Monday, May 19, 2025

God Bless Big Government




Last week, while checking on a bee swarm trap, I hear wild turkey off in the woods, towards the fields.

Today, as I was driving by that same field, bordered by woods and the river, I saw the unmistakable outline of a full turkey fan in the woods border.  I whipped the car around and got a few shots of this Tom courting these hens.

The resurgence of Wild Turkeys is one of America’s great conservation stories.

Back when my grandfather was born, the Wild Turkey was teetering on the edge of extinction. Today we have more Wild Turkeys in America's woods than existed in pre-Columbian times.

How is that possible?

Good question. But before we get there, let's dwell a little bit longer on the miracle.

You see, it generally requires a lot of forest -- 2,000 acres or more -- to maintain the kind of food crop and cover that Wild Turkey need to thrive.

The reason for this is that in the dead of winter, Wild Turkey depend on acorns and other nuts and seed for survival. This food is only produced in abundance by mature hardwood trees -- oak, beech, dogwood, cherry and gum.

So what's the big deal? We have a lot of forest in America.

True enough now, but not as true a century ago in the Eastern U.S. and much of the Midwest. Back around 1900, virtually all the big stands of large trees had been logged out in the Eastern U.S. and across much of the Midwest as well. As the trees vanished, Wild Turkey populations plummeted.

Wild Turkey populations were further pushed to oblivion by rapid improvements in gun accuracy, and weak game laws that had yet to catch up to the changing dynamics of landscape and technology.

By 1910, there were fewer than 30,000 Wild Turkeys left in America.

Then, an amazing turnaround occurred. That turnaround started with passage of the Lacey Act in 1900. The Lacey Act ended commercial hunting of wild animals.

Commercial hunting is not sport or recreational hunting -- it is the opposite of that. In commercial hunting, the goal is not having a fun day in the field to fill your own freezer with wild meat, but a full year in the field to fill the freezers of 10,000 people whose primary concern is the price per pound.

To put it simply, commercial hunting is to sport hunting what gill-netting is to fly fishing. One comes with a factory ship attached; the other a simple wicker creel.

No single action has done more to improve the status of American wildlife than passage of the Lacey Act. Prior to its passage, commercial hunters bled the land white, shooting everything that moved. Wild game merchants sold pigeons for a penny apiece, and ducks for only a little more.

Hunters, using cannons loaded with shrapnel, would shoot 400 ducks in a day in Maryland's Eastern Shore marshes, while market deer hunters would set up bait stations near roads and shoot 20 deer in a night.

The Lacey Act helped put an end to this kind of unrestricted slaughter of American wildlife, but it did nothing to restore badly degraded habitat.

Wildlife without habitat is a zoo.

Habitat without wildlife is scenery.

America -- still a young nation -- remembered when it had both, and it wanted it all back.

The second step on the road to wildlife recovery occurred between 1905 and 1911. It was during this period that Theodore Roosevelt set aside 42 million acres as National Forest and created an additional 53 National Wildlife Refuges as well.

It was also during this period that Congress passed the Weeks Act authorizing the U.S. government to buy up millions of acres of mountain land in the East that had been chopped clean of its forest in order to obtain wood for railroad ties, paper, firewood, and timber.

With the Depression of the 1930s, and rapid migration of millions of people from the rural countryside to the city, more and more marginal farmland began to revert back to woody plots.

Spontaneous forest regeneration in Appalachia, along with tree-planting by the U.S. Government-funded Civilian Conservation Corps, helped restore more than 6 million acres of hardwood forests on denuded land purchased under the Weeks Act.

In 1937, the Wildlife Restoration Act (aka, the Pittman-Robertson Act) initiated a new tax on rifles, shotguns and ammunition, with this dedicated revenue going to help fund wildlife conservation.

Pittman-Robertson Act funds were used to purchase and lease millions of acres of public hunting lands and to fund wildlife reintroduction efforts for Whitetail Deer, Canada Geese, Elk, Beaver, Wood Duck, Black Bear, and Wild Turkey.

In the case of Wild Turkey, initial restocking efforts were not successful. Turkey eggs were collected from wild birds, and the poults that were hatched were released into the wild. Unfortunately, these pen-raised birds were quickly decimated by predation and starvation.

New tactics were tried. A few adult Wild Turkeys were caught in wooden box traps intended for deer. These Wild Turkey were then moved to suitable habitat, but these adults birds also perished under the onslaught of predation.

The reintroduction of Wild Turkeys was beginning to look hopeless.

After World War II, game managers began to experiment again. This time, cannon nets -- large nets propelled by black powder rocket charges -- were used. These nets enveloped entire turkey flocks at once.

