

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.... 

 

Reading List

From Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar. There is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person:

Most Americans, of course, do not have to fight for parking. On the contrary, the combination of urban renewal, public lots, and parking requirements for private development were astonishingly successful at creating ample space to park. 

By square footage, there is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person. 

All this asphalt constitutes a kind of ecology unto itself, changing the way air and water and animals interact with human civilization. It changes the way we behave, too. 

"The effect of the cars reaches far beyond the cars themselves," wrote Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language, his landmark study of human landscapes. "They create a maze of driveways, garage doors, asphalt, and concrete surfaces, and building elements which people cannot use. When the density goes beyond the limit, we suspect that people feel the social potential of the environment has disappeared." 

Perhaps most importantly, making it easier to park did not get rid of the life-draining experience of traffic. On the contrary, it created traffic. 

Wiley Coyote

Near the dawn of time, the story goes; Coyote saved the creatures of Earth. According to the mythology of Idaho's Nez Perce people, the monster Kamiah had stalked into the region and was gobbling up the animals one by one. The crafty Coyote evaded Kamiah but didn't want to lose his friends, so he let himself be swallowed. From inside the beast, Coyote severed Kamiah's heart and freed his fellow animals. Then he chopped up Kamiah and threw the pieces to the winds, where they gave birth to the peoples of the planet. 

– Nature

Yote - short for coyote, Wile E. Coyote, Canis latrans.   If you were to inquire of a wildlife biologist they would tell you that there are nineteen subspecies of coyote that are exceedingly well-adapted to living in urban, rural and wild America.   

Male coyotes top out at about 44 pounds while females weigh-in slightly less.  For scale my red golden retriever weighs-in at roughly 48 pounds, give or take.  Coyotes are known for how well they adapt to different habitats.  They are found living in and around large cities, the central plains, farmland, and northern forest, in the desert scrub of the Sonoran Desert, foothills and mountains as well as in populated ring suburbs. 

Coyotes dine on large prey and also eat snakes, insects, rodents, fruit and other mast.  As an opportunistic hunter coyotes have been known to prey-upon small pets and livestock.  In an urban setting they will eat garbage and pet food left on a deck or patio.  

The coyote is a gregarious animal - socially-inclined - like the wolf.  This is likely a consequence of the need for a family unit or pack of animals combining to bring down large game. 

Recent genetic studies suggest that coyotes are not native to the eastern United States - having largely evolved on the Great Plains.  As the eastern old growth forests were cleared for settlement and agriculture coyotes adapted to the new environs.   It is thought that coyotes dispersed to our neck of the woods early in the twentieth century.  These canids are presumed to have come from the northern Great Plains and are unique in their genetic origins.   

Additional coyotes dispersed from here to New England via the northern Great Lakes region and southern Canada meeting in the 1940s in New York and Pennsylvania. These coyotes have inter-bred  with gray wolf and Eastern wolf populations adding to their own unique genetic diversity and further contributing to their hybrid vigor and ability to adapt to an ever changing environment.  Coyotes here are known as the Northeastern coyote. 

More frequently Jill and I hear coyote vocalizations than we see them live and in person.  In rural America coyotes share the same natural aversion to people that other wildlife do.  They are scared-to-death of people.  However, from time to time I do catch a handful of digital photos on a trail camera.

 

Like these recent captures....

   

 

Do you see two coyotes?

 

Learn more about this adaptive canine here; Pay Wall-Free.