Standing up for Nature
I didn’t really want to go to Wall Drug but I am glad that I did. The legend behind the drugstore, restaurant and shopping arcade on the I90 is that it was set up in the 1930s and wasn’t really making a go of it until the lady behind the business had an idea. They…
I woke early this morning and knew that it had been raining in Midland, SD but that now the air had cleared. I got up, dressed, tip-toed down the creaky wooden stairs of the Stroppel Hotel and strolled down the rain-soaked main street. Midland was quiet at 630am although there were orioles singing, House Sparrows…
Today, the sun shone all day and the birds came out and it was great. I occasionally renewed my friendship with I90 heading West but mostly I stuck to smaller parallel roads that took me out of the homely and friendly Sioux Falls and through a mainly arable, mainly flat landscape broken up with wetlands and…
I’m in South Dakota – only just over the border from Minnesota, but in Sioux Falls. I started in Wisconsin, drove right across Minnesota and arrived here in South Dakota. This is the West – although Sioux Falls doesn’t seem very wild at the moment. And that mammal from yesterday – thank you to those…
Robert Allen Zimmerman is 70 today. Happy Birthday Bob Dylan! And today I did something that I have never done before, but I am going to do it again fairly soon. That probably makes it sound much, much more interesting than it was. But I enjoyed it – one often does the first time. And…
Today was a driving day. I started off somewhere south of Pittsburgh and ended up somewhere east of Chicago. So that’s Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, a short detour into Michigan just to say I’ve ‘been’ there and now in Indiana. My journey today started where the opening and closing scenes of the film The Deerhunter…
I might have been keen to shake the dust of New York City from my shoes if there were any dust, but the sidewalks are hosed down each morning and it was a bit of a drizzly morning. But this was the start of my drive West and I was keen to see the miles ticking by,…
I was in Central Park by 630am – and it may have been too early. There weren’t that many birds around. I added Magnolia Warbler to my list for Central Park but saw few other warblers. I added cream cheese bagel and coffee to my waistline and got a cab south down Broadway. Walking the last few…
I had a nice day’s birding today. And I think I saw another warbler species. I went to Jamaica Bay – over the Queensboro bridge from 59th St Manhattan, then get lost a bit, and you are there! A walk through some scrub and then you are looking out over a wetland. Many of the usual birds…
I walked north 8 blocks to Central Park and on the way saw countless house sparrows and starlings – I won’t keep going on about them but it is really striking how common they are here. Indeed, Greg Butcher, from National Audubon, made a good suggestion – that Audubon and the RSPB should do a joint…