Moving an entire flock of Wild Turkeys seemed to work. The first few flocks that were relocated out of the Ozarks (the last stronghold of the Wild Turkey) began to thrive, in part because regrown forest provided more food stock for the birds to live on. The millions of acres of mountain land purchased in 1911 under the Weeks Act had, by now, become large stands of maturing hardwoods in the National Forest system.

Systematic restocking of Wild Turkey continued through the 1950s and 60s, and by 1973, when the National Wild Turkey Federation was formed, the population of wild birds in the U.S. had climbed to 1.3 million.

With the creation of the National Wild Turkey Federation, more sportsmen and private land owners were recruited for habitat protection and Wild Turkey reintroduction.

Today, the range of the American Wild Turkey is more extensive than ever, and the total Wild Turkey population has climbed to 5.5 million birds.

Wild turkey hunting is now a billion-dollar-a-year industry, with 2.6 million hunters harvesting about 700,000 birds a year.

To be clear, successsful wildlife reintroduction, and habitat management is a “big government" program. Without Uncle Sam -- and your tax dollars -- much of America's wildlife would now be gone.

It was Uncle Sam -- and Mother Nature's natural fecundity -- that brought back the Wild Turkey, the Beaver, the Elk, the Whitetail Deer, the Black Bear, and the Bald Eagle. Ted Nugent and the National Rifle Association were nowhere to be seen, and neither were Bass Pro Shops or salesmen pushing Yamaha ATVs.

So next time you are in forest or field, remember Uncle Sam, and thank God for Mother Nature. Whether you know it or not, your hunting and fishing has always depended on both of them.



Sunday, May 18, 2025

The Berry Patch


The deer-fenced Berry Patch, with 6 grape vines, 8 Raspberries  8 Blackberries, and 3 Nanking Cherries, saw 18 tomato plants and six hot pepper plants added to the square. I have sprouted some cucumber and pumpkin plants, but I’m not sure where they’ll go.

Friday, May 16, 2025

Shasta Viburnum In Bloom

I bought 12 Shasta Viburnum in the Fall at auction from a nursery going out of business.  Bidding was on the internet, and the plants were unseen and winter bare when I picked them up.  Were they alive?  They didn’t look alive.

The good news is every single plant, acquired at deep discount, has sprung to life.  The Shasta Viburnums are about three feet tall now, but will grow to a mature height of 6-8 feet and a width of 9-12 feet.. In flower, and full-size, they should be magnificent.

The Roses Are Roaring Along

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Lots of Wine Cap Mushrooms



I’ve been breaking up the big patches of Wine Cap mushrooms fruiting in the yard to sow the mycelium over an even larger area. 

Stropharia rugosoannulata is a large, edible, commercially grown agaric that flourishes in woodchips of the kind I have all through the yard.

I’m not a great lover of edible mushrooms, but I have had an interest in mushrooms for over 40 years, and pioneered the use of Purina Dog Chow as a food base on agar plates in college.



Peaches!



I did not expect to get peaches on my newly planted, and quite small, peach trees, but they’re loaded with infant produce.  

No sign of fruit (yet) on the apples, cherries, plums, and pear, but they all flowered, and were no doubt pollinated by the bees.

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Rats and Red Clover

This field of blooming red clover is next to the river and about 300 feet from where I have a honey bee swarm trap set up.

Red Clover is the source of the the blood thinner Coumadin, and the rat poison Warfarin, which is a slow-kill repeat-bait poison and among the safest and most effective rat poisons in common use.

Warfarin was discovered after Canadian cattle ate improperly stored (moldy) red clover and began to hemorrhage and die. In 1930 the active ingredient "coumarin" was isolated from this clover. In 1940 the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation patented a coumarin compounded called Warfarin (named after the foundation's initials). In 1952 warfarin was first used as an anticoagulant on humans, and today it (or some other coumarin derivative) is used by patients with artificial heart valves or who are in danger of thrombosis (blood clots).

When used as a rodenticide, warfarin should be set out in feed-on-demand bait stations for at least two weeks. Other anticoagulants that work about the same as warfarin are brodifacoum, bromadiolone, chlorophacinone, diphacinone, fumarin, pival, and PMP. Some rat and mouse populations have become resistant to warfarin and other anti-coagulants -- a good reason to temporarily discontine warfarin after a few months and switch to zinc phosphate or another quick-killing raticide.

Average Vs Median

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

The Mace In the Hedge



Mace Sedge or Grey Sedge is a Maryland native that is common in the forest understory near rivers.

Monday, May 12, 2025

New Wheels for My Wife



To celebrate my wife’s second total knee replacement, both of which went well and with good recovery, I bought her a new e-bike with a very low step through.  

