Tag Archives: America

The Joy Of Birding

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Avocet Chick – Bear River Migratory bird refuge

Birding is one if those things people do to get outside and commune with nature where many of the wild birds live. Their sole purpose is to look at those birds and say “I saw you, now I can go home and have a beer.” They make a list of all the different kinds of birds they’ve seen over the years and write them down in a little book, which is called their ‘Life List’. This is shown to other birders and gets them Street Cred in the “I saw a bird and you didn’t” world of birding.

This is not a sport for the uneducated. You can’t be stone cold dumb and be a birder. Many birders have attended highly prestigious places of edification where they don’t necessarily teach birding per se, but they do teach Latin which is used to name and classify bird species and confuse non Latin speakers. This makes the Latin user appear to be much brighter than the poor unwashed non Latin speaker and maintains the guild system that we Americans seem to love so much. It also keeps the rif-raf where they belong and the superior, well, superior. This system is primarily human based as the birds themselves couldn’t give a flying fig about what people call them. Except for peacocks, they are so vain.

One of the burning questions in the birding world is where to go to see birds. Where do they live? Are they accessible to Americans? Does one have to quarantine before looking at a bird? Can you see a bird if you don’t know its Latin name? What do they eat? Are they carnivorous? Do they favor the various root vegetables such as Rutabaga or Turnips? We know they don’t like Parsnips, nobody likes parsnips. These are just a few of the questions asked by people who don’t know any better but want to know so they can move up in the birding world.

One of the places where you can go and look at a bird is one of the various wildlife refuges. This is land that the government has deemed to be of absolutely no other use and therefore suitable to warehouse our excessive bird inventory. Species like those little brown birds you see pecking at everything everywhere. They’re all over the place. You’ve probably tripped over them. It’s very likely they have a Latin name of some sort but who knows what it is. Even if you heard it you wouldn’t know what it meant so one can safely discount and ignore them and go on to look at more interesting birds.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge near Brigham City, Utah is one of those holding pens where excess birds are held until they’re needed elsewhere. There you can see huge quantities of birds. They have them stacked all over the place. There are whole fields of those little brown birds spoken of before, which has been learned are actually a house sparrow or the Latin named Passer domesticus. There are great huge lumps of the White Faced Ibis piled willy nilly in unsightly stacks anywhere it’s wet. There you can select an assortment of birds for your own migratory bird refuge, if you have one. Way in the back of the refuge where it’s quieter, is an enormous area filled with lockers where larger birds such as the Tundra Swan are kept until it’s time to cut them loose and send them on up to the Tundra where apparently they are desperately needed at different times of the year.

One of the all time favorites for birders is the American Avocet. The image above is of a young Avocet or chick as they’re more vulgarly known. They look surprisingly like an adult Avocet only smaller. Its bill or beak has yet to grow into the graceful recurve that it uses to sweep through and syphon the water for its favorite food, the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae which is only found here at the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. At least it is believed to be the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae. There were no explanatory signs to indicate what the food is so an assumption was made which is believed to be close to what ever it is that the young Avocet or Chick is eating.

If you are interested in ‘Birding’ or its companion sport ‘Snake-ing’ you can contact any sporting goods store where they’ll sell you everything you might possibly need in the way of birding equipment. They also might tell you where to see birds but I wouldn’t count on that. However you already know where to go as you have just been told right here. It’s the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. So, Happy Birding then, and look down occasionally, that’s where the snakes are.

Happy 4th of July !

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Happy 4th of July everybody.

Despite Buffoons, Crooks, Liars, Sociopaths, Narcissists, Fools, Embarrassments, and every other title you can add, notwithstanding this is still the greatest country in the world. So enjoy your freedoms and keep a close watch so we don’t lose them. Many of our best and brightest died to preserve the rights that are under siege at this moment in time and it’s up to us to keep those rights safe. Let us choose wisely the next opportunity we get to pick those that lead us. That’s still one of the greatest rights we have, to choose our leaders by the will of the people and to be able to correct our mistakes through peaceful means. Let’s exercise those rights the next time we have the chance.

Happy 4th of July.

Dancing With The Bulls

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A lot of folks who live on either coast think that entertainment and the civilization to appreciate it only exists on either coast. Of course they live on either coast and tend to forget or not even realize that there is an entire country between those two coasts. A big country filled with people who occupy that entire space here in the middle of America and are just as sophisticated and worldly as any stuck-up but arrogant, think they’re cooler than us, coastie.

Take TV for instance. Sure most of the shows we see here in the hinterland are produced on one coast or another but did you ever stop to think where the ideas for those shows come from. Like “Dancing With The Stars” for example, that’s the show where famous couples perform various dances in front of America ,whether either of them knows how to dance or not, and are judged by a panel of people who decide just how good or bad those dancers are because we’re not smart enough to figure it out for ourselves, and we’re supposed to like it. They wear fancy clothes you’d  never go to Wal-Mart in, and prance around doing dances we never even heard of. If you danced like that down at Tony’s Ball room and Beer Bonanza you’d get asked to leave pretty damn quick.

