Jack Russell / Fins And Claws

04/25/2026

04/24/2026

Here's something most people don't know about the bright yellow bird currently stealing the show at feeders across America. 🌼

The American Goldfinch is one of the latest nesters in North America — on purpose.

While robins are on their second clutch and wrens are filling every nest box in sight, the goldfinch is still just... eating. Molting. Getting ready.

It won't build a nest until late June or July — timed almost perfectly to when thistles and milkweed go to seed. That's what it feeds its babies: regurgitated plant seeds, not insects.

Almost every other songbird switches to insects for protein during nesting. The goldfinch said no thank you and stuck with seeds — which is why it waits until the seed supply peaks before starting a family.

Meanwhile, that nyjer feeder you put out in April? It's been appreciated. Deeply.

04/15/2026

“ Yes, with a Bloddy Mary”!

It’s springtime in Louisiana, and crawfish boils are heating up across the state. But a new way to eat mudbugs is steadily gaining popularity...no peeling re...

04/14/2026

61 years ago today, Rachel Carson died at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was 56.

The house she built on Berwick Road — where she designed a corner study with windows on three sides to stay surrounded by nature — is where she finished Silent Spring, the 1962 book that helped launch the modern environmental movement.

But long before the book came out, Carson was already making her case right in her own backyard. When a local homeowners' association asked her to speak about pesticide use in the neighborhood, she abandoned her prepared remarks and spoke instead about the link between chemicals and cancer. The association voted against the spraying program.

Boundary Stones has the full story of Carson's years in our area — link in comments.

04/12/2026

“Who woulda thunk it”!

04/12/2026

The Market Gunners of the Chesapeake, 1880s
Before hunting laws, the Chesapeake Bay was ruled by “Market Gunners.” These were watermen who hunted ducks not for sport, but for survival and profit to feed cities. They used “punt guns” – cannons 10 feet long that fired a pound of shot and could kill 50 ducks in one blast.

The most famous was Annie “Captain” Cole. A widow with four kids, she outshot every man on the Bay. She built her own sneak boat, painted it like marsh grass, and could pole it silently through reeds. She hunted at dawn in winter, lying in the boat with her punt gun braced, wearing her dead husband’s oilskins. She sold to hotels in Baltimore and D.C.

Game wardens tried to arrest her. She’d sink her boat and walk home through the marsh. Judges refused to jail her – “She feeds more people than you, sir.” When market hunting was banned in 1918, she burned her punt gun and became a fishing guide.

Her sons said she could still call ducks at 90. “They came because they remembered her.”