Out on the Bicycle Today

Out on the bicycle today for the first time in two months (one month post surgery).  It felt great, and the weather was beyond perfect.

Canada Geese, all with young, seemed to be everywhere. The water in the canal was up, which no doubt attracted the geese, even as it discouraged the wading birds like Great Blue Herons.

Digging and kayaking are now back on the menu.

Most Dogs Love Lure Coursing

As organized gambling at greyhound tracks has gone the way of the Dodo and Sonny Bono, backyard and open-field lure coursing has grown in popularity.

How does lure coursing work?

Quiet well, actually.

The first lure-coursing machines were made from bicycle wheels with string wound on the rims, and a small rabbit pelt pulled through the grass.

The Big Leap Forward came when the hand crank was replaced with the starter engine off a truck.

The second big leap forward came when pulleys were attached to stakes set in the field, so that the string could be operated as a continuous zig-zag loop over a large area.

Here was mechanical "open-field coursing" in which nothing died, and a disabling rip from barbed wire was never going to be a worry. 

Perfect!

I remember seeing one of the first modern lure-coursing rigs being operated in the very early 1980s, and trying it out with two of my terriers back then. It turns out that a white fluttering plastic bag is about all that is needed to get a dog -- almost any dog -- running like the wind.

The code explodes, and that’s as true for terriers and Basenjis as it is for Whippets and Greyhounds, 

Today, lure coursing rigs are not only used by a wide arrays of dog enthusiasts, but also by zoos giving exercise to Cheetahs and Wild Dogs (as well as a bit of entertainment for visitors). Modified lure coursing rigs have also been used to exercise large hawks and eagles in wildlife parks and sanctuaries.

AKC Finances Are Sliding Into the Toilet

From the July 2025 AKC Board Minutes:

Ted Phillips, Chief Financial Officer, presented interim unaudited financial statements as of May 31, 2025.

▪️On year-to-date revenues of $38.7 million the organization sustained a net operating loss of $1.7 million as compared to the same period of the prior year that resulted in net operating Income of $4 million.

▪️Operating revenues are lower than budget by $5.2 million or 12% and lower than prior year by $2.5 million or 6%. 

▪️Registration revenues from litters and dogs total $14 million trailing budget by 18% and prior year by 7%. 

▪️Recording & event service fees, title recognition fees and event applications fees total $7.2 million are lower than budget by 5% and similar to prior year. 

▪️Advertising, sponsorship and royalties total $7.2 million are lower than budget by 14% and prior year by 13%.

▪️Operating expenses total $40.4 million and are lower than budget by $2.4 million or 6%, but higher than prior year by $3 million or 8%.

See >> https://www.akc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Board-Minutes-July-2025-FINAL-PUBLISHED.pdf?

As of January 2026:

“Net Operating Loss is $5.9 million primarily due to lower registration revenue, excluding investment income of $3.2 million. Operating revenues total $83 million, led by registration (litter and dogs) totaling $28.8 million. Operating expenses total $85.8 million.”

See >> https://www.akc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Board-Minutes-January-2026-FINAL-PUBLISHED.pdf

The System Is Designed to Fail

▪️The system was built by the lowest bidder.

▪️The system is based on quarterly economics and personal incentives rather than lifetime economics and group costs.

▪️The system assumes present dollars is the most important metric.

▪️The system did not budget for maintenance.

▪️The system was cut back until immediate failure, then they added just a bit to avoid immediate failure.

▪️The system was built under the control of white men, ensuring little or no creative input from 93 percent of the world's population. 

▪️The system was built without appreciation of the cost of system failure.

▪️The system does not account for widespread human foibles like greed, willful ignorance, bigotry, and sloth.

▪️The system is immunized against corrective accountability.

▪️The system assumes present conditions will last forever.

Failure of the system is part of the plan; it’s Step One in selling you a “new and improved” system.

