Category: Fish & Wildlife
Those Wonderful Wildlife Caregivers
One of the more disheartening, sometimes discouraging, aspects of a wildlife officer’s job is dealing with injured, orphaned, or imprinted wildlife that cannot be released…
For the Love of Ducks
With the north wind blowing off snow-covered Mount Shasta, it was brutally cold that December afternoon in 1960. Sitting in the back seat of our…
Splashing Salmon and Giant Sycamores
I’m sometimes asked if I had any favorite places to work during my twenty-one years supervising the warden force in western Shasta County. Lower Battle…
Above the Canopy
Having had the pleasure and privilege of diving in California’s kelp forests from San Diego to Monterey, I would describe it as a surreal, almost…
Those Amazing Elephant Seals
My first opportunity to see a northern elephant seal was in October of 1959, as an excited eleven-year-old passenger aboard the Fish and Game Patrol…
Good Migrations
I was recently invited to write an essay for Zocalo Public Square, a nationally-renowned online magazine. The publication of my essay in the magazine’s November…
What’s in Your Yard?
My wife and I are fortunate to live on a patch of oak woodland in the foothills of Northern California. Several years ago we decided…
Where Have All the Pheasants Gone?
Growing up in the tiny farm town of Orland at the north end of California’s Central Valley, a pheasant sighting was a daily occurrence for…
That Resilient Little Goose From the Aleutian Islands
Last weekend, Kathy and I drove over to California’s beautiful North Coast. We were biking through the pasturelands, northwest of Eureka, when we began seeing…
Tribute to the Giant Sea Bass
My friend Sergio Fainsztein recently posted an underwater photograph of a giant sea bass off La Jolla Cove, San Diego, on his Facebook page. The…