Jack Burns Lives!

Heading out on the trail, folks.
My focus in 2007 is to spend more time camping, hiking and reading. Exponentially less time on the Internet. Frankly, all this time on the Internet seems pointless. Groups, blogs, forums or trails, fauna and books? Hmmm. Doesn’t seem like much of a contest.
I’ll be doing the 70 mile section [...]

The Moon When the Deer Shed Their Horns
Chankpe Opi Wakpala
On this day in 1890, December 29, over 200 Sioux men, women and children are massacred by the United States military at what is popularly known as Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
It is the probably the best known event in the American Holocaust and is generally considered [...]

photo credit: birdsofoklahoma.net
Happy to report the sighting of another migratory bird species, Regulus calendula, or Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
I saw this bird, a female, last year but had difficultly with the identification. The female lacks the distinguishing red patch on its crown. Like the previously cited Pine and Prairie warblers, and I’m fairly certain this is the [...]

Special thanks to Michael Lewis for recently posting this on the Haydukespeaks! listserve….
Merry Christmas, Pigs!
By Edward Abbey, from Abbey’s Road
Scrooge was right. What I like best about Christmas in the desert is the conspicuous absence of Christmas. By late December the cone-nosed humbugs are gone and all the horny elf toads retired into [...]

My Pine warbler (Dendroica pinus) friend has returned for the winter. I strongly suspect it’s the same bird that appeared last winter, because I’ve only seen one, and it comes to exactly the same suet feeder at the exact same time of year.
Although it’s a common species in the south, I’m not sure why I’m [...]

Riverwoods photos are here.
In my previous post, I failed to mention why I believe the new road through Riverwoods Natural Area is unneeded.
Germantown and state officials have statistics that show there’s too much traffic on Farmington Blvd. I agree.
Where we disagree is on the solution to the traffic problem. The guvment wants to reroute the [...]

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a public hearing concerning the construction of a new road through the Riverwoods Natural Area. It wasn’t much of a hearing, however, unless you came to hear public officials and developers talk about how much their new road would “enhance” life in our community via the reduction [...]

Photo: Bill Pinson, North Mississippi
It’s duck season again in the Delta, the biggest season of the year, other than football, of course.
Thousands of Southern men and boys are jumping into their 4×4’s, pick ‘em up trucks and SUV’s, clad in Gortex camouflage gear, equipped with Beneilli and Browning shotguns and ready to get their limit [...]

Sometimes the most simple things in life bring great pleasure.
This morning, while walking the recyclables up to the street, I heard the unmistakable call of a Great Horned Owl (Bubo Virginianus) in a Sweetgum tree about ten feet away. The first one I’ve ever heard around the house.
Then, in the bright light of the waning [...]