Ah, can you feel it? Summer is in the air, with the birds tweeting, plants bursting into bloom and that inexorable itch to get out in the garden and plant something — anything! The intersection of fine weather and a little less rain has me dusting off my hori-hori in anticipation of planting all those […]
Birds
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Bunting Hunting
A diminutive, pudgy, winged visitor has set Humboldt County’s birding community all atwitter. The little bunting has decided to show its beak in the fields of McKinleyville, and, according to a Godwit Days mailer, “hundreds of birders in California and — even from the East Coast and other states — have changed their weekend plans […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
December Gardening
December usually alternates between stretches of cold, clear weather and weeklong downpours, so there’s usually plenty of time for both indoor planning and crafts as well as some of the normal outdoor garden care. Here’s what to do in the December garden. Protect tender plants. This December has shown us some of the coldest weather […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Down for the Count
Normal people look forward to the holidays as a time to indulge in creature comforts that take a back seat the rest of the year. Birders, seldom mistaken for normal people, anticipate the three weeks around Christmas and New Year’s as an endurance test of predawn-to-dusk forays into the outdoors, whatever the weather, in search […]
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Update: Hatched! Check Out Humboldt’s Bald Eagle Babies
Jean Pichler says the second Humboldt Bay eagle hatched just before dark on Wednesday. “Kyle,” the first to hatch, was named after the property owner’s nephew, who died in December. The Humboldt Bay Eagles Facebook group invites local schoolchildren to suggest names for the second baby. The group is accepting suggestions on its Facebook page […]
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Man About Town
Jack Lincoln is one of the latest strutting habitués of the brick sidewalk in front of Old Town Coffee & Chocolates, in Eureka. Handsome, too: blue head, changeable neck — it goes creamy white when he’s content, says his person, Nick, and red when he’s excited (equally with anger, happiness or lust). On this sunny […]
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Parking Lot Monitors
This was nothing new. All the cars parked under the row of big Leyland cypresses that divide the parking lot at First and D streets were kersplatted in white drips and blops. And the pavement all around these bombed cars was, as usual, devastated. Whitewashed. Just like every day before this. Oh, maybe it was […]
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Scare Crow
Freaked-out opposition and stern eyebrow-raising amongst the citizenry has caused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to drop its plan to poison crows and ravens on Clam Beach as a means to protect the threatened Western snowy plover. The plan — called an experiment by the Fish and Wildlife Service — was to plant avicide-laced […]
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VIDEO: Inside the Pelican Rescue
As a supplement to his story on the ongoing brown pelican crisis, Scottie Lee Meyers, the Journal‘s brand-spankin’-new intern, shot and edited the YouTube video below, in which Lucinda Adamson, an intern for Bird Ally X, offers a tour of the emergency response efforts underway at the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. Hooray for interns! Also, if […]
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Bright Bird
If you happened to be hanging around the game pen up at Humboldt State University a couple autumns ago, you might have chanced upon a miserable huddle of characters puking their brains out like over-partied freshman. These guys were small and bright blue with pointy, soot-colored heads. And they’d just had some baaaad eggs. The […]
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Hawk Murders Pigeon
On 03-26-12 approximately 1:40 P.M. this Journal reporter encountered an avian assault in progress at the Old Town Gazebo, near the corner of F and 2nd streets in Eureka. The victim, who is described as a chubby, partially beheaded pigeon, was alive but did not respond to the blank stares of numerous onlookers. Residents of […]
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Drugs? Guns? Nooo…BIRDS!
OK, if you’re really good at this gig, you were up before dawn, shivering on the back porch in your Life is good® flannel jammies, listening for peeps in the dark. Or warm-up squawks… “Hm, yes, Zonotrichia leucophrys, I believe I expected you,” you muttered into the darkness. Damned sparrow had carried on all night. […]