A friend, to whom I owe a life's worth of favors, asked me to comment on a message he received. Normally, I ignore this kind of junk: okay, that's "normally" as in always.
I have too little time left to entertain the thoughts and ideas of others. I've spent over sixty years formulating a worldview, and do not wish to reformulate chunks of it.
So here's what I received:

Please respond to this egregious message sent to me via an acquaintance-I responded and was accused of being a Communist.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 5:21 AM
Subject: THE AWAKENING OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Carol and to all: (this is going out to many people, but I have sent the emails as blind copies for privacy reasons)
Below you will see you a letter that was written by Greg Evensen a former Kansas State Trooper and Marshall. I asked that you pass it on with to everyone on your email list and ask them to pass it on as well. When I got the letter via email it was so strong in stating the blatant truth about what is going on today in the US that I called him at the phone number that was at the bottom of the letter to verify that he wrote it. Lo and behold I got him on the phone and he verified that he indeed was the author of this letter. We had a long conversation about his views about what was going on in the country, which you can read below.
As you all know I have been saying for a long time that the US is becoming more and more fascist every day. Now if we look back and really analyze the real resulting affects of 911 we will see that it was the grounds for getting us into two losing wars that has cost us over a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and tens of thousands wounded. However, it has made the industrial military complex hundreds of billions of dollars. But it was more than that. If you will remember, 6 weeks after 911 Congress passed the Patriot act. Now the Patriot Act is a massive 342 page document that violates at least six of the ten original amendments known as the Bill of Rights—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth as well. The bottom line, it has taken away our freedoms that we enjoyed prior to 911.The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress, even though the majority of our representatives admitted to not reading it, reassured perhaps by the inclusion of a five-year sunset provision. But that sun does not seem to be setting on this chilling piece of legislation. Instead, congress has since made the Patriot Act permanent and also expand its reach. The next step in the big brother society will be to chip everybody and do away with money and replaced it with a debit card number so they will have total control over we the people. Sound far fetched, just wait and see.
Now have you ever thought about the fact that the Patriot Act could not have been written in a few weeks and in fact was sitting on the shelf waiting for an event that would insure its passage? That event was 911. By the way at the end of my conversation with Mr. Evensen, I asked him point blank a question. I asked him as a criminal investigator for years with the Kansas State Police have you looked at the evidence of the 911 attacks and have you drawn any conclusions? His comment was that when he first saw the pictures of the Pentagon, he concluded that there was no way a plane hit the building. There was just no corroborating physical evidence. He also said it would have been impossible to fly that commercial jet at 500 miles an hour only a few feet off the ground into the side of the building. He stated that they tried that in simulations and it couldn’t be done. He concluded that a missile hit the Pentagon. Now this is not me making this statement it's a former law enforcement officer who was a criminal investigator.
Now look I am sure all of you have heard about 2012 and the confluence of events that will happen in that year that will cause God knows what. In fact, there is a move coming out in November of this year called 2012 and it starts with the destruction of the planet and the rest of the movie is about survival. As we approach the year 2012 there is a Shift in human consciousness taking place and is occurring even as you read these words. The shift is being triggers by supernovas, earth changes and Earth's alignment with Galactic Center in the years leading up to 2012. This Shift has been documented in a stimulating multimedia presentation entitled “Preparing for the Shift,” by Barry and Janae Weinhold, Ph.D.s. who has spent decades devoted to the study of consciousness and evolution. The Weinholds, both trained psychologists, have gathered overwhelming evidence that humanity is in the middle of a long-awaited Shift in consciousness predicted by hundreds of indigenous cultures worldwide
Today this Shift in consciousness is visible nearly every time you open a newspaper or turn on the TV. It can be seen in the breakdown of many old structures such as those that underpin governments, churches and corporations, as well as in families and individuals. It is also evident in the ecological breakdown of numerous Earth systems, a widespread perception time is accelerating, drastic changes in weather patterns, more people feeling overwhelmed by modern life's complexity, and increased polarization between groups, religions, and regions. You also see it in the huge protests against the government’s health care program, the bailout programs, the take over of major corporations and resuliting huge deficits the 435 are running up for the rest of the 300 million We the People. There is outrage in the land against the crooks and criminals in Washington who are taking the country down a disastrous road towards totalitarianism.
Now you will see by Mr. Evensen letter that his consciousness is switched on. The consciousness of thousands of other Americans are also being switched on as they show up at town hall meetings and express their outrage against a government that is out of control and doesn’t represent them anymore. They are now realizing they have been betrayed and they are mad as hell. Now you have to get your consciousness switched on as well and get mad as hell as you recognized what is going on in US. My statement is that the land of the free and home of the brave has turned into the land of the policed and the home of the fleeced. Switching on your consciousness is simply being aware what is going on and what is going on is the evisceration of your freedoms. They are being wiped out every day and if the masses do not get consciously switched on now, they will soon all be gone. You have to get switched on and get proactive like the thousands who are showing up at the town hall meetings.
So here is the letter from Greg Evensen, if you want to give him a call or send him an email of support. He needs our support and is taking a big risk in speaking out against the fascist big brother government.

THE DEATH OF LIBERTY: THE FINAL SCENE UNFOLDS

By Greg Evensen
July 29, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

When police investigators begin amassing evidence at a crime scene, the bits and pieces of the puzzle begin to take shape. Usually, with several trained men and women working together to come up with an answer, the intent and actions of the perpetrator are almost always revealed.Since my core training and experience over many years was as a state level law enforcement officer, I have worked crime scenes that were large, complex and conflicting. With enough time, effort and resolve, we too, were able to bring the bad guys to account.You certainly do not have to be a trained state trooper—or any other level police agent—to use common sense, logic and knowledge, to assess the crime scene that has become the socialist states of Amerika.I continue to be at a loss to explain how it is that so many tens of millions of Amerikans simply do not see the utter destruction of their former republic by socialists, one worlders, deviates, liars and thieves. The men in black have been roving the country flashing their memory erasers around the clock. Let’s take a check on how things are really going.Our nation’s police forces prior to the criminal thug Richard Nixon were centered on community policing. MOST of their time was spent on looking for, identifying, and monitoring criminals, and responding to unusual or dangerous events that were beyond the control of ordinary folks. We appreciated those officers and were proud to say, “he is OUR Cop!” We knew that we could talk to him, kid him, see him play adult softball, and sit across from him in church. We watched him shed tears when one of our kids didn’t make it home after a night of drinking and driving. We remembered him at Christmas, because he didn’t make much you know.
I said “him” because back then, there were no women in the ranks.As government began its sickening expansion, policing became a meaner and nastier job. It was made that way by badge wearing thugs who didn’t hesitate to do whatever they were told by the S.A.C. (Special Agent in Charge) of the FBI, BATF(E), US Marshal’s Office right down to armed poultry inspectors—yes they have them and they are really tough on criminal chickens. The “us against them” mentality, and the “mission essential” attitude justified SWAT teams, “dynamic entries,” and later use of MACE, TASERS, FLASHBANG GRENADES and “routine” use of SUBMACHINE guns. All in the name of “taking down” the accused—no matter the charge. I abhor such police tactics and was an officer that served my own warrants, rarely with one other officer at the back door.Now we have become eaves-dropping, roadblock setting, door crashing, face grinding, arm breaking, pursuit driven bastards that have sold their asses to the government masters hell bent on establishing the TRUE reincarnation of the dreaded SS. That is NO overstatement. Note: There are significant numbers of officers at all levels that simply detest the forced training at FEMA centers, the requirements to stop Patriots and others simply because they “look” dangerous, and are exercising free speech statements on their vehicles. By whose ultimate authority does this take place? By whose ultimate judgment is it necessary to harass INNOCENT drivers and families? The public sees this Gestapo mentality as far more of a danger than any stickers they put on their vehicles? Where are all these “faithful” enforcers of the law when it comes to confronting the unlawful, unconstitutional, unjustifiable, and unmerciful rotten bunch of usurpers, communists, atheists, deviated, immoral scungebuckets that are walking the halls of Congress, the White House, and the Federal Courts? How is it that the “get ‘em at any cost” morons at Homeland Security have created an environment in Amerika that is an unwarranted intrusion of power in 186 other nations?
And all of this is done in the name of safety and security. I guess that a majority of ignorant buffoons really do believe that Barack Sotero is the Messiah and he does hold the keys to socialist paradise in his hands.So, once again, I implore those officers of the law who are in grave doubt about the legitimate authenticity of their superiors in any agency, to simply read the constitution, re-read their oath of office, seek out retired officers for guidance, and remember this very carefully—to brutalize citizens in the pursuit of order, is a guaranteed recipe for resistance. PLEASE do not pit yourselves (all 650,000 officers at all levels in the US) against a seething and angry populace who outnumber you 5000 to 1. Believe me; you want all of us working with you, not against you.

