Diary of a Mad Natural Historian

Some people (me) post GPS data from lame little trips on Rte. 128. Others - see here - post data on bar-hopping. In this case, the bars are floating on the igarapé do Tarumã Açu (a tributary of the Rio Negro), just west of Manaus. I’ve got radio towers and he has peacock bass - don’t know about you, but I’d rather be there.

I’m working on converting Mr. Lawrence’s track data to something that’ll show a path in Google Earth - so far, I’ve gotten waypoints and that may be where it ends - we’ll see.

The N810 I recently purchased has a built in GPS receiver. I had a drive to do this morning and figured I’d put it to the route-finding test. There was very little route to find - directions were about as easy as can be imagined - a perfect first outing. Call me conservative, but I prefer to shake things down before I’m in desperate need of them (when possible). There are two options, as far as I can tell, on the N810:

• Wayfinder comes preloaded on the N810 with a big caveat - to get route finding, you need to spend $$ to upgrade to the ‘full’ version. At this point it looks like a 36 month subscription is about $140 - too rich for my blood.
• Maemo Mappper is a free open source app that’s a one-click install, To get voice directions you also need to install flite, so maybe I should characterize it as a two-clicker.

I spent 10 minutes or so yesterday with Maemo Mapper - figuring out how to ask for directions, download maps along the route, etc. First thing this morning, I fired up Mapper and set out. A note on the N810’s GPS performance - every review you read says the same thing - it takes forever for the receiver to find satellites. True fact. I think my ancient Garmin 12XL comes up faster. However, once it’s up the N810 does a great job staying connected. I drove with the little beastie on the passenger seat (the Garmin would have lost signal for sure) and it knew where I was throughout the trip. No tunnels - it would be interesting to see how quickly it re-composed itself once above ground again - but as I said, baby steps. The voice directions were just fine; standard syntho-voice, something I prefer - don’t startle me with a “who the heck is in the car?” moment. All in all, a positive experience - encouraging for the first time out.

Mapper generates a track as you move - I saved the ‘going away’ track and loaded it to my server. Right-click here, choose save link as and it’ll load into Google Earth like a charm. Some pics from the ride:

Local point of interest

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Navigator/radio operator’s station

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Got the radio on

I’m like the roadrunner

Alright

I’m in love with modern moonlight

128 when it’s dark outside

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(I’ll bet a million bucks Steve knows exactly where these antennae are.)

Some pictures taken during the last week or so…

My office spider, a male Lasiodora parahybana. He has a small fan club led by a middle-school girl (her curiosity and fearlessness rock).

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A couple dart frog pictures taken when I dropped by a fellow frogger’s place to pick up a D. fantasticus. An E. bassleri Black in an ?Aechmea?:

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And a Phyllobates terriblis - the really toxic one - looking tough.

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Shifting gears a bit - a couple awful pictures of a killer vehicle. Spotted in Portsmouth on a misty evening, a Swedish Unimog. It looks like it’s set up for pumper duty - man, I love these trucks!

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“Yes. Your breath and a buffalo fart.”

With that bit of juvenilia, we kick off a feature I’ve had rattling around in my head for some time now. Out in the world of stuff, there are objects that go together perfectly and create mental images more interesting and exciting than one would expect from simple addition (n.b. - with all due respect to Bucky, I refuse to use the s-word).

Because of the time I’ve spent recently in the southern edge of the great circumpolar boreal forest, I’m going to start with two things that mean north woods to me:

The crooked knife.

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I don’t remember where I first encountered the crooked knife - maybe McPhee’s Survival of the Bark Canoe - but since then I’ve run across them in places that make me think of cedar swamps, balsams, sphagnum, and tussock-hopping. The Hudson’s Bay Company museum in Montreal has a couple nice examples, I saw one in Old Town, but - sad to say - I don’t have one yet. If you want to know more, Mocotaugan: The Story and Art of the Crooked Knife is available on line.

Tumplines.

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Tumplines are not unique to the north woods; people all over the world use them for carrying burdens. That being said, for me they mean one thing - portaging. You can rig them on canoes - especially useful if you are paddling an old wood and canvas canoe which may not have perfectly placed thwarts (the builder assuming tumpline use anyway) - wannigans, pack baskets, barrels, you name it.

There are other things that go along with this dynamic duo: a decent axe, a pole, the afore mentioned wannigan and packbasket, a freighter pack frame (with a fresh moose rack and cape on it), a reflector oven with a pan of bannock cooking away. Woo-hoo - still plenty of time to go canoeing - the water around here isn’t close to freezing over.

