James Todd Smith better known as LL Cool J is an American rapper. If you didn't know then LL Cool J stands for "Ladies love Cool James." Perhaps it should be ML Cool J as well!
As well as being a rapper (his latest album being Exit 13), LL has also acted in a number of films. He is based in Manhasset, New York.
Back with more hot celebs soon...
Caption: Twitchers gather on the North Norfolk Coast Path. This photo by gavinandrewstewart is used here courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
I can’t speak to the quality of the wines produced by Onabay Vineyards, but the owners of this Long Island vineyard are clearly attuned to the land. They describe the 18-year-old vineyard thusly:Today, the property encompassing the vineyard consists of over 180 acres of fertile fields, meadows, and forests as well as over a mile of bay and creek frontage. It is a wondrous, peaceable kingdom of great horned owls, deer, osprey, herons, and shorebirds. Striped bass, bluefish, and flounder abound in the tidal creeks and the deeper bay.
I was drawn to the artistic avian labels that grace the bottles of wine produced by Onabay. All three labels are illustrated here.
Comparisons:Totals.—Measurable amounts of precipitation (i.e., ≥0.01 inches) in the form of rain or snow fell on 77 percent (24) of 31 days, with a total accumulation (water equivalency) of 3.65 inches (0.12 inches/day, or 0.15 inches/day with measurable precipitation).
Rainfall.—Moisture in the form of rain or a rain/snow mix was recorded on 9 days with a total accumulation of 1.82 inches attributed solely to rain (0.06 inches/day, 0.20 inches/day with rain or a rain/snow mix). A freezing rain that fell on the morning of the 26th created severe icing conditions on area roads. Snowfall.—Precipitation in the form of snow was recorded on 22 days, with measurable accumulations on 18 days totaling 28.9 inches (0.93 inches/day, 1.31 inches/day with snow, and 1.61 inches/day with measurable snow); the water equivalency from new snow was 2.88 inches as measured from the rain gauge (0.099 inches/1.0 inch of snow) versus 2.96 inches as measured from a core sample taken from a snowboard (0.102 inches/1.0 inch of snow). The highest 1-day total was 5.0 inches on the 22nd. Snow Cover and Snow Depths.—The areal extent of snow cover was 50 percent or more on 27 days, and 100 percent on 26 days. Average snow depth on the 27 days with 50 percent or more snow cover ranged from 0.5 to 10.0 inches (on the 22nd), with a median of 3.0 inches. The amount of water on the ground in the form of snow or ice ranged from 0.03 to 1.94 inches (on the 23rd), with a median of 0.43 inches. On average, each inch of snow on the ground (new and old combined) yielded 0.18 inches of water (range 0.02 to 0.46).
Temperature, Relative Humidity, and Dew Point (at 7:00 AM):At the official weather station in South Bend, Indiana (located 12 miles SE of this station), the precipitation total for the month (3.79 inches) was 23 percent above the norm of 3.09 inches. By contrast, total snowfall (16.8 inches) was 12.5 percent below the norm of 19.2 inches. The 30-year (1951-1980) mean December precipitation at Niles, Michigan (located 4.5 miles ENE of this station) is 3.18 inches, while the mean December snowfall for the same period is 15.8 inches.
Previous Reports for 2009 Water Year: October 2008, November 2008.Temperature.—High (51 on 27th), Median 22, Low (2 on 22nd). Freezing or sub-freezing temperatures were recorded on 27 days. Relative Humidity.—High (99 on 11th), Median 74, Low (51 on 7th). Dew Point Temperature.—High (47 on 27ty), Median 14, Low (-6 on 21st).
At one time, it was believed there were as many as five billion Passenger Pigeons in eastern North America. By the mid nineteenth century, their numbers began to decline sharply – killed by sportsman, commercial hunters and by farmers angry as the birds began raiding farm fields as forests disappeared to logging. Jon Wuepper, a naturalist and historian, documented the decline of the pigeon in southwest Michigan by scouring sixty-plus years of newspaper articles, beginning in the late 1830’s. He traced the decline through 1894, when the last bird was killed in the area. Wuepper tells the story.The audio file (.mp3) has a running time of about 8 minutes.
This [2007] was an excellent year for finding birds in Berrien County. The species total for 2007 was 279, which is well above the 40-year average of 259.Two additional reports from 2007 also bear mentioning: (1) One to two individual Whooping Cranes from the eastern reintroduction project paused in northeastern Berrien County from April 1 to May 22 enroute to their “breeding” location in Wisconsin. (2) A banded Barn Owl found dead in Lincoln Township, the casualty of a car collision, was determined to have been a captive-reared bird that was released in Dupage County, Illinois, as part of a reintroduction effort.
Remarkably, four new species were added to the county list in 2007. Two Black-necked Stilts were discovered in early May and at least one Black Rail was located in mid-May. In the fall, a Sage Thrasher was observed and photographaed, as was a Say’s Phoebe. Other very notable sightings this year included Trumpeter Swan (3rd county record), Black Vulture (2nd county record), California Gull (10th county record), Chuck-will’s-widow (3rd county record), Rufous Hummingbird (5th county record), Painted Bunting (2nd county record), Red-necked Phalarope, LeConte’s Sparrow, Hoary Redpoll, and both Red and White-winged crossbills. Since the first Field Notes in 1962, 340 species have been accepted.
Additionally, three species were recorded prior to 1962. They are Greater Prairie-Chicken, Passenger Pigeon, and Kirtland’s Warbler. This brings the Berrien County total to 343 species, which are accepted by the Michigan Bird Records Committee.