Greg Eversen

(Greg Evensen is an award winning former Kansas State Trooper and Kansas Marshal. He speaks across the nation for Patriot groups and is available to come to your area as well. Call 906-367-0505 or e-mail him at greg@theheartlandusa.com.)
(No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com/ Version: 8.5.392)

Maybe the most disturbing are the references to Doomsday, 2012, as the loonies have almost 1208 days to get really cranked up.
Feel free to respond to Greg as befits his views, and, by all means, contact me, pro, con, or indifferent.

My most humble (just kidding - maybe, depending on your reaction) response, as requested by my commie friend, follows:
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Sweet Jesus, what do people learn in their lives that they even read this bullshit? I usually don't but, since you asked . . .


The Patriot Act was written by the (mal)Administration, to streamline decision making and centralize same in the hands of the President, or whomever was making decisions for the Stooge.
One thing the past administration had was excellent lawyers: given six days they could easily have cobbled together a working version of the Patriot Act. Give them six weeks, and you have the virtually unassailable and heinous Act it is today.
I would agree the Patriot Act is in violation of those same six amendments in the Bill of Rights. I would guess that the 13th is a typo - it repeals slavery - and the author may have meant the 12th, revision of the Presidential election process. I don't know that this has anything to do with the PA, but it was surely ground underfoot when the Supreme Court, filled with cronies of his Daddy, appointed Junior President, despite overwhelming evidence that the vote, and its count, was thoroughly botched in Florida.
That the Patriot Act "has taken away our freedoms" is a bit of a reach.
There are no particular abridgments to Free Speech, the 1st Amendment, described or otherwise outlined in the PA. What the Act does do is suspend some of the protections, defined by the courts, that in specific cases have been judged to violate the intent of the law (Amendment). The most egregious is wiretapping without court order.
I could (maybe should) write an argument defining free speech, but it has been done, many times. However, there is this: when you make your "Free Speech", know what you don't know - your audience. There are over 6.4 billion people in the world. Whatever you say, write, or type, and anything you send over the internet, may reach one, some, or all.
The Patriot Act, then, does not "limit" your right to free speech, but shreds your cloak of privacy.
Amendments 4 through 8 all deal with arrest and due process. The PA does indeed suspend portions of these Rights, but the scope and application probably won't affect you too much.

The "disappearing airliner" in the Pentagon crash is old ground. Whatever the photographs "looked" like, American Airlines Flight 77 went somedamnwhere, taking 59, passengers and crew, with it.
So what is the point, that a missile hit the Pentagon? PanAm Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, 12/21/88, resulted in the same prolonged debate - it must have been a missile, with photos released and much-discussed showing a missile, until it was found in 1991 to have been a bomb.
Why was it important to have a missile? to ratchet up paranoia, to justify the Patriot Act, to close our border with Canada, to build a damn wall in the Southwest desert, to invade an emasculated country and kill all its leaders...

In America in the 1840's, a wave of revivalism, known as the Second Great Awakening, swept the country. A group known as the Millerites believed the preachings of a founder, William Miller, that Christ would return to earth on 10/22/1844, triggering the End Times. While they gathered and waited, praying, Jesus must have had other plans.
Many of the Millerites weren't perturbed, however, and their ilk grew into the Seventh-Day Adventists, the 8th largest international body of Christians.
The point being, don't spend a lot of time preparing for 2012.

And don't confuse generalized hysteria and panic with any "Awakening of Consciousness".
As long as three times as many people in this country "believe" in the Virgin birth as understand the order of natural selection, there is a very low ceiling on consciousness.
As far as a world Shift in consciousness, know that the US religions we consider major, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Wesleyan, came here with immigrants. The Seventh-Day Adventists became so large internationally not through resettlement but through proselytizing, preying on ignorance throughout the second and third worlds, spreading the same guilt and despair Christians crave.
The idea of a global raised consciousness is more to do with exposure of the poor of the world to American culture through making outsourced clothing and personal items, and evidenced by wi-fi parlors in Sarajevo, Istanbul, the West Bank, and Timbuktu.
The shopworn pipedream that a butterfly fart in Madagascar becomes a tornado in Kansas is just that, a dream, not raised consciousness.

There is no reason to think that a lifetime in service to the people of Kansas makes one an expert in National policing.

I reject that Government made significant expansion, "sickening" or otherwise, in or after the Nixon era. The only significant growth in Federal Government came during the Roosevelt administration, after twelve years of Republican fiscal incompetence pushed the Country into the deepest of Depressions, culminating in the Stock Market crash of 1929.
The growth in government was to help those out of work to once again earn wages, feed, clothe, and shelter their families, and to regain self-respect, after failure was forced upon them.
And it was a timely, enduring, and wonderful success, this flood of Federal projects and agencies.

The most significant change to policing since the '60's, seemingly everywhere but Kansas, was the pipeline of drugs craved by many of our stout citizens. The War on Drugs has succeeded in doing but one thing - overfilling our jails and prisons. Fully one percent of our adult male population is currently incarcerated, the highest percentage in the Western world, and the highest here, ever.

As for the rearming of Law Enforcement, look to the North Hollywood shootout of 2/28/1997. As hundreds of police were pinned down, shot, wounded, killed, two pieces of human excrement fired 1000 armor-piercing rounds. Only introducing more powerful arms allowed police to end the battle.
In the aftermath, enforcement bureaus across the country upgraded firearms, and, in larger cities, SWAT teams were added or expanded.
The use of MACE, flash-bang grenades, and TASERS are all in the Public Interest, to maintain the demand that only reasonable force be used, and to protect the innocent.
Those larger caliber, higher velocity sidearms find the intended target about 30% of the time, meaning seven of ten shots fired find other targets.

The "jackbooted thugs" line was used before, most famously by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President but actual leader and decision-maker for the National Rifle Association, a paranoid man and leader of the most paranoid group of individuals to walk the planet. In response, George H. W. Bush (41) resigned his life-membership in the NRA. The claim that our police forces in any way resemble anything Nazi is as ludicrous today as in 1993. Before you disagree on any level, Google Kristallnacht and give it some serious, informed, thought.

There is no arguement that there are people in all three branches of government who, by any standard, should be elsewhere, including among the 1% club noted previously. But they are protected by the sad irony that they are representing the wishes of a majority of the people, and most certainly protected from armed insurrection of a group of concerned policemen, however well-intentioned. Bush (43) did all he could to turn this country and its government into a Banana Republic, but the talk of a junta should end here.
Instead, use the old-fasioned way: vote the bastards out. Recall, if needed.
Voting in America should be an obligation, a duty. For the most part, elections are relatively clean (exceptions: Florida, 2000, and Ohio, 2004), yet only about half of those who register bother to vote. Regristration should be mandatory for even the most basic of services - vehicle registration, driver's license, utility services, conracts to buy, sell, or lease, etcetera. And failure to vote would result in forfiture of services and goods.
Only then would our government, designed by some pretty smart guys, function as intended. Stupid laws Right and Left, such as The Patriot Act, could be expunged, and other laws enacted that represent the collective will of the people.
There would be no need for misfits to go off-the-grid, except to avoid prosecution. Militias across the country would become superflous, and the more mentally stable ex-members might actually find a constructive outlet for their energies.
And people could worry about the truly meaningless - the second coming of the christ, the two suns of 2012 (this bs willy really blast off with the dumbass movie), who will win the 2013 Super Bowl, all important stuff for vapid minds.

