hoots, mon

Chinggis was a Scotsman! Or at least maybe an honorary one. Post facto.

Annie just sent the announcement that there will be a St. Andrews Night Celebration on Friday at the Steppe Inne, Ulaan Baatar's coolest, diminutive nightspot. As Paul Bacon writes on iExplore: "Whereas most embassies around the world are more renowed for diplomacy and issuing visas, the British Embassy in Mongolia is famed for the pub that sits in its grounds."

Alexa, a former NGO worker in UB, has a little of the history of the Steppe Inne here from her 2006/2007 blog, AYearinMongolia.

Andrew McLaughlin of Slate.com mentions the Steppe Inne in a longer journal entry about the non-Mongolian food selections in UB. He wrote his piece in 2003: I enjoyed a Millie's cappucino when we were there in December 2004 -- and while we did enjoy the food at Taj Mahal, if you're looking for Indian food in the capital, we heartily recommend the restaurant at the Puma International Hotel just off Sukhbaatar Square.

And here's Dan Murdoch's very recent post about passing through UB in a mini-convoy of Trabants. Not so much about the Steppe Inne, but a fun, funky, and random travelogue entry on their way through UB last week: "The Mongolian version of Vodka Red Bull. I'll have a double Genghis with Genghis."

But here's an encylopaedic entry on St. Andrew from Wikipedia: incidentally, Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece, Romania, and Russia. But they don't have bars in Mongolia.

update from Team-Vizsla: eastern MA chapter

Here's a couple of great pictures from Rich and Adrian. Here's their junior majesty, Khumbu, the 85ft Vizsla pup. (Great low-angle pic!) He's just shy of 4mos old and already 27lbs -- and a looker just like his sister. He's already has his first points on training birds. Good luck with that little firecracker!

And here's a nice B&W pic of Ella taken back in late September. Rich had better take a few shooting lessons so he doesn't let his, now, two beautiful bird-dogs down.

Thanks for the pics, Rich.

melange

Ingredient #1: Kudos to Andy Reid and the Philadelphia Eagles. I actually stayed up past my bedtime to see if they would pull off an upset to equal Arkansas's recent win over #1 ranked LSU. They didn't, but they sure as heck made the Pats work for every point.

Randy Moss was shut down, Tom Brady was harried by an endless series of blitzes, the Pats running game looked imminently fallible. By contrast, AJ Feeley looked more like the starting QB than the back-up and Brian Westbrook took every yard he could possibly get. And, at least in my opinion, the guy who really showed up out of relative obscurity to help win the game wasn't Asante Samuel (with his 2 interceptions), but Jabar Gaffney.

Ingredient #2: I heard the first few bars of the State of Maine's official Christmas song on the radio. It makes sense that the Pine Tree State would stake a claim to an official Tannenbaum ode -- but I had no idea it had such a history. Or an authorized CD.

Ingredient #3: It's deer season in NY. The boys and I are limiting our time in the woods between now and December 10th to minimize the possibility of an accident. Hopefully we'll get to chase some pheasant at a friend's club in ten days or so.

In the meantime here's a phone photo of Vizslas at speed here in the Bronx. It's a nice blend of 'wild' and 'urban tough'... maybe that's a gangsta log... we're especially fond of the graffiti on downed trees around here.

bits and bobs

1) Jozsi continues to grow. He must be about 85% the size of his brother, Momo, but is about a gajillion feet longer. Whenever it gets to the end of the day, trying to get him off his chair and out to the bathroom nearly always takes picking him up. At which point, he extends himself to his fullest... which seems to be about 19ft.

We sent in his AKC papers today. We've decided to stick with the simple -- but wanted to honor both his mother's owners by including both their kennel names. His Junior Majesty will henceforth be known as Widdershins Upwind Jozsi. Here's a picture of all three of the boys relaxing in front of the Patriots vs. the Bills. Momo is a diver: his butt can just barely be seen under my right shoulder.

2) I have no idea which depth of my ever-fogging brain I pulled this out of, but somehow the name Nogbad the Bad kept coming in my mind. Maybe it was something to do with officially 'christening' His Junior Majesty. Dredging further, I extracted the children's series Noggin the Nog. As you can see, Noggin's trip to the moon inspired the cult-classic The Clangers.

3) Lloyd Carr has officially retired. He was a good coach, but seemed to lack that edge that makes a good coach genuinely great. Somehow I had missed this headline in September from The Onion about U.Michigan being dropped to NCAA Division III. That should make some of the interdivisional play in the MIAA conference a little easier -- although since their National Championship glory days of 1994, Albion College (just down the road) also seems to have been struggling.

