The Gamble

So you might have missed the part about how the current horror of affairs in the Middle East was most recently ignited by an ill-conceived and ill-planned military adventure in Iraq.  Click on Mark Twain above to see Troutbirders take on The Gamble....

Home Waters

Troutbirder reminisces about fly fishing for trout, some good rivers here and in Montana.  Click on Mark Twain above for a review of a good anthology on the same subject....:)

Our Neighbors

It’s late March and I’m on a mission. Actually Mrs. T and I are less than a mile from our home base.  Moving silently I probe the trees with my binoculars looking for clues. Distant crows break the early morning quiet. Have they returned, for the fifth consecutive year I wonder?

There high in the tree overlooking the trout ponds! I move closer but not too close. I do not want to cause any disturbance! My friends, the trout farm eagles have returned. All is well here in Bluff Country

 

A Beautiful Song To Remember

Something made an appearance last week at the Goethite W.M.A. that totally made my day. It was a pair of Meadowlarks. What kind were they? Well, I'm not sure. Mr. Science (Gary my birding mentor) tells me that the Eastern Meadowlark needs singing lessons and the Western sings more sweetly. I will go with that though I had no comparison to hear any difference....

As a child growing up on the East Side of St. Paul, the song of meadowlarks often brightened my day. They lived in a field just across the road from my parents’ home on Johnson Parkway.(Pictured left below)   I often awoke to their beautiful song drifting thru my bedroom window. Today that field is long gone and a nursing home has taken its place, along with miles and miles of suburbs and malls stretching 20 miles to the east, all the way to Wisconsin.

I've thought, more than once in recent years, how long it had been since I heard that lilting song. Decades I think. And last week I heard it again. How sweet it is...

 

And Then All Hell Broke Loose

NBC's Chief correspondent Richard Engel tell it like it was and is..... Click on Mark Twain above for my take on his take