Okay, on the off-chance I have any readers, the National Rifle Association never spits, always swallows, and Ted Nugent is whale shit in the Marianas Trench, 7 miles below sea level, where there is no oxygen (too much pressure) and no light. Nuge has his head so far up his ass, for so long, he surely wouldn't notice.

The above photo of a hovering American Kestrel, by Rob Palmer, an absolute genius with a camera, and the ultimate master of raptor photography, is probably copyrighted, so I am probably in violation, but I downloaded it from his site, and, unlike the rest of his work, it wasn't protected. It appears in Kate Davis's Falcons of North America, easily and by far the most lavishly illustrated paperback ever, with, among others, photos by Nick Dunlop, also.

This evening I watched a kestrel come off a fencepost perch in pursuit of a sparrow.

World War I, the "war to end all wars", gave us another killing legacy besides trench warfare and biological weaponry, mustard gas, thought to be so nefarious that its usage was banned by International Treaty. There are cheese-eating surrender monkeys afoot who would posit Agent Orange was the first violation of this treaty, and napalm a close second, but that argument will wait, as the victims of both continue to die.

Another first for WW I was aerial combat, "dogfights" in unfortunate parlance, pitting fighter pilots in mostly meaningless encounters (sorry, Red Baron). There were two notable developments: synchronous-firing machine guns, which allowed pilots to shoot through the propeller blades without shearing them off, and the Immelmann roll, or turn, which put a pursued plane on the tail of its pursuer.

The little sparrow did a perfect 3/4 Immelman, and escaped. The kestrel, powering up for pursuit, was totally out of the chase, and went on.

I will always root on the kestrel, but have only admiration for the sparrow's perfect escape.

We had at least a thousandth-inch of rain today, and I checked some gravel sideroads, and found several kestrels, very heartening. I found no red tails today, and was surely looking in all the wrong places.

Little, if any, solace.