Heading north yesterday, I noticed that a neighbor had pulled his Ultravan out of the barn. I popped by this morning to ask permission to take some pictures and got a surprise. I didn’t know these folks - had only spotted the Ultravan nose peeping out of the barn on previous trips past - turns out they are the folks that drive the Isetta, the Messerschmitt, and other little vehicles in the Madbury Day parade. Also, very nice people. Not only did I get permission to photograph the Ultravan, I got a lot of info about the vehicle and I got a quick tour of the basement (Daihatsu three-wheeler, France Jet, motorcycles, outboards) and the garage, where the current active project sits: a Goggomobil Dart. Pictures:

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The whole photoset is here.

The weather isn’t going to cooperate forever (in fact, the remnants of Noel are supposed to scream through tomorrow), so we went back north to the covers today.

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I hunted Boone for just a short time - turned him loose in a pocket cover with Dinah. He goes to it with a will, but when we circled back to the truck after 15 minutes, his legs were shaking. I sat down on the ground next to him and we just relaxed for a bit.

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Tamarack (aka The Larch per Python, Monty)

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Janey was wonderful. She can be frustrating - she’s field trial stock and wants to range too far for the kind of covers we hunt. If she doesn’t find birds as quickly as she thinks she should, her urge to range and self hunt grows - thus the e-collar she always wears. But, and it’s a big but, what a nose! What staunchness! She’s one of those dogs that will not release from point if you haven’t flushed the bird she knows is there. If I go in and tell her “OK” and she doesn’t move, I know I need to kick around a bit more - and be ready. She ran one big cover for an hour and a half today. Her final flourish, as we got back to the truck, was to lock up on a bird. I was 150 feet away - not too bad - it was reasonably open - and as I started towards her, a grouse went up to my left (Janey was at 2 o’clock). “Oh, crap”, said I, “the bird must have run.” She didn’t move. I kept walking towards her and a second grouse went up right where she indicated. As I swung on the grouse, I heard a woodcock go up - Janey had managed to line on the 2 birds and not bump either. I never saw the woodcock - only heard it - but I did see the grouse (yum).

The cover, just before it opened up for Janey’s last find (those aspen/poplar/popple are about 1 1/2″ in diameter and 1′ to 3′ apart):

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Dinah has come a long way in two working days. When she first hit the ground Wednesday, she was working on defining “gamboling”. By her second cover today, she was moving pretty smoothly, using her nose (she’s not sure exactly what smell is the most important, but she know it’s one of those scents) and when she bumped her last woodcock, she spun and threw a flash point. I love watching a puppy figure out birds - there’s a fit there that is sublime - the world’s best key clicking into a damn fine lock. Not to get too full of myself - let’s end on a lighter note. There are a lot of moose in the woods where we hunt. You’ll never confuse their droppings with deer turds…

I took a day off yesterday and went north to where the pa’tridge (ruffed grouse for non-New Englanders) and woodcock, she run free and wild. When I’m bird hunting, I’m not thinking deep thoughts; one of the many things I love about it is that I’m paying attention to the moment - the dog, the cover and occasionally the bird. So… nothing earth shattering to report - some pictures interspersed with some smells.

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New fallen leaves. Smokeless powder.

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Wood smoke from a distant stove.

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Peat bog funk (very different from salt marsh funk - another fave).

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Goldenrod crushed underfoot.

I wonder if Christopher Brosius at I Hate Perfume could put together a Grouse Woods scent? Anyone who knows me, knows that I am anything but metro- (the phrase ‘lipstick on a pig’ comes to mind), but some of the smells he puts together? Burning leaves? At the Beach 1966? In the Library? Hmm…

A few additional pictures (there should be more along soon) on my ‘bird hunting ‘07‘ Flickrset.

Via Cool Tools:

A second skin for your Moleskine that itself will become an elegant heirloom. Priced at $39.95 it is an excellent value and will provide exceptional service, becoming a comfortable second skin for that valuable Moleskine. We used our regular English kip, a thin very tight-grained leather that is exceedingly durable. (Also available in Chocolate or Black calf finished cowhide or buffalo, depending upon availability.)

Droolworthy - and Gfeller Casemakers offer some other wicked pissah leather goods. I’m sure Gfeller is a familiar name to some out there (my money is on RF, for one), but they are new to me.

This looks like an interesting CD for dreamers like me. “I really need to get this, just in case I end up in Siberia in the next year or so!” Yeah, right…

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How much do you want to bet that the motorcycle in the picture above is a Ural? I don’t think I could fit 3 dogs, 1 hawk, 1 falcon and a yurt into the sidehack, but who cares? Wishes are free! And a pony!

A bit of suspension trivial - until a few minutes ago, I thought all forks like the ones on the Urals were Earles forks. The great Wikipedian oracle tells me that all Earles forks are leading link forks, but the converse is not true - location of the pivot point is the key criterion.

CD via Birding Mongolia.