Posted Sept. 4 from Seattle, WA. After a hatchet-job by Mara Liason on the same subject, Scott Simon interviewed Ron Paul about his courageous position that FEMA should be dismissed. The show is here: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=140163743&m=140163952 Paul eloquently defended his position and made the point that environmentalists have been...
Posted September 2, 2011 from Seattle. Famed NOAA Climate scientist Jim Hanson says that if we approve the Keystone Pipeline—The Canadian pipeline that would bisect the country from North to South and deliver Canadian crude oil from Alberta’s tar-sands to Texas-- it’s “game over” for...
Posted August 21, 2011 from Seattle. It's almost a decade too late to influence the debate when it mattered and help forestall the tragedy of the ethanol mandate, but Scientific American has admirably come out with an article critical of biofuels in its August 2011...
Posted August 20, 2011 from Seattle, WA. Before I dropped everything to work on the 7th and last Washington State Birding Trail Map, I was wroking on this Osprey at Deception Pass painting. Having given it a break gave me fresh eyes, and I feel like...
posted August 11, 2011 The painting that will be on the cover of the 7th and last Birding Trail Map, featuring two Eagles on a snag at Cape Flattery, doesn't exist. Well, it sort of does. Ed Newbold began an Eagle/Flattery painting in the middle oughts and...
posted August 1, 2011 from Seattle, WA. We just got back from the Bootheel of New Mexico, where my parents-in-law live. There were 3 or 4 hundred Hummingbirds holed up at the Ranch apparently waiting for a few flowers to bloom in the outback, including this Broad-billed Hummingbird. And this...
June 20, 2011 from Seattle. Updated August 10, 2011 Below is the beginning, if it works, of the upper right quadrant of the seventh and last Birding Trail Maps of Washington State. This map will cover the trough of Western Washington from Pierce and Kitsap Counties...
Posted June 26, 2011 from Seattle, WA. Lake Sammamish State Park was teeming with birds and reproductive activity today, although Delia and I dipped on both our target birds. (an American Redstart has been reported there and Red-eyed Vireos are always likely, plus we missed Green...
posted June 24, 2011; Seattle, WA It's good to see the painting represented on a computer screen--it really helps identify the flaws. I think I need a lot more definition in the foliage of the Firs marching up the side of the cliff. I still feel...
Posted June 22, 2011. When a Killdeer doesn’t want you to know where the nest is, it creates a distraction display and determinedly leads you somewhere—anywhere--else. The Killdeer shown below was getting excited in the early stages of a distraction display at Spencer Island in Everett,WA last...
The Seattle Times is ambling in the right direction with its June 20 editorial “End Ethanol Support,” which commended Senators including both WA Senators Cantwell and Murray for a largely symbolic vote to end the $6 billion subsidy for ethanol and the tariff against imported...
Hi all, Update June 19, 2011; posted June 13, 2011 from Seattle, WA. I'm tired of finishing stuff. (The last thing I finished was Common Loon, which is up in the store under 11 x 14s and 8 x 10s.) It's time to start a slew of...
Posted June 12, 2011 from Seattle, WA In a feature story by Marilyn Geewax, NPR's Morning Edition again covered the rising-price-of-food story while barely mentioning ethanol. Geewax pegged the story on the weird weather that has diminished prospects for the US crop this year, quoting USDA economist...
Posted June 1: updated June 9, 2011 [caption id="attachment_854" align="alignleft" width="400"] Western Tanager, photo by Ed Newbold. Western Tanager is one of many North American birds that are to some degree dependent on shade coffee plantations.[/caption] Saving Birds like this has now become almost as easy as shooting...
Posted May 25, 2011 updated May 26 with Lazuli Bunting, et al sightings It’s a paradox of photography and Photoshop software that a gloomy spring can result in some very bright shots. Delia and I have been birding around Washington state lately and we’ve had to retreat at...
May 8, 2011 Weather in Western Washington has been abnormally cold, windy and rainy and that has bottled up the bird migration. The result to this casual observer seems to be that birds are seemingly trying to decide when to move on an almost individual basis. Our...
May 7, 2011 In a story covering the release of a study linking higher food prices with global climate change, NPR failed to add any reference to that other huge vector force driving food prices up: biofuel mandates in the US and Europe. A list of...
posted April 28, 2011 Updated May 11, 2011 [caption id="attachment_760" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Photo from Leavenworth area by Janet Millard"][/caption] Here's an idea: Visit beautiful Leavenworth, Washington for the Leavenworth Spring Bird Fest on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday May 12, 13, 14 and 15. Here is the link: http://www.leavenworthspringbirdfest.com/ARTS.HTM As part...
April 22, 2011 Susan, my print rep from Olympus Press in SeaTac, WA, holds up a press proof in the final minutes before we give the go-ahead for the my spring 2011 printing. Susan’s been my print rep for 21 years. Kone and Jason operated the press...
April 17, 2011, Seattle, WA. We just got back from a week in the bootheel of New Mexico, where we were visiting Delia’s folks. It was a change from Seattle, with hot and dry being words that come to mind. This is looking at the Chiricahua Mountains...
March 30, 2011 updated March 31, 2011 This morning it was so windy and upleasant, I forgot to turn on Butyl Creek, our 8 ft. backyard artificial creek that Delia named for the Butyl it’s made out of. I didn’t even look in the backyard till 3:15...
March 26, 2011 Delia and I made a mid-afternoon visit to Lincoln Park today. This Hutton's Vireo was very accomodating, foraging very low and close and at one point bashing some poor insect to death before eating it. We met Brian and Susan Pendleton at the Park and that...