4) Annie-bagsh has a great post on her blog about getting back to eastern Mongolia and visiting the monastery in Choibalsan for the Shiini Nam celebration. It's almost three years to the day since we were in Choibalsan. There are rumors of a Super Walmart opening up -- but those may just be vicious rumors spread by her brother.

grouse fans + fans grousing

1) Grouse fans:
Based on my examination of the tail-fan and feathers of the grouse we took in Maine, I think it's most likely a male. Michael Furtman's recent book, Ruffed Grouse: Woodland Drummer, has what seems to be the best summary of the research on grouse sexing. He also has some incredible photographs that are well worth the asking price of the book.

As he relays, regional variations in grouse size affect how long the tail feathers are and, therefore, in the absence of sample data from your particular area, mere measurement of an individual bird's tail-feathers isn't a very reliable indicator of sex. By the same token, just looking at the butt feathers or the banding on the tail feathers isn't entirely reliable either. In Furtman's opinion, a combination of the latter two factors should give a high degree of certainty.

Because our grouse had an unbroken dark band across the base of its tail and a single white spot on the butt feathers immediately above the tail, I'm figuring this was a male, grey-phase grouse.

2) Fans grousing:
Michigan plays Ohio State in college football in a little under an hour. Both teams are coming off a loss the previous week -- UM to the Badgers of Wisconsin, OSU to Badger-slayers Illinois. ESPN thinks this might be Lloyd Carr's last game against Jim Tressel... I think more than a few of us UM alums wish it might have been sooner.

In any case, UM is playing for bragging rights and OSU to have even a possibility of staying in a national title race. But this is arguably the greatest sports rivalry of all time, certainly in college sports.

We'll see if Dan at shotonsite is right -- that OSU is overrated because of its weak schedule -- or whether my thoughts about UM's slow starts in games will be its undoing against the machine known as jim Tressel.

a grouse equation

I prepared Momo's first grouse this morning, saving the wings for training and the tail-fan to commemorate His Senior Majesty's achievement, and of course the breast meat (which I will most likely eat at Thanksgiving). I will do my best to sex the bird once I get home this evening and can take a little time to examine the tail-fan.

Ruffed grouse being opportunistic feeders, they adapt what they eat as seasons, cover, and appetite change. While many authors point to the frequent overlap between alder trees (which provide moisture- and nutrient-rich buds) and grouse populations, their research over time and place invariably notes the diversity of grouse food. Being a curious type, I was interested to examine the crop contents of the bird we had taken. The crop is the sac-like container in the espohagus prior to the digestive tract -- and at least for the Spruce Grouse can hold up to 10% of the bird's body weight for digestion at night (while predators are also asleep). Grouse, like many other gallinaceous birds, will also consume a significant amount of gravel to help in breaking down and digesting plant cellulose. We didn't find any in the crop of this bird -- but did find clover and small fern leaves that, perhaps not surprisingly because they hadn't entered the digestive tract, still smelled wonderfully fresh (despite being frozen and defrosted).

(Here's a nice outline from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for a Wildlife Management Activity Guide for teachers to use in their biology classes and then share their data with the NPS. And here's a nice reference article from 1928 of what grouse were eating up around Syracuse, NY.)

My friend, Dudley, has a nice simple equation for finding grouse: gravel, water, greenery, and cedar = grouse. The greenery largely offer food, while the cedar could most likely be subsituted for other evergreens because it provides good roosting cover above ground predators and visual coverage from raptors flying above.

big game season...

I forgot to mention that Jozsi's half-birthday was yesterday. He is therefore six-months old and a whopping 41lbs. And in a pleasant personality development, he's become quite snuggly. Until a couple of weeks ago he was stridently independent, although clearly devoted to us. Now... he's a big softy-pants. But still quite vicious and manly, of course.

However the highlight of this post is really to flag that The Redgirls have a fabulous post on their site about the Opening Day of their game season. I am very impressed at their prowess on H. vulgaris... although it looks like they had the wee beasties on flat ground and therefore at a significant disadvantage.

Not sure if they were pen-reared or genuinely wild haggis, but it's great to see the girls using their genetic abilities to the full.

It inspired me to see whether our two monsters had any latent skill on the wee beasties. As you can tell, Momo couldn't quite his snout around it, but Jozsi being the wee tanker was all over the two specimens we had kept for just this purpose.