So far, I’ve only ridden it down the driveway (24 miles per hour, no peddling, due to gravity alone), and back up again (an incline steep enough that it foiled a Kubota front end loader back when we had ice).  Up hill was no problem and I hit 14 mph without trying.

I ordered this from my phone, and it was delivered to my door within 36 hours which I thought was quite remarkable.  I bought a two year warranty with it too.  

Prices on every kind of bicycle are about to go through the roof due to Trump tariffs, and there will be shortages too as fewer ships will be crossing the oceans.  Almost every bike sold in the US is now made in Taiwan or China.

If One Doesn’t Get You, The Other Will

 


Sunday, May 11, 2025

The First Black Pope?

It turns out that Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope’s maternal grandmother was a Creole who hailed from New Orleans’ 7th Ward and his maternal grandfather claimed Haiti as his birthplace.

Yep, the new Pope is not a “pure-bred” under the “one drop rule” that is the beating heart of the Kennel Club’s sniffing pretensions and classification system.

The one drop rule?  What’s that?

Wikipedia notes that “the one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry is considered black.”

Right. 

Same thing in the Kennel Club.

One drop of any other breed, and Kennel Club matrons will tell you that your dog is a mutt produced by “back yard breeders,” even as they raise up their 50-year old breed created by a puppy peddler.

This is an old game of created privilege and exclusion, name-calling and pretension, vanity and denial.

How can we marginalize more? How can we exclude and “other” more? How can we segment and divide more?

You’re white?

Are you?

Really?

Here’s the Benjamin Moore paint chip chart. They don’t have a color just called white. So what shade shall we call you? Mango smoothy? Bavarian egg shell? Lily of the Valley?

Remember there’s only one correct answer, and if you are not that one correct answer, we’ll simply describe you as “swarthy” or a “wog” with “a touch of the tar” about you.

If we are being particularly cruel, we’ll just say you’re French. 

Hey, don’t blame me.  I don’t make the rules. 

That dog? He’s not a pit bull. We know that because he’s not registered with the registry I salute, and never mind that the type is older than the nation, much less any canine registry.

That dog? He’s not a poodle. We know that because he’s not registered with the registry I salute, and never mind that the type is older than the nation, much less any canine registry.

You’re a Scotsman? I think not! 

No true Scotsman would put ice in his whiskey or sugar on his oatmeal.

No true Scotsman would speak English or wear anything but Woad.

No true Scotsman.  It’s an appeal to purity, and it’s used to define people out based on some artificial (and often just-invented) criterion.

It’s all a bit tiring, which is why I propose a radical reimagining of people and dogs

How about we judge people and dogs by what they DO?

How about no matter who they are, we treat them like they are sentient beings too easily abused and too rarely helped?

How about we try to dial down the asshole quotient between our ears?

You say you can’t tell if the person in front of you at the coffee house is male or female? Why does it matter?

You say you can’t tell if the woman in the light blue bedsheet walking past the window is a nun in her habit or a muslim in her hijab? Why does it matter?

You need to know the race, ethnicity, sexual history, fecundity, and religion of the person you are voting for? Why does it matter? 

How about asking folks what they do?

Oh, you’re an attorney, former 20-year prosecutor, former Attorney General of California, former Senator, and former Vice President? You have an exemplary and unbroken record of excellent and rising performance throughout your entire life? You have surrounded yourself with excellent people in both your professional and personal life? 

Huh. 

Oh, you’re a guy who inherited a fortune and then went bankrupt six times? You have a 40-year track record of failed businesses, broken marriages, and tax fraud? You are famous for your misogyny and racism, your narcissism and casual cruelty? You can barely read, but lie like a fish can swim? You have surrounded yourself with criminals, crackpots, and grifters in both your professional and personal life?

Yeah, I can see this is going to be a hard political choice for the lead paint-chip eating crowd to make.

Oh, and that lead paint chip you’re eating?

Be sure it’s the right color… because that’s the important part according to the KKK and the Kennel Club.

And don’t even get me started on the name thing.  

He was “Bob” last week, and now he’s Leo the fourteenth?  

Gimme a break.  

And this guy is a citizen of three different countries?

Oof.  

Good luck getting past US immigration and customs enforcement with THAT!

The Machines That Train Us



Do you have a car? If so, have you noticed how it has trained you to put on your seat belt? Why is that annoying (but not painful) chime used in every new car? Simple: it saves lives. An annoying sound in the quiet isolation of a car is a pretty good trainer because the sensor never sleeps and always chimes — you cannot ignore it for long.

Have you ever put on an Apple Watch? Why does it have haptic tapping? Simple: humans can ignore a great deal of low-volume sounds in a crowded world (we do it every day), but find it much more difficult to ignore even the tiniest skin tap. Haptic tapping works well to give notice, and if it is paired to a meaning, is a great trainer.

