pheasant with my phowling piece

We're going hunting, aren't we ? O boy o boy o boy, I can't wait, let's go, now or sooner if possible, this is gonna be great !

Artie does his job exactly as he's bred to do, runs deep into the weeds and flushes the birds out. I on the other hand frequently don't get my part of the job done, and miss the birds.. Once in a while I do hit, thereby avoiding Artie's ire - you should see The Look he gives me after missing - and he faithfully brings it in.

Pheasants are extravagantly beautiful. They are, as Gierach observed of trout, far prettier than they need to be. On the other hand, for the last couple of centuries it's been a very successful strategy from an evolutionary standpoint: be attractive/useful to man, and he'll spread you far and wee across the world. Both pheasants and trout seem like elementals of air and water, jewels that swim and fly. Then men like me come along to turn them into meat.

In the evening, the birds come in from the cornfields to their evening quarters in the bottomlands. We hide behind the haystack and wait to see who shows up. The trick to recognizing a rooster is the C's - either hear him cluck, or see the colour on his face. In the evening the colour trigger isn't usually visible; luckily they'll sometimes declare themselves by chattering to their harem. This evening, four hens swooped in silently. The solitary rooster dropped into the dense weeds. We went to root him out with the dogs but in the meantime he'd run down into the jungles of the wetlands. Outfoxed by a bird, yet again.

Back at the barn having tea, Artie fell asleep standing up, while I scratched his ears. A thoroughly-well-hunted dog.

Update: 'the last couple of centuries', forsooth. Pheasant arrived in England with Caesar's armies. They'd been moving out of Asia for a few thousand years before that. There are some 30 distinct sub-species of the common pheasant; the status in the wild of all of these is unknown. The common and ringneck pheasant are of course not endangered, being so widespread.

Harold Macmillan on pheasants in England, reported in a letter of Patrick Leigh Fermor's,

"We're very lucky to have them. It's entirely due to the Roman occupation of Britain. The junior officers were very fond of them, and collected them in large numbers. I believe there was a certain amount of rivalry about which centurion had the most or the handsomest birds. In the end, of course, in 410 AD, in the reign of the Emperor Honorious, the order came for all the legions to return to Rome, but they weren't allowed to take their birds with them, so very reluctantly, all the centurions let their birds go. There must have been thousands of them. Anyway, they survived the Picts and the Scots, and the Saxon invasion."

There are some other remarkable pheasants. Bird books usually give a picture plus a paragraph or more detailing the 'field signs', the notable features by which the bird may be recognized while twitching. For the Lady Amherst and the Golden pheasant, one word: 'unmistakeable'.

The Lady bird:

From excelglen's flickr set.

 The Golden:

From Dave Appleton's flickr set.

eragon and saphira

#1 son wanted me to publish his picture of Eragon and Saphira, so here it is..

what are we playing at ?

The last construction weekend of the year. We're putting up the deck for the yurt near Palisade, five 'professionals' with soft hands labouring manually. One ex-engineer who went careering off to law, and one actual engineer, so at least we have good directions to follow.

In the course of the weekend, the side of the shed in the background blew off. We upgraded the yurt with the wind package.

It's quite soothing to have nothing to do but heave lumber and bang nails, in the cold wind below the mesas.

The children of the yurt lent a hand and a hammer, putting in the spacers for the Trex boards. That palled after an hour or two, so they went off to Crash Valley, the gully where the previous farmer sent all his cars to die.

A few vagrant gleams of sunshine were all we got.

On the drive home even those would have been welcome - Vail pass was closed most of the afternoon and evening. We gave up and checked into a hotel. The boys and I went to sit in the hot tub, under snow, where we learnt that the hotel had just filled up and the Red Cross shelters opened. I hardly ever get that right, usually we're in the miserable cold waiting for the pass to reopen. After dinner we all huddled around the laptop, watching 'The Gods must be Crazy'. I thought the boys would enjoy the slapstick, their parents indulged in a bushveld nostalgia.

Two of the pictures courtesy of Mitch and Linda, thank you.

respectability

Brad DeLong says:
"We can finally have normal politics and policymaking again. That's not a tremendous accomplishment, is it?
It feels like one:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth... the holy city, new Jerusalem..."