Now smart as those tv show producers want us to think they are we have it on good authority that they don’t think up those shows their ownselves. Nope they get ideas from us out here in the flyover zone and want us to believe it is original thought on their part.

What you see in the photo above is a prime example of what we mean. It’s a show put on by us locals here in the western part of the US and it features a talented bunch of individuals that really know how to dance. The show is called “Dancing With The Bulls” and has been in production for a long time, way before TV was even invented in fact. We’re the real deal here, no kidding around. This dancing couple was just introduced during the show’s performance. Never having met before this show, they didn’t have weeks of rehearsals and practice. They simply walked out on the dance floor and got it on, so to speak. All of the choreography and costuming is done by the contestants themselves and their routines include a lot of free form interpretation of the music. The more spirited the performance the higher the marks.

The bull, named “GonnaKillYa” out of Hereford Texas, wearing a fashionable number 8 hand-twisted hemp belly rope, and the Rodeo Clown who wants to remain anonymous as he has some outstanding warrants, so we’ll just call him “Hey! Look Out!” are performing a never before seen performance to “Can’t Get No” by the Stones. The bull is pulling down some high numbers with his ability to twist and turn and shake it up baby with all 2000 lbs. of his tightly packed unground round in motion, and his ability to put his cloven hoof down exactly where he wants it usually pretty close to the Rodeo Clown’s head. The Rodeo Clown is no slouch either throwing in his version of The Twist made popular by Chubby Checker and The Fat Boys. This couple shows promise and is in the running to win this weeks contest so they can appear again next week and win big prizes. Buckles for the cowboy, new feed bag for the bull, a lifetime supply of frybread. We’re talking big money here.

But the important thing here is the fact that its us out here in middle America, the real folks that make up the bulk of our great country, we are the ones who are the creative bunch, who have the ideas and skill to bring entertainment to everyone. We’re the ones out here Dancing With The Bulls. The ones getting our ideas ripped off. And don’t even get me started on how they robbed us of our epic saga of older women in nursing homes called Game of Crones….

Announcement ! Christmas Posts 2017

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Announcement !

Beginning December 14 we will be reposting our FAMOUS top ten gifts for the discerning gift giver.

That’s right readers, our famous Top Ten gifts will be brought back starting tomorrow as we have a few of them left over from our original posts back in 2013. Apparently they didn’t have the mass appeal that we thought they might when we first offered them. It turns out we might have misjudged the buying frenzy of America in 2013. Instead of buying mass produced trinkets like Bentley’s, or Lear jets, or Mommy’s Little Crematorium where Gwyneth or Towanda can tasteful dispose of their unalive pets, we thought for sure they’d line up in droves to purchase our offerings. Plus the fact that we only had eight readers that we knew of reading the blog at that time may have  impacted sales. We thought volume would take care of us.

Since the frivolous, but fickle general public couldn’t get their minds past Barbie’s, or things that squeak, discharge fluids and have small swallowable parts that require batteries, not to mention Chia Pets, etc. we’ve had to store these unwanted but still salable gifts. Which of course has required our having to take them out and wash them, count them, (I know even though there were only ten different items we had to count them anyway, there being some kind of government rule about knowing exactly how many gifts of a questionable nature we have on hand in America at any given time), rotate them so they don’t get lumpy or limp on one side, feed any of the still living ones and other problems too dehumanizing to mention, we had to make a decision. So, I talked to the Director of the now historic but defunct organization known as *The Institute and we decided to run them again in what has become a Christmas tradition here. I think we may have missed running them last year due to losing the key to the storage unit, but a tradition none the less.

The Director has informed me that there has been lots of mail winding up on the ground around the mailbox by the front gate and blowing up against the fence at the foot of the mountain where *The Institute was formerly located. In trying to read those that were the least water-logged and stepped on and generally legible he found many, ok a few, alright, actually one, that wanted us to run these specials again. To that person we say “Bully you! Thanks and if we can ask you a personal question do you have like, any funds that you could possibly buy one of our gifts. It’s embarrassing that we haven’t sold any of these incredible items that if you had all the money in the world, you still might buy only one or two. That’s how amazing and different these things are. Even as rich as, well, name any crooked politician, and you could only handle a couple of them.

However think about it! You or a close friend would own one of these special items. You! The Big Dude in the neighborhood! I mean, how freaking crazy is that. You might even make it onto Jerry Springer, course you may also have to tell about that thing where you found out that your Grandmother had Bigfoot’s baby and you married its illegitimate twin, but that’s for you to deal with. We try to stay out other people’s drama.

