As the owner of a big yard in the suburbs, I see a lot of nature, and nature is pretty much evenly split between happy growing things and and sad dying things. The advantage is pretty plants and the occasional racoon. The drawbacks include dead birds and doomed ones.

I found this dead cock robin on the ramp under the cedar.


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My fondness for crows is well-documented, but today I've become a fan of the American cock robin. Like their cousins the jays, crows are loud-mouth bullies, and I appreciate their tendency to mob bigger birds. The easiest way to spot hawks along the freeway is to look for dive-bombing crows. Usually there's a hawk sitting in a tree below them ( Read more... )

When the idea to ban pit bulls gets floated, well-intentioned citizens routinely make the case that the pit bulls aren't the problem, the owners are. In fact, it's clearly both the owner and the breed that are the problems.

Sure, pit bull owners can be bad. But are we really expected to believe opponents of this law when they say that there's no ( Read more... )

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When does a rabbit chirp like a bird? When it's a doomed baby that's got nothing left in this life to do but cry. Daisy found three baby bunnies in the long grass of the yard. Perfect little adorables, with brown fur, short round ears tucked tight against the back of the neck, a white stripe slipping up from the underbelly along the side, pink ( Read more... )

This morning, Daisy chased swallows for the first time, and it was a wonder to behold. Over at the park, these perfect little swallows fly in low circles over the grass, snapping up insects on the wing. Daisy's chased crows and other birds before, but this was her first time with swallows. Other birds just fly up into the trees, but swallows stick ( Read more... )