Great, now it's only a matter of time until Moby kills them all. Well done, Stanley.
Actually, I'm told that, like tuna, they're better rare.
"Small mammals" = lemmings. There's a lemming shortage -- probably the stupid lemmings all jumped off a cliff like they always so.
Indeed, if those range maps are accurate it seems that you can always see them in parts of the US.
3: You didn't read the link in the post, did you?
The Ohio people and the Minnesota people will have to fight it out about whether there were too many lemmings or not enough. At least we've established that lemmings were the cause.
Lemmings are not voles, but they're closely related. The lemming vole is a vole.
The muskrat is the largest relative of the lemming and vole.
The Ohio people and the Minnesota people will have to fight it out about whether there were too many lemmings or not enough.
It sounds like the dispute is more over whether it was too few lemmings or too many owls (as a result of too many lemmings for the previous generation).
I suspect that the range maps are a little inaccurate. Except in irruption years they're not at all common in southern Minnesota, uncommon enough that a sighting is worthy of note.
Hmm. I am developing ear-tufts that are (as yet) small and tucked away. Perhaps I am a Snowy Owl.
It's VOLE!
Worst Broadway musical since Legs Diamond.
You can change the dates on the map here to see Jan 2012 compared to other years (for instance 2011--open in adjacent tabs and flip back and forth). 2009 was somewhat of an irruption year as well (At least in the eastern US) There are always a few seen in the very northern parts of the lower 48.
That sort of destroys a lot of your imaginary friends' bullshitting opportunities, JP.
13: you are probably a university professor.
there were reports of a snowy owl at montauk in NY one year, before I was born, and my dad says my great-uncle sonny's instinct was to get a few shotguns and go out to try and shoot it for his collection of wildlife trophies. dad was horrified (he was visiting the in-laws, all of whom he despised, this was just fuel for the fire.)
it's return of the brutal migraine, or migraine II, electric boogaloo! why am I looking at the fucking computer? because I have been up since 6 looking at the inside of a towel and I am bored. also my head feels better now that I tried my new triptan, and the holy caffeine/aspirin/panadol trinity. slept from 1:30-7:30 yesterday afternoon and 10-6 last night. I deserve to feel more well-rested. it's actually going to take me a long time to recover from this idiotic fever, isn't it? I hate listening to the doctor's instructions. you know, I didn't have all these problems when I used the world's strongest painkiller, all the time.
18: no, happily he failed. I was trying to excuse his behavior to girls x and y before we went to his trophy-laden house (includes actual tiger draped over balustrade) by explaining that when he was big-game hunting in the 40s-70s we didn't know we were running out of tigers and stuff. girl x looks witheringly: "mommy, we knew about wooly mammoths and siberian tigers and those pigeons, you'd have to be stupid to think you weren't going to run out of tigers." um.
17.2: Audubon would have understood.
Although he would shoot the birds for sport, he also shot them in order to paint their features.
Audubon early realized that drawing birds from stuffed specimens produced stiff paintings, lifeless and dull. So he proceeded to use inserted wires to display his models in natural positions. This process enabled him to add drama, life, and vigor to his paintings.
In his mission for new specimens, Audubon would shoot a minimum of a hundred birds each day. {this was on a specific trip in Florida, not *every* day.
Interesting life. Illegitimate; born in Haiti--French father, creole mother--back to France, then draft-dodging Napoleonic wars to America near Philly, sucked at business. Also plumbed spent time in Louisville and Charleston and finally Washington Heights, NY. Good unfogged geo cred.
||
Would someone with blogpower please bump the Boston meet-up thread up to the top of the page? We're on for Thursday at 8:00 at Brick and Mortar.
|>
There's one extinct bird whose last know sighting was by the naturalist who shot and stuffed it. Now that's dedication!
19: One off-label use of Viagra and Cialis is the relief of some symptoms of altitude sickness,* including warp-spasm** headaches, by dilation of blood vessels. One hates to encourage pharmaceutical wildcatting, but is there any discussion of same in the migraine sufferers' underground?
* Also treated with caffeine, aspirin, lying prostrate moaning, caffeine, unfair personal attacks on and brutal threats against the person whose idea the trip was in the first place.
One off-label use of Viagra and Cialis is the relief of some symptoms of altitude sickness
I'd love a cure for my airplane headaches, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be worse to endure a 5 hour flight with a boner that won't subside.
I used the world's strongest painkiller, all the time.
It would be kind of awesome in a horrible way to have a Large Animal Immobilon habit.
I used the world's strongest painkiller....
Love is the drug.
The Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) is a large owl of the typical owl family Strigidae
Racists.
11: There was an article in the Strib last year about Snowy Owls hanging out at the airport. Nobody knew what they were doing there, or why the planes did not seem to bother them much.
We're having one hell of an irruption of wild turkeys recently though. The ones in Nordeast even have a fan club. I don't know if they tweet.
Also: Bubos: Not just for armpits anymore!
WHAT ARE WE, CHOPPED LIVER?
mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data supports the decision to consider the Snowy Owl an eagle-owl adapted to Arctic conditions and moving it into Bubo, rendering the monotypic genus Nyctea invalid.
Eurasian eagle-owl is Bubo bubo. Tracking the etymology, it appears that the root it might be onomatopoetic back in Greek,
Not just any owls. Owls whose hobby is humaning.
Nah, you can tell I'm still here by the motherfucking typos. Who knows what the fuck was happening in that last sentence fragment.
Pretty extreme owl nest lemming abundance correlation exhibited here. Bylot is north of Baffin.
On Bylot Island, nesting Snowy Owls have only been seen during summers of high lemming abundance. During those summers, 10 to 22 nests have been found
The muskrat is the largest relative of the lemming and vole.
Depends how loosely you define relative.
"Muskrat Vole" was actually the original title of the song, but the Captain made a typo.
Just got back from seeing the snowy owl at Jones Beach, Long Island. He was pretty easy to find - just look for the pack of hardcore birdwatcher dudes with the big cameras.
The snowy owl looks a lot like a large, fluffy, marshmallow, sitting out in the open. He did that cool thing where he spins his head around to look behind him.