OK then, Gird your loins! Top ten gift ideas start tomorrow. Start thinking about cashing in those old 401K’s. Pre-address some envelopes. Find Your checkbook. And order while the ordering’s hot. We will have someone standing by at the mailbox to process your orders. Remember, Se habla Espanol and five other foreign languages. And also, NO Returns. No Refunds. No Uncertified checks. Absolutely NO Trying to throw them back over the fence. We don’t even live there anymore. And Remember it feels good to give so give a lot, we can use those Yankee dollars and Euro bucks.

Enjoy our sharing once again the Gift Giving Joy of the season and Happy Holidays. I know, we copped out by saying the Happy Holidays thing instead of saying something more suited to one of the major religions in the world like Merry Christmas because we know they have big, I mean, huge, Christmas spending budgets and there has to be something in this gift selection that a major religion would buy, if not for themselves then for some of the poor around the world. See you at the ordering desk, and remember it’s OK to buy something totally useless once in a while.

*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Never mind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Shadow Racers

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Yeah, a lot of you have been asking ” Hey! What about the first heavier than air, air race that was held on May 23, 1909 – the Prix de Lagatinerie, at the Port-Aviation airport south of Paris, France? And how does that tie in with this new sport we’re hearing about called Shadow Racing?” In fact so many cards and letters have been coming in that we had to assign a special intern just to steam the stamps off the envelopes so we could use them again. We heard you and have been working feverishly to gather the information to put together this article. There’s a whole crock pot of information about this subject and we intend to dredge up every sordid, exciting, non-essential, nearly factual bit we can find.

Air racing as a sport has often included airplanes, some of them made here at home which would be America, and some made other places like Europe which at one time included Great Britain and France and Germany, all countries that fit inside Europe the continent and have had some success with inventing various stuff and then bragging about it constantly. One of these things was Airplanes and their own proprietary version of air racing.

The heyday of this sport was in the 1930’s and 40’s and even later in which the races were set at different venues and various contestants got airplanes and raced them. Many spectators attended these races and got sore necks from looking up all the time. Some even got all over dizzy of a second and had to lay down for a while. The planes themselves were interesting in that they all were heavier than air and took some skill to fly them. Every one who had a plane was extremely proud of their aircraft, even more so if it didn’t fall out of the sky and crash and these owners would go on and on about the safety of this new mode of transportation called aviation until you were just sick of it and began avoiding them whenever possible. In the early 20’s you had planes with names like the Albatross L 69 from Germany, the de Havilland DH.71 Tiger Moth from England. Even earlier you had the Deprussian 1912 Racing Monoplane from France. Those early planes were special in that they were constructed of things like, wood, wire, paper, canvas and glue and other non-essential materials that were cheap and readily available.

 Later in the 40’s you had the Caproni Bergamaschi PL.3 from Italy, and the Condor Shoestring from the U.S. There was even one from The USSR called the Yakolev Yak – 11. However there is no record of it ever winning a race or even flying for that matter which may have something to do with its namesake, as the only time Yaks fly is when they’re tumbling through space after falling off one of the high mountain cliffs in which they’re found. But you know the Russians they got to get their two cents in there. Even if it is to brag about their dumb named plane which supposedly crashed into a tree upon take off and never flew again. It wasn’t even a very tall tree.

All of  this sky racing stuff was not lost on our feathered friends, the birds, who have been flying for years and have gotten highly skilled at it. Birds are great mimickers and saw the fun that people were having racing their planes around and sometimes getting big bucks for doing so and thought “Wait a minute! I’m a bird! I can do that!” and soon were putting on their own airshows and races and pulling in big crowds.

One of the big events they created was the sport of Shadow Racing. This is when a single bird or sometimes many of them, builds up a head of steam way up in the air and comes screaming in, diving as low as they can over the ground, trying to out race their shadows. In the image above you can see this streamlined racing gull, a tried and true model that hasn’t changed its shape for many years, slowly but easily out distancing its shadow. Cool, right? This sport is growing in popularity and gaining big crowds at flyways like Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge both important areas for bird flying. We mustn’t forget Padre Island and those long sandy beaches perfect for this event. Even the lumbering old Pelicans, the C-130’s  of the bird world compete there. There is even some talk of a nationally televised race sponsored by Red Bull and Budweiser, but as yet no dates have been set.

We for one, look forward to this seasons many Shadow Racing events and will be on hand to capture the excitement of it with our cameras. In fact we have been busy designing our own Shadow Racing bird and believe we can do well in the shorter Shadow Racing Sprints. Wish us luck. Hope to see you there.

A Bit Of Trouble

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Well we don’t know if you know this or not but things aren’t always calm and collected here at *The Institute. Occasionally there are little problems that crop up and get out of hand. We’re not sure if it’s the holidays, or the election, or just things bubbling up inside of people’s lower intestine and getting too much for one to deal with.

