jfleck at inkstain

A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico

First black-chin of the year

I put out the hummingbird feeders Saturday, then felt stupid for putting them out early. In 2009 (the first year I kept track) the first sighting was April 16. In 2010 April 16. In ’11, April 17. For 2012, it’s April 9. Just a quick stop and then disappeared.

The year of the budgie

I’d have to call Emma Marris’ The Rambunctious Garden the most influential book I read in 2011, in large part because it fell on fertile ground. I’ve been puzzling for a long time over the question of what counts as “nature”, both in our political discourse and in my own heart of hearts. Why is it, [...]

On the nature of nature

We spent Saturday at the Bosque del Apache, a wildlife refuge south of Albuquerque. It’s early in the season for the well-known sandhill crane wintering grounds, but in addition to cranes we saw mobs of pintails, a cormorant, a family of grebes (I’m reasonably certain they were westerns, though they’re tough to tell at a [...]

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Clearly the gulls are drawn by Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Or do they play YMCA? It is San Francisco, after all: Some gulls have an uncanny way of showing up at AT&T Park during the eighth or ninth inning of a ballgame. Day game or night game, the gulls bizarrely seem to know [...]

Palo Alto Baylands

My friend Alison, who used to live in Palo Alto, dispatched me on my recent travels to the Baylands, a lovely little park that is, as its name suggests, on the bay. It’s got salt marshes and tidal wetlands and a ton of birds. Being an inland desert dweller, I was in bird overload. A [...]

What I did on my spring vacation

What I did on my spring vacation: Lissa and I got the backyard train running (track needed a bit of post-winter sprucing up) We rode the big people train to Santa Fe I got new glasses We got far more work done to the car than I expected Slept in some, but got up early [...]

Stuff I wrote Elsewhere: A Visit to Work Case 82B

From this morning’s paper, a visit to Work Case 82B (sub/ad req) at the University of New Mexico’s Museum of Southwestern Biology, where they keep that which has gone extinct: The Carolina parakeet on the top shelf of Work Case 82B, green with a dingy red head, looks little different from the other 30,000 stuffed [...]

2010: The Heineman-Fleck Yard List

I’m having a hard time deciding whether this was the year of the yellow-bellied sapsucker, or of the swimming doves. I’m leaning toward the doves. The sapsucker was a novice birder’s treat. It showed up Dec. 11, a Saturday. I was sitting in my office at the back of the house and saw it flitting [...]

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: The Birds

From the morning paper, an invite to one of New Mexico’s treasures – the Bosque del Apache (sub/ad req): Come for the sandhill cranes and the grand clouds of snow geese. Stay for the coyote, or possibly the American pipit. The big gray cranes and waves of geese are the marquee attraction at the Bosque [...]

Swimming Doves

Saw the strangest thing this morning in the pond outside my office at home. The pond’s a round metal stock tank Lissa got me for my 40th birthday. It’s popular with the birds, but never like what I saw this morning – swimming white-winged doves. The picture’s not great. I watched ‘em for a while, [...]

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