WILD THINGS: VULTURES VS. ACTS OF GOD
I bounced off of Tom McGuane’s novel “Panama” the first couple times I tried to read it. It seemed arrhythmic, and fraught with a preternatural diction that...
WILD THINGS: DON’T FEAR THE QUACKER
Ducks scare me.
Some people might be tempted to get Freudian about this, and think it has to do with male ducks’ often outsized corkscrew genitalia, and the...
BIRDS DON’T CARE WHAT YOU CALL THEM, BUT IT STILL MATTERS
Avian nomenclature generally does not rate a lot of attention – or any attention, really – in the mainstream media. At least it didn’t until last week,...
WILD THINGS COLUMN: ‘TOP OF THE WORLD, LOOKING DOWN ON CREATION’
It was weird. The last time I was on Mount Wachusett in northern Massachusetts I was 8, riding the chairlift alone. It was spring break and my...
FLAMINGO FOMO AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
This is the thing: I’ve seen American flamingos before. At least a dozen times in the U.S., maybe two dozen times, sometimes in groups, sometimes as solo...
WILD THINGS: PRIZED BOOBIES & BOOBY PRIZES
It was late in the day and Kevin Christman was leaving the Keys, not for the weekend, but for good – boxes packed, small dog in his...
BIRD WATCHERS DELIGHT IN RARE FLAMINGO SIGHTING ON GRASSY KEY
Florida has a tetchy relationship with flamingos. A few centuries ago, before the state had been developed, they were common in South Florida and the Keys, as...
WILD THINGS: NOTES FROM A SMALL POND
Were I a better birder, I would have been at the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden when the gates opened at 10 a.m., but I’d...
WILD THINGS: DRIVEWAY MOMENTS WITH WHITE-CROWNED PIGEONS
The white-crowned pigeon and I had something of a tradition in the summer. He’d be out there feeding in our driveway, and every time I’d open the...
WILD THINGS: YELLOW BIRDS, YELLOW ROBES
Of the many arguments I’ve gotten into online, one that has stuck with me the longest was about prothonotary warblers and the origin of their name.
I mean,...
