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great shot! Absotively an osprey! Dave

poison ivy/oak - stump water had a great-uncle who swore by this: Take a pint of stump water collected under the light of a full moon, mutter obscure incantations while pouring the stump water over a capped bottle of Calamine lotion. Rinse off the bottle with tap water. Open the bottle and...

Oh yeah; I believe that figure has been pretty well settled upon by demographic statisticians of great repute as 13.2 per year plus-or-minus 13.1 (standard deviation from the mean), but then there are those rural sociologists who decry such figures since the data is clearly non-parametric on a...

A perched raptor is usually at the mercy of any flying bird. If I were an osprey who had been regularly robbed of my fish by a bald eagle, I'd relish the chance to catch one of those bald-headed bullies on a perch! As a falconer ( before my knees and hips gave out) I saw numerous episodes of...

Eric Sloane ! You betchum, Red Ryder; that be the guy! He also put out an exceptional book - also self-illustrated - on weather. It's a wonderful read for anyone with a bent to the out-of-doors. Sloane was a meteorologist by training. Dave

Countin' points, eh? When you get my age you realize it's probably most efficient to remember only those days when you wind up with a positive tally... like I'll never forget August 8th in '04.... and February 14th,'87,... and that Friday in May of '81... Yeah.... Gotta remember...

No, I don't know, what it is, but I'm pretty sure what it isn't. I'm reasonably savvy about comparative mammalian osteology, and I can attest that it bears no resemblance to any mammal's scapula I've ever seen. The edges of the plate have fine serrations/undulations suggestive of a plane of...

My son, who lives in NYC, kept me abreast of news about the 'yote in Central Park. It actually took them several days to corner it so it could be shot with a tranquilizer gun. The consensus among NY wildlife folk is that it made its way down the green belt along the Hudson and crossed Spuyten...

Hey, Jeff - or anyone else- Has anyone seen black vultures in south Jersey yet? For the past 30 years they've been slowly making their way up the south-east coastal plain from the Gulf coastal plain. I saw a bunch on the outer banks of NC several years ago and a few in south west Virginia and...

It took me a moment, WAMBA, but I got it! Cute! Dave

I just realized, in my seventh decade, that I've been mis-spelling "weasel" as "weasle" lo these last 60-odd years. I thought you guys were off base with "weasel",but since you were so damned consistent in your putative error, I thought I'd up-look it just to reinforce my confidence in...

Now realize, this may simply be indicative of a blind spot, but it was (I thought) an easy call : it's a long-tailed weasle (Mustela frenata). I stated that, albeit, perhaps, too confidently, for two reasons: 1. I had been of the long-held opinion (quite possibly in error) that but one...

I presume that the coyotes now being seen in the PBs with more frequency than heretofore are of goodly size, robust, and well-fed? I would also expect that, with all that carrion about, during the winter you'd see the occassional bald eagle and red-tailed hawk feeding on the suff. Dave

Spot on, Jerseyman! I'm not at all sure, indeed, I doubt, that there be a better single source of information on frontier and early rural folkways and occupations. One or another of the volumes of this work is always on my bedside table ... as is one or another of the books by ...(and here I'm...

Not a fox hunt, but likely a 'coon hunt; they are a definite night activity! (see Guy's post re: a "treed" coonskin) Dave

...why would you hang it in the tree? 1. To provide the dogs with an end to their trail, 2. have the dogs end their hunt with a "treed" 'coon, and 3. ensure a known site where the dogs can be gathered by the 'coon hunters at the end of the "hunt". Tho' not a 'coon hunter m'sel', I...

Actually,... no ...he isn't. He is a native New Englander. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut,and received his.... well ... he was exposed to the opportunity to receive the intellectual benefits of a "higher"education right there on his New England home turf (prep school in Massachusets -...

I'd say that a red-bellied snake. Back when I was current on ophidian taxonomy it was also lovingly refered to by the herpetocognoscenti as "Storeria occipitomaculata". Is a close congeneric of the "ground snake" or "Dekay's snake" - "Storeria dekayi" The red-belly is a fairly secretive...

New or old...if that were on ebay I'd bid on that sucker to the bitter end! Dave

I totally agree. Can't count the number of times I or my wife have been honked at or driven close-to while moving a turtle from the road. In East Texas there is a particularly barbaric act (practiced by folks from the slimy shallow end of a drying gene pool and who epitomize retro-evolution)...