Tag Archives: Joe Cocker

Strawberry Fields Forever

Posted on by

Many times as you stroll amongst bears you will hear them singing or humming various melodies under their breath. This is especially true in Yellowstone National Park, a place where you can interact with bears on many different levels. At first you may not pick up on the fact that they are actually producing musical renditions of current musical selections as they go about their usual bear business, whether that business is eating road kill, or gently plucking flowers out the surrounding shrubbery, or simply rending a newborn elk calf down into its lowest common denominator. They are singing.

As with human people, bears like various types of music. Grizzlies for instance, are most fond of Gregorian chants and when they gather around a freshly killed buffalo you will almost certainly hear certain choral works such as Bach’s ‘Mass in B Minor’ or even Brahms’s ‘A German Requiem’. They can often be identified by the music they choose to sing when you can not see them, like you identify birds by their unique songs. For instance if you should perhaps be hiking near Mt. Mary’s trail and hear the refrains from Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’ or even Mozart’s ‘Mass in C minor K. 427 “The Great”, coming from somewhere in the nearby bush, stop immediately and ring the bejezus out of your bear deterrent bells very loudly, as loudly as you can, that is a Grizzly. As beautiful as the music is it might be prudent now to turn around and quickly leave the area as this music stirs great passion in these bears and it’s best to not speak to them even if you liked the music.

Then of course, you have the black bears. A bear of many colors ranging from jet black to red, brown, even a golden color, tho that is pretty rare. Black bears have different musical tastes entirely. These bears are fun bears, with a great sense of rhythm and style and a most pleasing tone when they sing. You can actually spend a little time with them as they appreciate an audience and will choose a piece of music that they know the listener will get into. Such as anything by Joe Cocker, Arron Neville or John Prine. Bonnie Raitt and Emmy Lou Harris are favorites for the lady bears. And of course Etta. Just don’t sing along with them. They don’t like that.

There is one truth about black bears and that is as a group down to the last hairy one, they love the Beatles. Perhaps that is too conservative a phrase. They absolutely without a doubt are obsessed with them. So much so that when you see newborn cubs recently out of the den they will be playing and gamboling while singing The Yellow Submarine at the top of their tiny little bear lungs. How is this possible? Genetics, that’s how.

Our friend in the image above just stumbled across some shrubbery that reminded him of one of his favorite songs, Strawberry Fields Forever. Let’s stop and listen for awhile, shall we?

Anasazi Garden

Posted on by

AnazasiGarden1468

When many people think of the desert the first image that comes to mind is the Great Sahara desert, or perhaps the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, or the Great Sand Dunes of the Southwestern United states, or even your back yard if you don’t water it. A place barren and inhospitable to life. A place where nothing grows and you dare not venture far from water lest you perish. Which is a pretty easy thing to do if you’re standing out there in the noon day sun with no hat, which we would hasten to add you shouldn’t do, even if you are English and that comes natural to you. We’ve noticed that whenever we’re trapped in the desert and near death we always have a vision of Joe Cocker in his bright red English soldiers jacket singing “With a Little Help From My Friends” marching on before us. This always saves us and we make it back to civilization in one piece, thirsty but alive, but then we’re experts and trained for this kind of thing. But that’s just us, your mileage may vary.

But if you are somewhere like Johns canyon, Utah and its early morning you’ll see something entirely different. A desert garden literally brimming with life. It may be different than what you’re used to thinking of how a garden should be, but then you’re in a different place than you would normally be. As you journey through the canyons you will see small gardens tucked away in every nook and cranny, one after the other until you realize that this is a veritable oasis in the middle of a desolate land.

We are always struck by how similar in feel these desert gardens are to Japanese gardens, which couldn’t be more opposite in nature. The Japanese garden being lush and green with carefully manicured plants, with small trickling streams feeding into water-lily filled ponds, compared to this dry desert garden with its carefully chosen plants, tucked in amongst the boulders, placed just so to take advantage of what ever moisture may be sent its way. The color palette of this garden with its earth tones and giant boulders selected for their color and texture and positioned to fill the space but not overwhelm it is the same in feel if not color, as you find in the perfect temple gardens of Kyoto.

Sometimes we think, that is the experts in our botanical department who are paid to think about these things, think, that there must have been an early visitation to this land by wandering Samurai gardeners who traveled the world spreading their knowledge of how to make a perfect garden where one couldn’t possibly be, teaching people like the Anasazi how to have beauty in their lives in an inhospitable place. A group of Ninja gardening warriors, as it were, dedicated to creating beauty in even the most unreceptive, belligerent landscapes. Or not. But it’s as good a reason as any for the gardens being there.

Our First-strike gardeners here at *The Institute’s World-wide Center for Horticultural Research and truck farm have been collecting gardens just like this one and transporting them root and twig, back to our Botanical center completely intact, where our own hybrid gardeners keep and protect them for posterity. We have gardens similar in size and scope to this one that we have found throughout the world and brought back here to the Institute for safe keeping and our own personal viewing pleasure. Sometimes we let the public view them but not very often. You actually have to have some kind of pull to get in. If you’re interested write us and include your bio and an 11,000 word essay on why we should even let you in the front door and we’ll get back to you if you qualify. Thank you in advance for your interest.