There was a commotion down at our Visitors Center a day or two ago and the telegraph line was cut before we could get a handle on what the problem was. We sent a couple of the guys down to check on things and when they saw the smoke they knew that something had hit the fan. We’re up at the top of the mountain which as you know is where the big house and all the main Institute buildings are located, and the Visitors center is down the hill aways by the main gate. This is usually a place of peace and harmony where we check passports, review visitors financials, give any needed medical attention to those who tried to get  over the razor wire, and do the required intrusive strip searches that generally determine who is good and who is bad. We like to think it’s a friendly place where we get to know you better.

We get a lot of visitors, and although we have an open door policy where every creed, religion, sexual preference, skin color, dress style, tattoo style, political belief and any other bizarre behavior you may favor is tolerated, in actual practice it’s not for everybody. It’s kind of selective policy. It’s sort of loosely based on what The Director can stomach. If you fall into any of the objectionable categories, loosely defined by what would gag a normal person’s Hinder, then there’s a darn good chance you’re not making it through the gate. If you’re a bill collector you’re not getting in. We have legal beagles for that down in town, go see them. If you’re a politician, or a politician wannabe, you’re not getting in either. We don’t want your kind here, this is America and we get to say who we like and who we don’t. So it’s Tough, deal with it. And if they did a better job there’s a slim chance they could get in, but of course the morality quiz would still apply to them.

Yes having a policy like ours sometimes leads to issues. The Institute isn’t a democracy, it’s a benevolent dictatorship. Some folks find that uncomfortable but then they weren’t invited in the first place so too bad for them. We’re pretty cheesed off that someone took it upon themselves to complain about our system here at The Institute and did some minor damage down there at the Visitor’s center, but just remember, when you first came in we got your prints and they automatically go into the database, we know who you are. Just so you know, we have taken steps to prevent anything like this happening in the future. We’ve got just one word for you. Claymore’s. That’s right, claymore’s. You won’t find them but they’ll find you. So watch your step.

If you find yourself angry and out of sorts, and feeling like taking it out on those around you, do it to someone else. We’re fed up with it. This is the season of good spirits, fellowship, with love and kindness towards all. Enjoy the holidays.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Happy 4th of July!

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OK Folks, it’s that time again for that holiday we all wait for. A day of birthday celebration of our country’s founding. A day of hot dogs and beer and DUI’s. A day of, or actually night of, controlled explosions producing vast amounts of colored lights, joy and the universal call of the American public “Ooooooooh, Aaaaaah” while viewing the magnificent displays in the sky. And not to mention for you gun types, the heady smell of ignited gun powder wafting through the crowd. How much more American can you get. ( relax, don’t get all weird, I’m one of you)

This was also the day that my mom’s dog, a small raspy Shih-zu like creature, would go completely insane because of the sound of the fireworks and have to be given Elephant tranquilizer to keep her alive until morning.

This is also the day that my best friend in the world, Tony, got very drunk and very mad at some comment made by a supposed friend and jumped off a second floor deck onto to the roof of the pickup truck of the guy he was mad at, then jumped up and down until the roof was level with the bed of the truck. That story is still being told around the campfire and it happened years ago.

We thought we might pass on some fireworks viewing tips to our loyal readers so you might get even more enjoyment out of the day. First, if you forgot your video camera, or can’t find your cell phone, or figure out how to use it after being the moderator of the keg all day, here’s a neat little trick to bring those memories home with you. Simply blink your eyes real fast while staring at the displays in the sky. Blink really hard and fast. Then when you get home simply sit back in your Barco-lounger and remember. The images will play against the insides of your eyelids until you have to make your pilgrimage to the porcelain god in the bathroom. If you’ve done a really good job of blinking the night before sometimes you can see the rerun of the fireworks in the swirling water as it flushes your troubles away.

A word of caution. Each 4th of July many people are injured by not letting go of the fireworks they are igniting. At best the exploding fireworks will simply blow some of your fingers off. At worst they will lift you into the air (if they’re big enough of course) and they will be finding parts of your flip-flops and maybe an ear or something way the hell and gone from the fireworks area. So don’t do that. Let go of the fireworks you just lit immediately and run like hell to hide behind the keg or some other safe place.

America is 240 years old this year if you go by that old calendar method of the Julian style of running a calendar, (we’re not ones to jump into these new trendy ideas like the Georgian method), which is a long time if you’re holding your breath but not as long as it will be if you get dead from driving while intoxicated, or mishandling fireworks. So be safe, think about what you’re doing and do not eat more than 30 or 40 hot dogs. Remember that scene from the Python movie of that great big guy over-eating in the restaurant. That should help you stay in control of your excesses this holiday. OK then boys and girls, get after it, celebrate your brains out. Happy 4th! See most of you tomorrow.