The Phony War on Drugs

In 1994, former Nixon aide and Watergate co-conspirator John Ehrlichman proudly told writer Dan Baum that racial control and discrimination was in fact the purpose of the war on drugs.

“At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. ‘You want to know what this was really all about?’ he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. ‘The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.’”

Billy Strings :: Taking Water

Double-crested Cormorant On the Creek

Cormorants generally prefer the big river. They are common there.  This is the first one I’ve seen one on this creek.

Biking Again

Out and about on bikes after two months off. 

Black-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron along the creek.  Notice the long thin white feather coming off the head.  Styling!

Baby Falcons About to Fledge

First baby Peregrine Falcon chick to start leaving the nest this year. I think there are three chicks, though I’ve only seen two at one time so far.

Peregrines at the Nest

Adult Peregrine Falcon flying off her observation perch over the nest.  

The nest was formerly a Raven nest, but the falcons have taken it over for the last four years. Two years ago, the Ravens tried to come back, but the Falcons had other ideas.

In the second picture, you can see one of the three chicks poking its head out of the nest.

Blue Jay Way

An interesting bird along the creek this morning. It was an “off” Blue Jay …. and then both parents showed up to feed it. Oddity explained!

An English Working Cocker

This is what an English WORKING COCKER looks like.  

None like him, before or since. 

Trump Is Their Man

Three Seasons on the Driveway

The Mystery of a Globe

I was once in a remote section of the Tasili N'Ajer in southern Algeria, when a Turaeg wanted to examine my fancy Tissot watch. I took it off, and it disappeared into a sea of hands before coming back a minute later. 

“Ca marche avec essence?" I was asked. Did the watch run on gasoline? They assumed the wind up part popped off to fill it up.

Before And After

Mushrooms Coming Up

As expected, 7 days of rain has driven up a flush of various kinds of mushrooms.

The first one is the Elegant Stinkhorn fungus (Mutinus elegans).  It is also called the "dog penis" mushroom. It takes buckets of rain to drive these up, and they do not last long.

The ones below might be Wine Cap mushrooms gone a bit long.  The last picture is definitely Wine Caps.

Blue and Gray, Green and Red

Monocacy Civil War battlefield, Maryland. just down the road a few miles. Every inch of Virginia and Maryland was soaked in blood and I hunt where the dead have fallen. I do not wonder why the soil is red.

Will This Work?

I have a wonderfully vocal, but problematic, Carolina Wren nesting about the house. 

Her first nest (successful) was in the front door wreath, which curtailed front door exit and entry for several weeks.

Last week, I noticed her inside the open garage, carrying pine needles in her beak.  She couldn’t possibly be nesting in there with dogs and the paint cans and me knocking about with tools and trash bags, could she?

She could.

My wife found the rather enormous nest, built almost overnight, in the box of microfiber cloth used for furniture and general cleaning.

Today, with the garage door open, the wren was back — very vocal and quite disturbed that her nest was in the same location, but no longer in the deep protective box.

Something had to give, and I decided to be firm but helpful.

I cut down an Almond Milk jug, cut a few drainage holes into the bottom, spray-painted it a dull green, and wired it into the fork of a small tree at the entrance to the garage — the very tree this very loud wren uses, every day, to serenade.  I then shoved the over-large nest inside, doing as best I could to preserve the round bowl inside. 

It was a tight fit, but that’s how Carolina Wrens like it.

Will the wren see her repositioned nest in the new location?  

I have high hopes.

Red-bellied Woodpecker Chick Reuniting With Mom

The night-time hours of predation by fox, raccoon, and possum are behind us, and the Red-bellied Woodpecker chick is very animated this morning. Mom knew right where she was, and called instantly.  I put a suet block in the feeder to help her along.

A Great Package of Threads

IF YOU ARE ON THREADS, I recommend thewokesalaryman.  

All the art is hand-drawn. 

Every post could be a children’s book of enlightenment.