LAKE TWP. HAD BEAR IN 1860sMy initial list of the mammals of Berrien County included the American Bison, Cougar, and Gray Wolf, but not the Black Bear or Porcupine; that list has now been updated to include those species
by Lila Chandler
H-P Correspondent
After reading Outdeer Editor Dennis Cogswell's recent column about Black Bears moving south in Michigan, Jon Wuepper of Royalton Township, who has a background in both local history and nature, sent along a note saying the last written mention of a bear in Berrien County he could find occurred in April 1868 in Lake Township.
"Lake Township was very swampy and sparsely populated then," he writes.
Other multiple sightings of bears were made in October 1842 in the Niles, St. Joseph, and Cass County areas. "It was thought that mast (acorns, beechnuts) in the north was sparse and the bears moved into our area in search of food. I also have a late record (of a bear) from 1875 from Kalamazoo."
Other "last" records of other animals in Berrien County, he said, were: Porcupine (1881, near Benton Harbor); Gray Wolf (about 1910, Lakeside); undisputed Cougar record (1853); Bison (late November 1860 near St. Joseph, about three weeks after Abraham Lincoln was elected president).
Do you love nature? Do you love reading the wealth of fine nature writing on the blogosphere? Maybe you’ve been curious about the writer behind the web presence. Or maybe you blog yourself and want to expand your readership.If the above description applies to you, consider joining the Facebook Nature Bloggers social-networking group, which was just created by Nathan Swick of The Drinking Bird.
This is male model Kristoffer Ryan. See more of his photos over at muscle dudes blog HERE
January: The Complete Chicken: A Book Review—I’ve always looked askance at the Domestic Chicken (Gallus domesticus) and it's evolutionary progenitor (G. gallus), as if they were not worthy of being considered real birds. (…more)Personal Favorite:
February: My January BiGBY List—This expands on an earlier preliminary list of birds recorded on a Walking BiGBY (Big Green Bird Year) count that I am conducting in Buchanan Township, Berrien County, Michigan. (…more)
March: My February BiGBY List—This report continues my monthly tally of species observed on a BiGBY (Big Green Big Year) being conducted in Buchanan, Michigan. (…more)
April: My March BiGBY List—The Big Green Big Year (known as BiGBY, for short) challenges birders to compile a Big Year list without the aid of fossil fuel-burning vehicles. (…more)
May: Field Notes from the Past #10—Being a continuation of field-journal entries from the springs of 1962 and 1963 when I was a budding ornithologist of just 15 or 16 growing up in the rural village of Galien in Berrien County, Michigan. (…more)
June: Pleistocene Vertebrates of Berrien County, Michigan-- The Pleistocene epoch lasted from about 1.8 million years ago until 10,000 years ago. (…more)
July: CoCoRaHS in Michigan: The First 15 Days—CoCoRaHS (the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network) was initiated in Michigan beginning July 1st (see here). (…more)
August: Fresh-Frozen Chickens—The following description of the effects of an unusual meteorological event on domestic chickens is excerpted from the History of Weather Observations : Indianapolis, Indiana, 1861-1948 (.pdf), by Glen Conner. (…more)
September: Emu on Pennsylvania Turnpike--Yes, that’s right. You read correctly. (…more)
October: Diagramming Sarah: A Bird Analogy--In an article that examines Sarah Palin’s convoluted speech patterns, grammarian Kitty Burns Florey provides this delightful bird analogy. (…more)
November: Unusual Field of View-- It’s not often that one encounters Wood Ducks and American Robins in the same binocular view, but that’s what happened to me yesterday, probably for the first time in my life. (…more)
December: Sparrow Wars-- If (like me) you enjoy attracting wild birds to your yard by providing food and shelter for them, and if (like me) your enjoyment of this activity has been diminished by the arrival of noisy and quarrelsome (and non-native and invasive) House Sparrows, then I may have found the solution to your (and my) problem. (…more)
Towhee Madness—This story begins in a most unlikely way. Standing by the dining room window and looking out at the usual assembly of birds gathering at the feeders on the morning of January 31, I said to Marj, almost in jest, “I want to see something new.” (...more)Most Popular (as determined by reader comments):
The "Other" Field Guide to Birds—I am speaking, of course, of the National Wildlife Federation field guide to birds of North America, by Edward S. Brinkley. (…more)Summary: While the total of 179 entries posted during 2008 (an average of 15/month; range: 3 to 37) was down from the 263 posted in 2007, I continue to pride myself on the quality of my posts.
Ghost Bird—The Movie (Trailer)—Here’s a little something to whet your appetite. (…more)
Mantra for True Believers—This would seem to be the perfect mantra for folks in hot pursuit of rarities such as the Ivory-billed Woodpecker or creatures of a more crytological nature such as Bigfoots and Thunderbirds. (…more)
Resident from northern Sinaloa, central Chihuahua, southern Coahuila, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi south in the Mexican highlands to central Oaxaca, Puebla and west-central Veracruz, also (apparently resident) in Chiapas, and Quatemala.My attention was drawn to the first comment, which is repeated here because of its relevance:
The bird listers that rush to see a bird like this leave a hideously large carbon footprint from air travel and car rental to spend 15 minutes in a remote area with a bird. This is a degenerate hobby. Knowing a few of them, I'd generalize that many are folks who never should have inherited money. Wasteful consumerism is destroying the planet, SAY WHAT??While I'm not ready to call birding a "degenerate hobby," I do believe that birders need to be more conscious of the impacts of their activities on the environment, and focus more effort on the long-term conservation of the living organisms that they lust after.