Thursday, May 08, 2025

Maryland’s Bird County



Frederick County has been officially recognized as Maryland's first "Bird County" by the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership for its  efforts in ecosystem restoration, environmental education, and habitat protection.

A Barbie Collie Is a Real Thing

The Dog Has Thoughts

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Growing 100 Cat Mints



I’ve ordered 100 Cat Mint (Nepeta Faassenii Walkers Low) rooted plugs to be grown out in 6” pots. A cattle panel greenhouse cover may get installed over this in the Fall — we’ll see if it’s needed.

Cat Mint is deer-resistant, produces a profusion of long-blooming bluish-purple flowers, and can tolerate rocky and clay soils.  It will top out at 2-3 feet tall and wide, and should do great as an accent understory in the sunny orchard.
 

Imagine This Dinner

It really happened.

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Active Management in Motion

There's been a lot of active land management at the Audubon sanctuary up the road, and it was desperately needed. Multiflora and callery pear have been cut, dozed, and killed. Mimosa has been marked for cutting. It’s good work. These tree tubes appear to be too close together, but that’s because in the mix are trees that will die after 20 years, leaving space for oaks, maples and other trees that will go the distance.

A Scion of the Wye Oak

This is the unmistakable shape of a field-grown white oak, Quercus Alba.

This tree is just up the road from me, and is a progeny of the 460-year-old Wye Oak that was felled by a storm in 2002. A single branch that came down from the Wye Oak in 1984 weighed 70,280 lbs.

Tree Swallow




Fortified Against Predators

I visited the local Audubon Sanctuary up the road from me.

The Tree Swallows have arrived, but I think they are not yet raising chicks. My guess is a visit 2 weeks from now will show a lot of bird box defense from the parents.

The bird boxes here are heavily armored against predators, with pole cans, under massive cones (often serrated), and entrance tubes on the boxes as well. A lot of poles have slinkies attached under the pole cans to discourage climbing snakes.

Einstein and Chaplin


Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin attend the premiere of Chaplin's film "City Lights" in Los Angeles, on February 2, 1931. Credit: socolorization on Instagram

Monday, May 05, 2025

My Bee Keeping Assistant

Misto is waiting for me to catch a bee swarm. Patience grasshopper!

Water Makes Forest Floors Interesting

Popping Up All Over






We’ve had a lot of rain the last three or four days, and I counted 54 separate mushroom colonies fruiting on the wood mulch in the yard.

Mycelium are the engines of growth for trees, and mushrooms are the fruiting body of vast fungus colonies that are often symbiotic with tree roots.

The Song of the Forest

A Carolina Wren in full-throated song this morning.

Sunday, May 04, 2025

The Yardbirds

I put on the Merlin app while I power-washed a bit of concrete, and these are the birds that were heard:





Thursday, May 01, 2025

Sex, Carp, and Bees



I’m feeling pretty good about the honey bee swarm traps I have just put out. 

The first two are located along the banks of a river in forest and partial shade, and though they were just put up yesterday, they were being visited by bees even though it was just 60 degrees out this morning.  

I put out two more swarm traps this morning, both in riparian forest in trees on high banks.  All the traps are located at least several miles from each other.

While I was putting up the third trap, there was an enormous splash in the river below me, and it was perhaps a dozen large (3 foot) carp mating. I took that as a good sign, and took a quick video with my phone.  Vigrous action at the 1-minute mark.

I am putting a fifth swarm trap on my upper deck, right off the master bedroom. This swarm trap is a full deep box with 10 frames, and is what I hope will trap back the bee colony that swarmed off into my neighbors locust tree, about 200 feet away.  It’s a good sign that locator bees showed up within 15 minutes of placing the box



Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Anything That Helps the People

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people. —Harry Truman, 1952

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

We Are All in Peril

“The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” — Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Monday, April 28, 2025

Honey Bee Trapping

I assembled two honey bee swarm traps out of 5-gallon buckets today. I have high hopes they will work, as I was visited by bees while constructing them. 

The orange “gate” is repurposed from honey storage, and can be closed when a swarm of bees are inside, to facilitate movement to a real hive. 

Bees are attracted to bees wax, which has been heavily slathered around the outside of the orange gate, as well as painted thickly on the inside walls of the bucket.

A deep frame was cut in half and friction-mounted inside as a friendly “starter” for a swarm. In addition, a cotton ball or two soaked in lemon grass oil will go inside. If there has been no action by the third week in May, I will re-up the lemon grass oil and add a small dose of Nasarov, a bee attractant pheromone.  

These will be mounted as high as I can, along a riparian forest running through farm country. I’ve never trapped bees before, but I’m told this is the way.