And never underestimate the capacity of the learned and wise to say something incredibly stupid. In 2000, LaPierre said President Bill Clinton tolerated a certain amount of violence and killing to strengthen the case for gun control and to score points for his party.
Submoronic crap.
Gotta love that Wayne, though. He stays on target. Even when his two most famous frontmen were the Alzheimer-addled Charlton Heston, a C-List former actor, and the psycho rocker Ted Nugent, whose "hits" include WhangBangSweetPoontang.
Adds the kind of credability the NRA has worked to achieve, at a much higher level than they ever dreamed possible.
They vote, but the real damage they do is weaken laws designed to keep weapons out of the hands of convicts, felons, criminals, and youth, in defence of a second amendment never intended to allow same, by papering congress with tens of millions of dollars annually.
The kind of democracy in action that creates a need for the SWAT teams and stun grenades.

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Okay, maybe the potshots at the NRA weren't necessary, but I'm so sick of their one-issue crap ("George Bush (43) was the best president, ever, for protecting our 2nd Amendment rights") that any words spent on exposing the asininity, bribery, stupidity, shallowness, and paranoia that is the NRA are an investment in a better future.

So, what about some bird news?
The Ashy Storm Petrel is still threatened with extinction, and still "not endangered" according to National Fish & Wildlife.
The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, thought to be extinct for thirty years, has since been spotted once, a flash in front of a canoe in an Arkansas swamp in 2004. The flash wasn't photographed, understandably, and the identification was made on the sounds it made, quite a feat as the bird hadn't been heard from in three decades.
Yesterday I saw a red tail in flight, and almost immediately an American Kestrel left a wire. Either would have been enough, but both made the trip worthwhile, even if I can't remember where I was going.
In some lowground, holding duckweed-covered water this late in the summer, I found a Great Blue Heron, a scaled-down Pterodactyl. The heron, in flight, surely appears prehistoric, a coelacanth of the air. What troubles a casual observer such as I is that the set of the wings, supposedly reptilian, closely resembles a bat, a mammal, and should make you glad I'm not an ornithologist.
The birds are still here, big birds, egrets and herons and red tails. And the warblers are on the way.
Just go look.

Yesterday, I walked my dogs at 6:30 in the morning.
I heard the faintest crackling, and an occasional pop. Exactly like a very powerful sound system, powered up, amplifying dust and breeze burps.
Converse built a new water tower. Our "old" water tower was a can with a hat, picturesque, possibly undersized, probably outdated.
And beginning with those pops and crackles Tuesday, at least a half-hour before sunrise, the tower was down and gone before dark.
There are still lots of red tails, and I've been seeing them posted up. Power poles, dead trees, where you would look.
I'm seeing fewer and fewer American Kestrels, and am distressed. I'm at least several steps, and several more months, away from an apprentice falconer's license, and a kestrel is my best first bird, based on my studies to date, my means, and my physical capability and limitations.
Okay, this is so totally selfish.
An Orthodox Priest once said that bachelorhood was the most selfish life, refusing to share the gifts of life with others. I fully agree, except when those gifts amount to a living hell, and sharing that is more selfish, by ten, or a hundred.
Is anyone else as Totally Creeped as I regards the Burger King "King"?
And how about the latest ads featuring physical malformities?
Enjoy that Whopper.
There was a Belted Kingfisher near the carp pool this evening, and I haven't seen him for at least six weeks. Welcome back.
Monday I went to Grant Creek, a part of the Upper Mississinewa Reservoir. There were people fishing both sides of the bridge, and I passed through, creeping up the bluff, looking for Great Egrets. I saw at least three to the south, through the foliage, and a Great Blue Heron. Great big birds, magnificent. The Great Egret is perhaps the most beautiful just plain white creature on earth.
Back down towards the bridge, focusing again on the fisherfolk, and, looking back, I saw a Great Blue Heron just around a point, not thirty yards from the bridge, and the fishermen, oblivious of each other.
Likely for the best.

Several years previous, a very good friend, much better than I deserve, said she was tired of all the rock-star causes, Save-the-Whales, Sea Turtles, California Condors, Spotted Owls, that they blind the public to the hundreds, even thousands, of species threatened, endangered, and rapidly becoming extinct.
Polar Bears get the headlines, the funds, while Oceanodroma homochroa, the Ashy Storm-Petrel, was denied protection by an Administration we thought would be more caring, more accessible.
The problem is the public wants warm and fuzzy, not small and slimy. Public backlash against the Endangered Species Act began in 1973, when construction on the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River was halted because the river was the only home to the Snail Darter.
When the Tennessee Valley Authority "let slip" the Snail Darter was, at most, 9cm, about 3", long, very many "new" environmental advocates were outraged, that a multi-million dollar project, to benefit hundreds of thousands of people, could be stopped by a useless damn minnow.
This fight lasted six years, included a Supreme Court ruling that The Endangered Species Act was not to be compromised for economic considerations, and ended in 1979, when Tennessee US Senator and uber-asshole Howard Baker pushed through a bill in the House and Senate, then signed by Carter, to exempt the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act. Legislative trumps Judicial. Through the backdoor, which is how Baker operated, and how, despite charisma that launched his star in the Watergate proceedings, saw it burn out in the Senate.
But the damage to the ESA, in the jaundiced eye of our General Public, was huge.
Which is why, now, the Happy Feet movie may be the only reason we care that Antarctica is melting.
All the money we donated in the eight years of hell that was the maladministration of the Idiot Prince was spent defending our lands, air, water, wildlife, and resources from a group of insatiable gluttons who considered all the worth of earth theirs, and theirs only.
Further, inexplicably, Interior's Secretary Salazar seems of the same mold, and must be replaced, with anybody who cares.
We need Polar Bears, because, sadly, no one cares about the Ashy Storm-Petrel, least of all Ken Salazar, a lawyer and Colorado rancher, neither of which suggests any primary and abiding environmental, ecological concern, or any awareness of pressing issues like promoting species diversity or the imminent threat of local, global, climate change.
Know this: the ambient air temperature, what we feel, can rise or lower five, ten degrees, and mean nothing. The meaning lies in the change in temperature of the oceans, 6/7th's of the earth's surface.
And this: if the ocean temperature changes just a few degrees, very few, the planet will be changed, dramatically, and everything alive will be affected, from the Snail Darters, supposedly relocated to the Hiwassee River before Tellico Dam closed, and flooded miles and miles, to Ken Salazar, who is in a position to do something.

Last night I stole the Angel's Share, and spent the the day in a fog, and later, a haze.
Went to Wabash for chicken feed (yes, really) and back. I saw some birds that deserved much more attention than I could muster.
There were two red tails, both in flight, one soaring, the other hanging in the air as it made to a perch in a roadside tree.
There were four kestrels, all on wire, and three flushed briefly as I passed. One was a big girl (sorry, female) and I went into a brief coma, imagining her on a bow perch in my livingroom.
I saw two Great Egrets, hunted to near extinction a century ago for their feathers. My vain darling.
And a Great Blue Heron, living proof that dinosaurs evolved into birds, and seeing one fly will transport you to the Triassic, so watch your back.
I saw a gorgeous little goldfinch drinking from a puddle in a church parking lot, surely the best use of any of the property, ever.
I once went to a BBQ chicken dinner at this country church. BBQ, of course, isn't about red sauce, but smoke-cooking, and the food was great. It was ruined by a loud, arrogant barrel of industrial-grade prison lube, and if I were to be charged with not throttling this alleged person, I would plead no contest. The least I could have done was smack him, or shove a chicken carcass up his ass. (Oops! Did I say that? I meant down his throat. Where is my White-Out?)
This evening I was standing at a grave and was bitten by a line from an old song. It was by the First Edition, which made a pretty good song before Kenny Rodgers swelled in the head, and they became Kenny Rodgers and the First Edition, and wasted tons of irreducible vinyl on the execreble "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town)", by Mel Tillis, who should have been hanged.
But I heard "I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and I followed it in".
I didn't do the pushing, but I've spent 50-odd years scratching, and clawing, trying to get it out.
I stood at the head of Krystle's grave, and looked up on a gorgeous August evening's sky, big, high clouds, and I wept.
For little Krystle, surely, whose living hell ended one chilly night in early June when she tackled a semi in front of her home. She was 14, beautiful, quiet, and kind, and her life was so unbearable, and so unlivable, and with no place for a little girl to turn, she chose to step into a hog truck.
It's easy to cry for Krystle, but it doesn't help her, and maybe the tears are for a world that does this to a little girl. Because she's cold in the ground, and the reason is walking, living, breathing.
Good night, and sleep tight.