* 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.

Chicks, Man

Posted on by

ChicksMan4750

For those of you who follow the blog closely you will remember that the Eagle Observation Department (EOD) here at The Institute has been closely following developments at our Top Secret Golden eagle nesting site at Watson lake, Bellvue, Colorado, 80512. Just a few weeks ago we conducted a scientific study concerning the number of Feathers on a Golden Eagle and its importance to their quality of life. You may refresh your memory by revisiting this important study here http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2015/02/07/ .

One of the reasons we have been closely following this Golden eagle pair is that due to recent activity between the two we have been led to believe it is entirely possible that they will produce young. We’re talking Chicks, man. As this is not a triple X rated blog we will not describe all the lurid details of these eaglesque encounters but we have all the pictures just in case someone doubts our word. And just like Kim Kardashian we won’t show you all the intimate details, wait, Kim Kardashian did show us all the intimate details. Hmmmm, however we’ve already said we won’t so we mean it. NO naughty eagle bits here.

But as you well know you can’t be doing the eagle dance of love all the time and there are other things that need to be taken care of before it’s egg time. There’s the eaglet shower, and getting the nursery ready, catching a movie and maybe an eagle dance or two to get in before it’s time to lay the eggs. As each egg is about 3″ long the eagles are looking at a long incubation period of 43-45 days with the female sitting on the nest constantly until the eggs are hatched. Absolutely no eagle dancing goes on during that period for sure I can tell you. The male, who by the time the incubation period has been in effect for a week or so, gets a little grumpy and goes out and hunts stuff and brings back the unnecessarily mangled prey for his mate to eat. This goes on for about 6 weeks after the chicks are hatched and by that time you can’t even tell what it was that the male eagle killed and brought back. Eagles are pretty basic animals, live, grow feathers, love, get frustrated, kill stuff, raise chicks. That about covers eagle behavior.

But as we mentioned earlier there’s a lot of stuff to get done and one of the biggys is getting the nursery ready. Here we see some rather common eagle behavior. Featherglo, the female Golden eagle, is bringing in nesting material to line the nest with. In this case it is a sage plant she has ripped out of the ground and she will use her body weight to press the sage down into the nest cavity forming a lush soft base for her to lay her eggs on.  She will be sitting on this for nearly a month and a half so it needs to be pretty comfortable.

We have given these two Golden eagles identifying names so we can tell them apart and have some sort of reference to indicate who’s who. We have already mentioned  Featherglo our female eagle, and we have named the male Strongbeak the mighty of the Iron Bill clan, Rabbit killer and Talon Thruster, Highest Flyer, Sky Crusher and Rattlesnake’s bane, we call him Strongbeak for short.

Since things are really getting good here at our Top Secret Golden Eagle nesting site, what with eagles flying around doing cool stuff in the air, the frenzied eagle dancing, and nest-building and such, we plan to follow-up this story to its hopefully successful conclusion, which would be young eaglets being raised and sent forth out into the world to make their own lives and repeat the cycle. This will require long periods of time spent sitting in a lawn chair behind our long lens drinking cold drinks and eating Subway sandwiches and occasionally some lasagna we made a few days ago, waiting for something to happen and then photographing it. We are prepared to do that so that you, who can not be here in person, can follow the lives of Featherglo and Strongbeak as they undertake this most important time of their lives.

If there is any problem with this plan it is that our Top Secret Nesting Site is on government property which is controlled and managed by the Colorado Fish and Game department. Consequently they have seen fit to establish the eagle’s nest on a Cliffside across a river, approximately 600 plus yards from where we can set up our observation post where it is handy for us to put up our lawn chairs, coolers for our refreshments, stands to hold our eagle identification books for dummies, trash receptacles, restroom facilities etc. As this is just about the optical limit for our specially designed Japanese manufactured telephoto lens to hope to get useable pictures, we have petitioned the Colorado Fish and Game division to move the nest closer, perhaps to one of the cottonwood trees nearby that line the river bank. That would make life much easier for us and give the eagles a change of view. So far we have had no response to our request. In fact when trying to flag down the government vehicle that is filled to overflowing with government officials that periodically cruise by to observe us, they speed up and will even take drastic measures to avoid the nail strips we place in the road to slow them down. We are considering writing a harsh but carefully worded letter to the New York Times if we don’t get a response soon. I know they don’t want that so we hope to get word from them soon.

In the mean time, we shall be on the job, doing photography stuff, observing, analyzing data, taking short power naps, calling people to see what they’re doing, trying to figure a way to stop the government truck, telling jokes to people who walk by, singing songs of nature and trying to figure out the lyrics to any Joe Cocker song, making bets on what the next food item might be that Strongbeak brings in, and living life. That’s it, Join us if you want to, Oh that’s right, this is a Top Secret Golden eagle nesting site located at Watson lake, Bellvue, Colorado, 80512 and you won’t be able to find it. Watch for future posts then.