Posted inOutside

Owl Quiz II: Another test of your owl knowledge

Give a hoot.If you are wondering what happened to the second part of our "little"
Owl Quiz, the answer is it got too big. So, if you still want to have a
good time with the quiz, you'll have to wait until my website,
www.northwestnaturalist is up and running, which should be in about a
week.
In the meantime, let's discuss six of the remaining eight,
one of them a newcomer, the barred owl. This pugnacious alien wandered
into the Northwest from eastern areas of Canada and the U.S. It's one
of the owls I grew up with, the other being the great horned – which I
had to eat when my grandfather said, "Whatever you shoot, Jimmy, you
eat."
Barred owls, as far as I know, are the only owl in North
America with an eight-note call. The northern spotted owl comes close,
because they are genetically and physically very similar, but once
you've heard them both, there is no question whooo-is-whooo-t-whooo.

Posted inOutside

Winter Tidbits: A Tri, Give it a Try, Hoodoo and Roos

WINTER TRI
Iced up at Bachelor.Some people just don't learn. Which is why it looked like
a reunion of Masochists Anonymous when I showed up at the start line
for the 2009 USAT Winter Triathlon National Championship last Sunday at
the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center. Most of the faces were familiar from
last year's event, also held at Mt. Bachelor, with competitors flying
in from places like Colorado and Alaska to vie for berths for the World
Championships in Gaishorn, Austria coming up in February. One new face
in the crowd was Ned Overend, the first ever world mountain biking
champion, which was pretty cool.
Conditions were much better this
year for the run/bike/ski event, with a bike course that was firmer and
more rideable. Brian Smith from Gunnison, Colo. finally dethroned
perennial champion Mike Kloser from Vail. Local professional bike racer
Carl Decker, who had been sighted actually running in a velour warm-up
suit earlier in the week, took third place. In the women's race,
Olympic Nordic ski racer Rebecca Dussault, also from Gunnison, won
handily. Sarah Max was the top Bend finisher in fifth place. I got
passed by Kloser's 15-year-old son Christian during the bike leg. Nice
genes.

Posted inCulture

Purple Dragons, Oh My!: Spyro Dawn of the Dragon

Puff on this dragon.Ever since Mario took the game scene by storm there have been many
attempts to steal the limelight from the-little-plumber-that-could,
with little success. One exception is Spyro the Dragon.

The first
Spyro game was released in 1998 on the original Playstation. The game
was a straightforward platform game with Spyro freeing fellow dragons
from their crystal prisons. The game won praise from gamers and spawned
several sequels.
Now comes the latest Spyro adventure, which is
really more of a remake. The game uses an all-star cast of actors
playing the main characters, including Spyro and sidekick Cynder. The
game concludes much like the original game wherein Spyro must defeat
his archenemy Malefor, the Dark Master.

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