Filling my little 20 year old, 20 mpg truck to full, 2/3 of a tank, cost $31. This is 1/2 day's pay, net. I may have to get out of my comfort zone and actually go find and identify some birds, even, heaven forbid, some little brown jobs, and stop reporting on the same birds, counting on them and my comfortable circuits to provide story and backstory. Before I drive ruts in the roads and begin to loop posts.
This most certainly does not mean I will fail to report every raptor I see.
But I drove to Marion this morning, and later to Elwood, combined over 75 miles, and there was nothing.
By now you know you can see hundreds of birds any day you spend a couple hours driving.
So now it's time to change perspective.
I did see an Eastern Kingbird on a wire, and it briefly flared. I have seen at least a hundred Eastern Kingbirds this summer and this was first time I saw the "distinctive" white band at the end of the tail.
The point is, that white terminal tail band is a definitive identification in my favorite ID Guide. What that same guide doesn't make clear is the Eastern Kingbird is the only gray over, white under, bird of that size in Indiana.
If it isn't supposed to be here, it probably isn't, which makes good range maps indispensable for identification. It still surprises me the Petersen guides don't have range maps on the description pages, and I don't own the general Petersen guides for that reason.
Even the most descriptive words, photos, and drawings can't account for ambient light, distance, perspective, and the real chance that, like the white band on our kingbirds, the identifying trait in any of your guides isn't what you observe as the most obvious characteristic of your bird.
That little brown job with the black bib is a House Sparrow. If you look in the guides, there is a Black Chinned Sparrow, a Black Throated Sparrow, and a Harris's Sparrow, but only Passer domesticus, our House Sparrow, is found east of the Mississippi River.
There are a lot of house sparrows, and they are largely scorned, and mostly ignored.
Too bad. Because a bird watcher should watch birds, not just identify them, which is "birding", tallying species. If your interest in birds is to chalk up a list, my humble efforts are a waste of your time.
Watch the birds.
I am in awe of raptors. American Kestrels are remarkable for their ability to hover, to hang in the air, and for their call, killy killy. And a sad fact is I have briefly seen the former, and never heard the latter.
Instead of cursing sparrows for draining expensive blends from your feeders, watch them for a while.
Entertainment absolutely guaranteed.
About 50 years ago I watched two sparrows in a tail-chase fly between a roof-drain pipe and the wall, 2" apart. These little birds are 6 1/4" long, with a 9 1/2" wingspan, and both passed without a brush, a bobble, a notice. An inch apart.
These little rockets are a half-foot long, with three-quarters of a foot wingspan, and weigh less than an ounce, organs, bones, feathers, and all.
Feel free to say 'Wow'.
I took a familiar drive this evening and saw a kestrel, on wire just past the first pole of a link up a lane.
And, later, I went past the chained-dog house, except there were no dogs, which means, I so hope, the dogs are out while the residents work, and they are all brought in to the house soon after the "owners" return.
Kestrel Alley earned a visit, and perspective. "The American Kestrel", by Roland Wauer, says "The size of the kestrel's winter territory also varies with geography. In Michigan, four individuals utilized forty-three square miles each, and in Illinois five individuals utilized an average of thirty-seven square miles each."
Note that each and consider my 4 kestrels on wire in less than a mile. My (uneducated) guess is this is a pair and two youngsters.
There is an old saw, the more you learn, the less you know.
So it is with me and kestrels.

Robert Novak died today. Novak disguised any likable or admirable traits very well. According to David Broder, Novak was a journalism giant for The Washington Post in the '60's and '70's, long before most of us met him through cable TV and the Internet. By then, he was a nasty hollow shell, awash in his own bile, and, if still a "journalist", he produced the kind of "journalism" you find on FOXNews, or read in any Murdoch-owned yellow sheet.
In July, 2003, Novak outed Valerie Plame, a CIA agent. This is treason, exposing a secret operative in service to the US Government. This heinous and treasonous, cowardly act was a "punishment" of Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, an ambassador to Africa who in 2002 repudiated a linchpin in Bush's war on Iraq, publicly denying any efforts by Iraq to secure "yellowcake" uranium from Nigeria. Karl Rove's uber-flunky, Scooter Libby (really: a grown man named "Scooter") took the fall for the Administration.
Seriously, Bush is too dumb to ever orchestrate such an outrage, so this all stinks of Cheney.
Judith Miller of The New York Times served nearly three months in prison in this affair, while Novak, a Bush shill, was never indicted for his base act of treason.
May Novak burn in one of the hotter corners of hell.
I took a short drive this morning and saw five red tails, two flying and three perched. Pretty sure there were only three birds, with two repeats. One bird was roused by a tractor and landed on a pole directly above as I passed under.
A female was perched at the very top of a very tall pole and seemed regal, and majestic.
This evening I revisited some of my morning's route, and found one of the red tails, improbably perched on the side of a different pole. Odd spot, and you're nearly past when you see the bird.
In a thirty yard stretch of road I noted two Indigo Buntings and an American Goldfinch. Stir in the Northern Cardinal I saw on wing into trees and you have three very beautiful expressions of primary colors, the most accessible anywhere.
In counterpoint, a little meadow was blanketed with starlings. Starlings are proof positive love is blind, as they are prolific, and ubiquitous. Each feature is more hideous, from the tail feathers that look like every bird flew backwards into a fan, to the mottled brown mess that passes for "coloration", and closely resembles rotting foliage, the starling is ugly on ugly.
Introduced, whether or not intentionally, species have experienced too much success in the US.
Sparrows, starlings, lamprey eels, zebra mussels, purple loosestrife, nutria rats, kudzu vines, Norway rats. All are extraordinarily successful, prolific, nearly indestructible. Some proved not only a nuisance but rapacious and destructive.
In readings about raptors, I found a particularly disgusting product brand-named "Avitrol".
From their website: "Avitrol Corporation offers a solution that utilizes a bird's natural behaviors to eliminate or reduce pest populations effectively. Avitrol, an acute oral toxicant, acts on the bird's central nervous system. The toxicant causes birds to involuntarily display behaviors that mimic the fright response and frighten away the remainder of the flock."
Except, according to HSUS (the Humane Society) pigeons, the most targeted birds, are largely indifferent to the sufferings of other pigeons. Which leaves people to be affected, and they are, horrified at the distress, the vocalizations, the thrashing deaths.
One thing the website fails to mention is Avitrol can be taken up by birds, such as (and especially) raptors, who are, after all, diners of opportunity, and seldom pass a free meal.
If anyone you know even thinks of using Avitrol, shoot them.

And in a most unlikely spot, on a wire on a road separating two cornfields, perched a kestrel. No hunting here. The falcon flared, wondrously backlit, then flew, making a small loop and back on the same perch.