I'm not sure it's possible to return to a normal politics after the last eight years, that well is deeply poisoned: still I agree it's a relief (in the same way that a biopsy for cancer coming back negative, is a relief) to have a respectable President again.

Not much to ask, but it seemed unattainable for so many years. Ezra Klein sums up the Bush legacy:
"He has been worse than a bad president: he has harnessed the power of America to do genuine evil, under his watch."
From the report by the Senate Armed Services Committee (12 R, 12 D, ranking member Sen McCain):
"senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."
The general counsel for the Department of the Army has declared that what we did to prisoners in Guantanamo was torture. No weaseling, no mealy-mouthed obfuscation by tough-talking bed wetters, just the admission that it is in fact plain old ugly torture. The Red Cross thinks so too. Of course, most of the tortured were innocent as well.

This is the second time I've voted for a black president. I also got to vote for Nelson Mandela, in the first free South African elections. Praise be. Perhaps a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a good next step, now that we will stop torturing people.

John McCain seemed relieved and happy in his concession speech. Odd. Perhaps he does have a conscience after all ?

Elsewhere I proposed 'Caravan of Love' as the song for the day. It's always worth hoping.

Update on torture: there was no campaign promise and no official statement on this. I had confidence however, and now:
"I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."
Decency in government, what a refreshing change.

dumb humans

California's proposition 2 will allow farmed animals
"to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely."
You mean they can't do that now ?
Astonishingly enough, there is strong opposition to allowing farmed animals the freedom to lie down.

We are all God's creatures; tormenting our fellow creatures seems to me appalling in any religion's worldview. If we are not God's creatures, instead just East African plains apes with delusions, living under an empty sky: then those of us capable of compassion should show it, for the good of our mortal souls if nothing else. We need to obey the Vonnegutian imperative, "There’s only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind".

Update: looks like it passed quite convincingly, sixty-some percent voting for it. Oh good.
On the other hand, proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage, passed as well. Cruel to humans but kind to animals, there's another puzzle of the human animal..

bird dogs in Veteran, WY

Off to darkest Wyoming, near the town of Veteran, to take Artie on his first duck hunt. The ducks are coming down the Central Flyway and are susceptible to ambush. Blue-winged teal are still on the ponds: since we broke the weather they stay around a lot longer than what used to be usual.

Ballasbak in the barn, planning a normal distribution of chores and entertainment.

Here's Artie taking a nap with his favorite stuffed toy, a 25c garage-sale cat.

Boy and dogs heading out to the wetlands. Artie thought he'd died and gone to heaven, from the boring suburban green-belt spaces to a whole farm full of smells.

Once the feathers hit the water, the party is reduced to serious hunters only. Artie's dad Spot is point dog.

Artie gets to practice with the downed ducks. Real birds were harmed in the making of this picture, I fear. Very tasty too.

The rest of us needed a bit of shotgun training, making shards out of clay pigeons. Mostly I couldn't hit the doubles, one going R and one going L, because I'm just too slow. Three different guns: a lovely little Beretta over/under 28 gauge, which pointed itself, didn't miss anything with that one; a Winchester 20ga, perfectly competent bit of American craftsmanship but my euro-snob side preferred the pretty Italians; a Beretta 12ga side/side, hardly any heavier than the 28ga. Ken sneaked in a goose load on the 12ga at one point, thing kicked hijus. The last thing I shot with a kick like that was a RPG. The clays would break when hit with 28ga, the goose load basically turned the clay back into silt.

Next day, Artie got to fossick around in the fields, to kick up some pheasant and/or quail. No shooting at these since the season isn't open yet. They tell me Montana is big sky country, but Wy manages a fair old spread too.

a brief excursion

Ken coming downstream, in a satisfied sort of way: took 5o casts and two changes of fly, but he finally got that 16" rainbow that was rising to tricos.







A turbocharged rainbow, he jumped higher than my head. Returned with thanks.



















None of the comforts of home, but many countervailing pleasures.








High country, empty and quiet. Except of course for the cows on welfare, grazing public land to a nubbin. Their outraged moos kept us awake for, oh, nearly five whole minutes.





nothing to say, just gratuitous prettiness.










Next morning on Lost Creek. Nothing much fish-wise, but it could not have been better.