This morning I did a lot of driving, very little observing.
Two red tails, both roused before I saw them. Red tails are big, beautiful birds perched, but are magnificent in flight. I have a physicist's reverence for conservation of energy, and do not purposelessly roust any bird. So the joy of watching the red tails fly was a bonus for my carelessness.
And I found a murder of crows. "Murder" is a traditional term for a "flock" of crows, but I have no clue as to the minimum: 2? 5? 10? 80?
Crows have an interesting and integral, necessary role in the resurrection of the duck population in the US. As much success as Ducks Unlimited has had, and not to in any way do or say any thing except in support of DU, the heavy lifter in waterfowl reintroduction was our Federal Government.
It amazes me that duck populations were all but made extinct by gunners early in the last century.
Because I know no one who eats duck, ever.
Whitley Co. Indiana is one of the world's largest producers of duck: if you eat Peking Duck in Beijing, that duck was fed out to a carefully monitored weight and slaughtered in Whitley Co.
The thread is that in the early part of last century, wild ducks trickled down traditional flyways, all but extinct.
Enter the Federal Duck Stamp program. Duck stamps are an annual issue of the USPS, a must-have. This year's Long-Tailed Duck Stamp is available now, for a mere $15, and the track record of this program makes this an outstanding conservation donation. Do birds a favor, do yourself a favor, do our world a favor, and buy at least one.
Now the crow. Mexico had no migratory bird protection. But crows are sacred to several belief systems in Mexico.
Okay, I hate "belief systems", but that is the least offensive term I can muster.
Carlos Castaneda wrote a trilogy in the late 60's about hallucinogenic, religious experiences with a priest/guide and various organic ingestibles (made-up word). The cover of one of the books was given over to a crow.
These books are worth reading, whether you are an experimenter with the plants, or if you just want to know why anyone would.
The Government of Mexico, in response to the US Migratory Birds Protection rules, agreed to protect ducks and geese only if the US offered similar protection to crows.
It's a great thing this all happened, as no one willingly "eats crow", and, as per a recent post, crows are most likely smarter than your cat. And one will kill your cat, straight up.
And crows have been destroyed on the same humbling mindless thoughtless ignorant scale as raptors, eagles, falcons and hawks, and in the ultimate testament to the stupidity of us all, even the albatross, harmless to every human endeavor, except it's big.
I was concerned this evening because I had seen no Falco sparverius, no American Kestrels, all day.
The concern was totally selfish. I want to fly a kestrel, to watch a little bird rule airspace. The window to get an apprentice license is closing for the season, in terms of legally capturing a little falcon and learning with her how to best exploit her skills. Kestrels easily take sparrows (sparrow hawk) and starlings, and maybe, well schooled, grackles and pigeons.
Though not likely, as these last two may be too large for a little kestrel. But I'd love to provide the opportunity to a well-schooled bird who would try.
I saw some Indigo buntings, always a joy. If you believe The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, pg 581, these magnificently iridescent blue little beauties are "actually black, but the diffraction of light through the structure of the feathers makes them appear blue".
Nine years ago, a seven-year-old girl told me Polar bears are black.
She was right, too.
Indigo buntings will do a near-vertical dive off a wire into a field, 15 - 20 feet. The culmination must be notable, but I've yet to see one. Maybe it is the key to "awesome".
I saw one possible kestrel, and, in desperation, headed to Kestrel Alley.
The American Kestrel, Roland H Warner, has a map of average kestrel sightings from "Breeding Bird Surveys" routes, 1996 - 2000. This may be the the count Andy was doing previously.
In the survey in my area, there are 2 - 3 annual pairs in the five-year average.
After seeing no kestrels all day, on Kestrel Alley, in the first 400 yards, I found 4 kestrels, including my big girl, and another a half mile on. I have seen a pair here, by behavior. At that time, it was just stunning, two kestrels, circling, climbing - since found to be the same thing.
If this is really the best 1/4 mile in Indiana for kestrels, I'll shut up now, because one of them is my best first raptor.
More likely, where and what are these people counting?

Thank goodness Michael Vick is back in the NFL.
When was the last time you heard about the suffering and cruelty that is dog fighting?
Maybe on Animal Planet TV, some big city nasty Animal Cops episode, where they rescue a hideously mangled dog that survived a fight, or was the "dummy" used to train dogs to fight.
Because that is a sad irony. Vick wasn't convicted and imprisoned for dog fighting. His felony animal cruelty charges were for the methods he chose to dispose of the 95%, 19 out of 20, fighting dogs that won't fight.
And I'm glad he's back, because dog fighting never missed a beat when he went to prison, and it hasn't been news since.
If you so love the NFL that you don't want the negative attention Vick will receive, everywhere he goes, sorry. But don't blame only the Philadelphia Eagles, because the Cincinnati Bengals, once the home for nearly all of the NFL's felons, was in the bidding.
Yesterday a farmer was raking hay, turning it to dry through, in a pretty meadow with some trees along the road and a creek neatly bisecting it. He liked what he saw, for this evening the hay had been put up. I was admiring his handiwork when a red tail flew towards a stand of trees a quarter mile north, shelter for a home and several outbuildings. I stopped and killed the engine, and another red tail took flight, this one calling. I will not be made to believe the calls were in celebration of being dislodged from a chosen hunting perch.
I turned north on the next road, gravel, and not just for that singular Indiana pleasure of raising enough dust to choke a mastodon. But the property was occupied.
Just before this road teed, just west of Amboy, I noticed more and more ugly dogs staked out on chains in a large rural front yard. Eight or ten or twelve.
When I worked a survey crew in Mississippi, 30 years ago, we carried a handy tool called an "Alabama Passkey".
Boltcutters, perhaps legal, and useful for going where you needed to go, irrespective of the safeguards of others. Such as padlocks.
I intend to get my own "passkey", and name it, and give all those ugly dogs a taste of life without a chain.
I will post my efforts, if overwhelmed by popular demand. Like, if one of you wants to know.
I saw a bluejay today - hooray! These beautiful birds, of dubious character, have been absent from my observations all year.
This one came thrashing out of the woods onto the grass of the right-of-way at Miami SRA, gathered, and flew back in the woods, making that irritating call, so I doubt he got what he was after.
Even with that large beak, bluejays can't crack seeds, and must use a tool, such as a stone.
Thus, things get done.

One of the best bits of advice I never should have taken came from a wildlife biologist familiar with most Indiana birds. We were collecting ticks at Mt. Summit SRA many springs ago (serious: I found yet another in my mustache the next evening).
Andy was paid by Ball State to count birds on a designated route two or three times a week. Sound recognition was critical, as identification was the purpose.
(Editorial note: bird watchers should be focused on seeing the birds. "Birding" nauseates me, is a scurrilous word, and no one interested in birds should tolerate the term, ever.)
What Andy told me was my Nikkon 8X40's, dear to me in cost and purpose, were useless in heavy cover, like most of spring and all of summer, and one would benefit from much less glass. Maybe like his Tasco camos, about $2 at any useful yard sale.
I bought compact Nikkons in 8X23, and I keep them behind the seat in my truck, and, to my enduring sorrow, no one has stolen them.
Andy can recognize a chipping sparrow on a Land-Sat print, but my little glass would only help if the bird perched on the hood of my car.
That 8X translates to 2X, at best 3X, for me.
I have glassed what I think is the same bird at Mier Cemetery a couple of times, with the Nikkes, and still couldn't pick it out of a lineup, never mind an identification.
I thought for a bit it might be a merlin, which would be uber-cool.
Merlins are kestrels on steroids. They have been flown for a thousand years on game, and are still preferred by many European and American falconers for their disposition, flying display, and ability to take down much larger birds.
I saw several kestrels today, and will attest to and defend their abilities and "game" as true falcons. They are stone killers, and will take sparrows, and much larger starlings, on the wing. With enthusiasm and training, a kestrel, like any falcon, will take birds three, four, five, and even more, times its size/weight.
Merlins are only an inch or so "bigger" than kestrels, but are much larger, pound for pound.
And there is a problem.
The US is married, welded, to a system of weights and measures obsolete since Archimedes demonstrated displacement.
Inches and ounces and pints and feet and pounds and quarts and miles and tons and gallons are perfectly suited to measure your waist, pot, and beer, your rugs, mass, and milk, your drive in terms of fuel and mileage in relation to your mode of transport.
This system has been largely useless since the 19th Century.
The metric system is a decimal system, every order of magnitude, whether measuring liquids, mass, or distance, expressed in terms of 1 through 9. And 0, signifying nothing, is nothing.
And nothing in the metric system is expressed. Zeroes are used only as a multiple of ten, and can be eliminated with a shift in order of magnitude.
And all data may be reduced and manipulated with a minimal understanding of the numbers 1 through 9, and any conceivable number, no matter how cosmically large or how infinitesimally small , can be expressed in terms of 1 through 9.
Sounds really simple? It is.
By way of comparison, there are 16 ounces in a pound, 2 cups in a pint, 12 inches in a foot, pounds grow to tons, pints to quarts and gallons, no limit, feet to yards and miles.
It is a nightmare to quantify any greater, lesser, or intermediate volume, weight, distance. It's why computers haven't replaced calculators.
And it's why there are no US numbers to demonstrate any real difference between kestrels and merlins, to explain why one is a hallowed hunter lauded for hundreds of years, and the other, averaging an inch shorter, is called a "sparrow hawk".
Just into Howard County this morning, I saw red tails on the next two pole-tops, and stopped. Male and female, both had flown while I clumsily uncased my glass. The female stayed in front, soaring and swooping and doing what huge hawks do.
The male came around and lit on a pole behind me, to the (east) left, and flew as soon as I glassed him. She left soon after, low, difficult to follow over the August Indiana corn.
Coming back north, I saw our most brilliantly colored woodpecker, a Red Headed Woodpecker, on a utility pole, of all places.
The red is brilliant, the black intense, glossy. Should I ever require a coat of arms, those exact colors will be featured.
There was another bird there, too, which I haven't begun to ID. Why they were on a pole soaked in creosote looking for organic matter beats me.
I have no skills to identify raptors. Mostly, I can't sort them out through glass.
But an accipiter, probably a Cooper's hawk, came off a milk cow farmlot, low, and it was most likely short an Amish chicken dinner.
Accipiters have a distinctive flight, flap flap flap glide, and this hawk had that down pat.
Little bit large for a sharp shin.
Too cool not to be glassed.
The glass was wanting.

Genius Corvids and Neandertals, Again

"Ravens and crows have long had a folkloric reputation for craftiness, and scientists are confirming what many cultures have observed for ages; these birds and their cousins in the Corvidae family—including rooks, magpies, and nutcrackers—have remarkable cognitive abilities. Last year, magpies demonstrated a sense of self-awareness previously thought to be unique to a few species of mammals. Now, two new corvid studies show that the birds can use tools for complex problem solving. In one study, crows were able to use three tools in sequence spontaneously in order to obtain a meal, a skill until now observed only in humans. In another study, thirsty rooks dropped stones into a glass of water in order to raise the level of liquid inside, a story straight out of one of Aesop's fables."
From Sb Weekly, 8/12: "Bloggers are Getting Fit and Crows are Getting Smart."

And from Scientific American, August, 2009: "Later this year researchers led by Svante Paablo of the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, are expected to publish a rough draft of the Neandertal genome. The work has prompted speculation that scientists might one day be able to bring back this extinct human."

BIG shout out to Jasper Fforde, the best author you never heard of, and his Neandertal clones.

There is one giant, formless, shapeless cloud low on North Central Indiana, and not even a bright spot. I'll assume the sun is still about where it ought to be.
Made a trip to Wabash today, which meant a trip across Mississinewa Dam.
Okay, the dam isn't even close to the preferred route, nevertheless...
There is a power line parallel to the road to the dam (from south and west). The towers are a tribute to the stability of the triangle. Two supports share a common moor and rise at fifteen degrees about seventy feet to the third side of the triangle, a twenty feet high superstructure to hang the cables. Each support is three-sided, and all the struts in each leg form triangles. Every detail of the legs and superstructure is a triangle. There must be thousands in each.
These towers were said to be indestructible.
In the ice storm of 1987, the entire line from Riverwood to Greentown, 25 miles, 130 towers, came down.
On a tower just before the dam road (on purpose) I saw a dark shape. I couldn't get close enough for my glass (eyes, maybe?) to make a positive ID, but it was a red tail, about thirty feet up, not threatened, not at all shy.
Just north of the dam at SR 124 is Asherwood, an ecology center owned by Marion Community Schools. They have a pond (no fishing, no swimming), trails (no dogs, no smoking), and an aviary (no flying), and other features, I'm sure (no interest).
There are eight cages in the aviary, pie slices, twelve feet high and fifteen feet deep.
There are five prisoners.
Okay, that's not fair. I've only been there a few times and have talked to no one about the status of the birds. All five may be physically incapable for release.
If you are a scofflaw, and ignore the signs, and cut across the walks, the first bird you, and I, come to is a rough-legged hawk. This is the wildest of these raptors, immediately climbing to the highest, sharpest point of the pie, and still fighting the webbing. This startled the bald eagle feeding in the cell (uhm, cage) next right, who hustled back away making eagle sounds of alarm, or disgust, or both.
This rough-leg is one sorry-looking hawk. In his defense, they weren't spotted in Indiana from mid-April until late October last year, as they summer on the tundra and nest on high Arctic cliffs (from Kenn Kaufman, Field Guide to Birds of North America). Heat indexes have been in the century range the last four days, and it had to be rough on a little cold-weather hawk.
Clockwise is another point-of-the slice dweller, a Barred Owl.
Staring at predators makes them intensely uneasy, and I feel big guilt discomfiting animals in prisons (uhm, aviaries), as they can't find a comfortable distance. Predators, like these five raptors, have their eyes on the front of their faces (like us), and staring makes them feel like food (which have eyes on the sides of their skull, the better to see and flee).
Quickly moving on, there is a great horned owl. Looking in those huge, yellow rimmed eyes is looking into a vacuum. The person responsible for the "Wise Old Owl" myth was overserved.
All this is totally unfair to the great horned owl, one powerful predator, taking what prey it wants from where it wishes, from Labrador to Alaska to Mexico, and you can color in everything on your map, from the Arctic Circle south.
Awesome is a word of reverence for me, and using the word to describe, for instance, a dunk in college basketball, is heretical.
That said, it is with all the reverence I can muster that I recognize the Great Horned Owl as one awesome bird. And the best predator of our little group of inmates.
Next along is a red tail, perched calmly three or so feet high at the front of the cell (uhm, cage), eye-level, collected, probably just fed. A big, beautiful hawk from any angle, easy to find, fun to watch perch, fly, soar, hunt, interact with a mate (no, NOT sex. There's more to life, but I must leave the proof to someone else.)
Not so much fun to watch one perch in a cage.
My wish is to fly a red tail someday soon, to watch a big bird own the sky, and return to me.
And then the Bald Eagle. I admit looking at a Bald Eagle, our nation's most recognizable symbol, in a damn cage is like looking at our President in jail. (Except, the Prince of 9/11. I'd really have enjoyed that. And I still have hopes for Cheney in chains.)
So, as stunning as the Bald Eagle was, there was no joy, and I left quickly.
Coming south from Wabash, I had no plans to get east to Grant Creek. I've never come into the area from the north, and the road turned where it shouldn't have, and I was at the bridge.
A Great Blue Heron left, loudly, flying south, under the bridge. A Great Egret stayed, watching.
I turned around and saw a heron and an egret in the reservoir to the south, and a heron and an egret in Grant Creek north of the bridge, and a big pile of fishermen's trash on the bank.
That last always makes me wonder: one goes "outdoors" by choice, to "experience nature" firsthand. One gets, at most, one or two chances a week to do this, fifteen to twenty trips each year. So why bring a bunch of crap, every bit packaged and sealed, then leave all the trash piled or scattered around? Is neck-deep trash a comfort from home?
I used to call such people "pigs" but came to understand that was a slander to hogs everywhere, who never choose to live among their own wastes, but are forced, by the hand of man.
There was a red tail flying over a field towards a corner of a woods, bypassing the salient, corner, tree, and continuing, soon out of view.
And I found a familiar red tail on a utility pole just south across Red Bridge. Thanks.
Nothing much else, but the myriad of life that swarms this area hasn't gone anywhere.
Under a smoke-grey sky.

A line of thunderstorms formed across the width of Northern Indiana early this afternoon.
It reached here after falling apart, and rained for a few too-short minutes.
Whether it was too hot this morning, or too wet this evening, no red tails enlivened life today.
I went to the carp pool to check if the rains allowed them to leave the pond, but there was no runoff in the creek. One fish was over four pounds, so they are not suffering.
Back east, there was a flash of blue into a tree, beautiful glimpse. My thought was blue grosbeak, but my conclusion is an Eastern Bluebird. Still, just a guess.
I went north up "Kestrel Alley", always good for American Kestrel sightings. I try to hold the road in abeyance. When (if?) I get a falconry apprentice license, my trapping target is the female mentioned in an earlier post.
Females are called falcons, and males, tiercels, being approximately one third the size of the female. (Okay, this distinction was presented previously, but it's bound to be on the exam for the license, so I'm reminding me, too.)
Our tiercel kestrel may be the most beautifully colored bird in North America.
The colors are muted by tropics standards, but a kestrel's aversion to forests and woods approaches phobia, as these are the haunts of accipitiers (sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks, and, north a bit, goshawks). All would consider the kestrel a meal, except the gos, who would grab a kestrel out of boredom, and still find room for an ox.
So I risked rousting the big girl again.
At Pipe Creek on Miami CR 950 E, there is a closed gravel pit. The "Kestrel Alley" is a bit north.
On a wire on the road at the pit was a singular silhouette of Indiana birds - a Belted Kingfisher.
A confession of sorts: I haven't seen enough kingfishers, and a sighting is still a Big Deal.
This is the third this summer, and I doubt I've spotted two in any one of the last six decades.
"My" falcon wasn't near the fallow spot, a bit troublesome, not yet worrisome.
She'll be back.

A third hot day. And, just looking, but supposed incipient storms are nowhere to be seen.
Along the Mississinewa River, near the headwaters of the Reservoir, there are four 8X12' signboards that chronicle the fate of the natives.
The first is at the battlefield memorial, where there is a flagpole, said memorial, 12 markers for the soldiers who died there, and an engraved stone marker for the 40 and more Miami who died defending their two villages (think towns) from a surprise attack.
The second signboard is behind the memorial, giving a history of the ford in the river and the subsequent development of that area, today, Jalapa. The ford consists of a six-inch riverwide fault in the limestone slab riverbed. It is visible in the Google mapquest land-sat image. The approximate location is S Bruner Road & 300 W in Grant County, IN. The ford looks like a little falls, about what you would expect from a six-inch cascade.
The third board documents "our" story of the Miami.
In the Treaty of 1838, the Miami were "awarded" 6400 acres, including 10 miles of Mississinewa River frontage. 10 miles square, 10 miles on a side. Okay, this is like giving them back their towns and farms. Except, you know, the towns and farms had been destroyed, and the few remaining Miami were scattered, living in "cabins", up and down the river.
Miami Chief Meshinoga accepted the terms in 1840.
In 1873, a "petition to Congress persuaded (then chief) Meshingomesia to divide this land, under government supervision", among the 63 members of the tribe still living there.
These lands were soon in the hands of "Americans" by way of marriage or purchase.
In need of soul relief, I found that Bruner Road actually exited east, and went looking for raptors. Soon, an American Kestrel chased two LBJ's (Little Brown Jobs) into a shade tree, in a rural front yard. I slowed enough to see anything going to ground-nope-and didn't stop.
Coming up on Grant Creek bridge, I saw Great Egrets in the reservoir. Grant Creek had a Great Blue Heron, and I found a turn-around to backtrack, park, and glass the Egrets.
I walked west down the ridge to the bridge, looking for any vista of the summer pool reservoir that is Grant Creek. Through the foliage, I counted five Great Egrets.
The last time I saw one Great Egret was on the Pigeon River wetlands in LaGrange County, 10-12 years ago. These egrets were 100 miles closer.
I walked back up and into "The Hogback", along the east and north side of the flooded creek.
I saw egrets, but never counted five again.
The heron came back, calling, and I saw a heron from where the call was answered, but was unsure of the canyon-like topography to assume there was more than one.
There are always birds on the wires at Pearson Mill Road, and there was such an assortment I stopped in the road to watch. The main show was the barn swallows, blistering the grime off a signpost from either side and never a brush. Eastern Kingbirds were a superb sideshow, breezing and looping and darting with no apparent purpose, except to show the swallows that yeah, they can hang dust in the air, too.
And my rearview was full of a car stopped in the middle of the road, and I moved over, then followed, subdued.
The good part is the lady was out of her car in her driveway a mile on, and I got to apologize.
On Red Bridge there were two, three dozen barn swallows, under and above the roadway, too, too, many to focus, too enchanting to ignore.
I went over the chip-and-seal, just to check the mile and some haunts of kestrels.
There were four, including a big falcon (males are tiercels, as in a third less the size) that was focused on a low, plat-sized piece of fallow ground where I have seen a kestrel take a sparrow into the soybeans. Maybe her.
Hot, and still hot.
No red tails of note.
One working kestrel.
A very nice drive.

There was something about the Wikipedia entry regards the Mississinewa Battle that didn't seem quite right.
It is noted that the soldiers allowed the Miami hostages to ride their own horses to Fort Greenville (Ohio) in the bitterly cold weather, and, because of this "gift", 300 soldiers suffered frostbite.
Riding a 1000 pound working animal in the cold, except in high winds, is not a freeze-type situation. Throw out the high-wind qualifier, as frostbite is not reported among the 74 (mostly women and children) Miami hostages.
So by the "grace" of their captors, the Miami were spared the freezing, crippling cold of frostbite.
According to the marker at the Battlefield, out of a force of 600, there were twelve soldiers killed and forty-eight wounded.
And 100 horses killed.
The math does not compute. The forty-eight wounded were surely mounted, leaving 452 horses for 540 soldiers. So how does the largess shown the Miami account for 300 cases of frostbite? About 90 soldiers were walking: the disparity here is in the 210 range.
It is too much to swallow that 210 mounted troopers were frostbitten, and no Miamis, "allowed the use of their own horses", thus suffered.
Walked down to the river from the battlefield, and back, and looked in the woods around the memorial for arrow points. After a few minutes, it occurred the only points I was likely to find would be stuck in my shoe.
Driving north, I found a red tail hawk on a post in an old barnlot, ten feet from yesterday's American Kestrel. The red tail didn't tolerate much scrutiny, and left west into the woods in the nonce. Motoring slowly, I found the kestrel, forty yards on, at the very top of a dead tree in the woodlot. I didn't press and he seemed in no hurry to reclaim yesterday's perch.
There was a changing of the guard on the dead tree on Crow Road, a mile east of Grant Creek bridge. There were two Red-bellied Woodpeckers, feuding. Red-bellied woodpeckers are overgrown Downys, but full-bodied, not as svelte. They were almost indiscernible in relative size, yet one would choose a spot to drill for lunch, and the other was on him in seconds. This tree seemed no more promising than a hundred others within a hundred yards, but the tussle continued. They acted too, too much like people, and I moved on.
A fisherman at Grant Creek, and no (rather shy) egrets.
There were a couple of (always entertaining) Barn Swallows at Red Bridge.
The show, though not always spectacular, goes on.

Where Are They?

Last night, in quiet desperation, I bought a fifth (750 ml) of cheap vanilla vodka.
After a sufficient chill in the freezer, I poured a shot into a frozen glass and sipped.
An initial, vague vanilla flavor was quickly and vastly overwhelmed by a lingering finish tasting of dry cleaning solution and spent anti-freeze.
After another 24 hours of conditioning, I tried again. The vanilla was a hint, and that aftertaste was so brutally pronounced I poured the entire bottle down the drain while it still bludgeoned my tastebuds.
This is the first time in 61 years that any bottle was dumped entirely.
Coming back east this evening, nearing the carp pool at Honey Creek, a blue flash crossed into the riparian trees. I thought Eastern Bluebird, but it may have been an Indigo Bunting, as there was one on the wire past the bridge.
The first Indigo Bunting I saw was dead on a canopied country road. I could not believe the iridescent blue, that any living thing (past tense) could be that beautiful. When I looked the little bird up, the description noted the stunning little bunting had a standing date with windshields.
Apparently Indigo Buntings reinvented themselves, as I see them regularly on wires, and only one pancake, in months.
I haven't seen any blue jays. A consistent always-see in my world, from my yard to my town to the trails I walk, I haven't seen one in weeks, months. According to E-Bird (ebird.org) there doesn't seem to be a dearth of reported sightings, yet I have seen/reported exactly none.
The carp were swarming, in what must be a crowd for such a small pool. At least, for once, there was noticeable flow into the pool.
There was a male cardinal just across the bridge. Don't give up on "just another cardinal". Each has distinctive coloration, shadings and highlights, that reveal that every one of the "most distinctive red bird(s) in America" is an individual. Take a look.
300 yards past the bridge there was a red tail in a nice little meadow neatly bisected by Honey Creek. He was on a dead tree, and I got stopped just ahead of him. He tolerated thirty seconds, shook his feathers, and, with a loud kree flew to a leaved tree 80 yards on. I caught up. Within a minute, he called twice, loud, shrill, and flew back west. I couldn't find him.
Surely his plan.

My little horse needed some attention, so I spent my little time with him.
Mister Buckles is a too-smart horse, and he is a much better horse than I am a horseman.
There are things I must provide, and one is supplemental insect control, for the insect population multiplies when the horses occupy the same area. I was a little late, and I always feel a flush of shame to see flies on his face.
Mister Buckles got a little round-pen work, initially not enough, as he chose to pick grass rather than join up. So a few more laps, and a little begging (I really didn't want to heat him up in the fast-warming sun) and it was carrots and Freedom 45 Spot-On. It goes on easily, provides full, rain proof coverage, and there is no spray blowing in the horse's eyes (or yours). And works for two weeks.
I turned Mister Buckles back out with Abra(cadabra), the Appaloosa mare, Briar, a buckskin gelding, and Llucy the llama, pasture police and protector of our small herd.
I drove north to Red Bridge, less than two miles away, on impulse.
I visited Red Bridge in 1955, when it was under construction. Looking from the height of the span, with the small creek meandering northwest far below, I lacked the prescience to envision any future for this massive structure.
I didn't trust my memory, and stopped at the first metal standard (where possible, wooden powerpoles were sunk into the ground; metal poles are anchored to concrete supports on the bridge proper) and checked: it was clean, dry.
I looked over the southeast side of the bridge and down on a gull, a white flash down around in the trees below. I thought "Okay, white gull, how many are there?"
Well, a lot. Here's a quote from David Sibley's Guide to Birds:
"Gull identification represents one of the most challenging and subjective puzzles in birding and should be approached with patient and methodical study. A casual or impatient study will not be rewarded." (Pg 208, Identification of Gulls)
Gee, thanks Dave. How about a little bone. This is not Puget Sound I'm exploring here. So I took a look at Cornell University's most awesome E-Bird (ebird.org) to apply the first rule of bird ID: if it's not supposed to be here, it probably isn't. And found the only gull or tern reported in Indiana in the first week of August, this or last year, is the Ring-billed Gull.
But it will remain a gull, in deference to Mr. Sibley, the Roger Tory Peterson for the next generations. (Admission: heretic I may be, but I don't use the Venerable Mr. Peterson's Guide because of ID rule #1: the occurrence maps are not on the description pages. It doesn't matter how closely your bird resembles the bird in the guide, if he's never been seen northeast of Winslow, Arizona, he's almost surely not on a wire in North Central Indiana.)
And it was on to the stanchion I recalled, and there, on the concrete anchor pad, was the detritus of the Osprey's noon meal yesterday. True to the appellation Fish Hawk, he (or she: no obvious distinction) had caught a panfish, probably a sunfish, keeper-sized for the meat fisherman.
Okay, that was all conjecture based on 3-4" of tail, but that's as good and true as observation gets.
I walked across the roadway to the southeast again hoping, from the elevation, to guess where he took the fish. Instead, I looked down on a dizzying flight of barn swallows, TNTC (Too Numerous To Count), swarming about over the Reservoir. Sweeping, soaring, diving, impossibly close passes, at dizzying speed, in a freeform impossible choreography that may have an ostensible purpose, but must be just fun, the very most fun, and any creature in the universe that could be doing this would be doing this.

The world stopped turning one hot evening in late June when my beautiful friend, my collie, Sweep, passed.
This morning I came up for air and found a five-week old collie puppy.
There was a beautiful red tail hawk perched on top of a powerpole just east of Mississinewa Battlefield. The bird was approximately across the road from the Miami Indian Cemetery. The cemetery lays claim to being the largest Miami Cemetery in Indiana. Before the Miami were civilized and Christianized, they didn't stick dearly departed into the ground to slowly rot, instead conducting an extended viewing, and hastening the Dearly Departed's return to the Sacred Elements.
I don't know what the current whitening term was for the "war" to seize the Miami Indians' Territory, "appeasement", "extirpation", "relocation", "settler protection", you know, the same process that calls extermination "ethnic cleansing" and slaughter of innocents "collateral damage".
So no one who died until the 1870's, before which the Miami had been awarded plots of land and cash settlements, which were, largely, swindled or married from them, is buried there. And they were relieved from "tribal" status, which has never been restored. For example: under US Law, a person 1/64th Seminole receives benefits from one of the largest Tribal Casinos in the country, while a full-blooded Miami has no rights as a native American. None.
So I glassed the red tail, hiding behind the windshield, moving closer, fifty feet at a time, then stopping the engine (the vibrations interfere with 10X glassing), until a car in a hurry to get nowhere (there's one way in, one way out) blasted him off the pole.
A couple of miles around the corner, to the north, I spotted an American Kestrel on a wire in an overgrown barnyard. I watched for a few minutes until the kestrel took wing, doing a 9, circling the perch then heading north.
There was a Great Egret in Grant Creek, wary, interrupted.
Then I drove, and drove, and drove some more.
Turning south to cross Red Bridge and head home, I noted a large, odd-looking shape perched on top of a powerpole on the bridge.
Amazing. An Osprey. Feeding on what I never determined.
I don't recall ever glassing an Osprey, and it was just the best. The longer I watched, the less recognizable the victuals became. Eventually a car behind slowed, and I moved on, to share.
Around the first bend a doe stood in the middle of the road. She moved into the growth on the east side of the road at pace designed to maximize the interest of Abbe, who responded with a frenzy only a companion would abide.
The Old Trail, a handy shortcut, has recently been chip-and-sealed, and a fortuitous k-turn found two red tails at the next intersection.
I watched for a few minutes, and observed something just too cool. The female (assumed, from relative size) flew off to the northwest, towards a small woods. Seconds later the male flew also, and made a pass so vey close it was everything except a collision. Nothing I've read credits red tails with notable flying skills, but this pass was that close.
Wonderful, just wonderful.

Three-day birthday weekend. And summer isn't the best weekendtime, as the reservoirs have too much traffic to begin to accommodate a windshield birder. Note that, at speed, American Kestrels may flare (stunning, with the sun behind) but not fly. When you drive slowly enough for an identification, kestrels fly, usually looping back to the perch.
"What can Brown do for you?" At the onset of this TV ad campaign, my guess is my reaction,
"WTF is 'Brown'?" was shared, to some degree of profanity, with all.
Brown? Brown?
There are a couple of things Brown can do for me. Tell me if a shipment doesn't really need a signature.
Tell me about, you know, some kind of schedule.
I waited from 9am - 12pm, came back about 1:30 pm, and the delivery was 3:30pm. No problem, no signature required, but, in similar circumstances, "What can Brown do for you?"
Well. Start with narrowing delivery times to a half-a-day frame. For those who may have even anything else to do.
I drove a bit hastily about near the home this afternoon. Did not slow enough to glass a wonderful red tail, on top of a pole holding up a few cross-type wire anchors, testing my observational instincts, which came up wanting.
Driving too fast for any birder, I breezed by an American Kestrel, who flared, backlit, an awesome display for any bird. This magnificent little falcon, smaller than a bluejay, is a stone killer, a warrior that will take down much larger birds with regularity, and with the minimal training necessary to share knowledge she (or he) can translate into tactical advantage.
A mile or two on, there were a pair of kestrels, looping quickly, off and on the perch.
I crave a kestrel to fly.