More Dog News, and Migrating Birds – RedState

There is still spring in the Big Country, and it is always a wet and dripping spring. The ATVs are still in the machine shed. There is a lot of stagnant water around, which does not bode well for the upcoming mosquito season. But the blackbirds are back, the mosquito-eating swallows are back, and I heard a variegated thrush singing in the trees behind the workshop the other morning. Summer is coming.

Now, first, some good news: Another surviving dog was found in this nightmare dog death mill in Talkeetna, and in this area I’m sure he’ll have a new home soon.

• A second live dog linked to a Willow woman charged with 26 counts of animal cruelty was seized from a Talkeetna home Thursday and is now in custody in the borough. She is in good health, authorities said.
• Misty Rehder was arrested after more than two dozen dead dogs were found in her kennel last week.
• Wasilla attorney Richard Payne was selected Thursday to lead an external investigation into the actions of Matanuska-Susitna Borough animal control officials related to the kennel. Witnesses say they warned authorities for months about the dogs’ condition, but were ignored.

Good news after bad news, I guess. It’s still a sad story; I have little time for people who don’t like dogs, even though we don’t have a dog at the moment. We kind of share one; our neighbor’s dog, Yogi, frequently walks in the morning to say hello, and he will wait patiently outside the office until I come out, scratch his ears, and tell him what a good boy he is. Then he goes about his business. Humans and dogs go together like peas and carrots, and it only makes things worse when we learn of people mistreating them. These people, at least, will pay the price.

Alaska Man Score: Mixed bag here. Five moose nuggets for the authorities responsible for this file; still nothing for the people who put these poor dogs through this.

Learn more: Alaska Man Monday: Sad Case Involving Dogs and a Stupid Swindler

Best of all, it was just Hawkwatch weekend!

Every day from March 10 to May 15, four figures stand by the side of the road on Glenn Highway in Glacier View, tracing slow “W”s in the sky with binoculars.

Earlier this month, dozens of visitors with their own binoculars, spotting scopes, cameras and lawn chairs joined them for a day of raptor observation at mile marker 118.8.

This is the annual Gunsight Mountain Hawkwatch Weekend, which draws bird enthusiasts from the Mat-Su Valley, Anchorage and beyond to celebrate the spring migration of raptors. The Anchorage Audubon Society and Matsu Birders plan for the event to coincide with the expected peak of the migration.

The goal?

“Just to see this parade of migratory raptors that happens every year. It’s incredibly cool to sit here and watch them go by,” said Mr. Whitekeys, a longtime South Central celebrity and self-styled commander in chief of Anchorage Audubon.

My parents were prominent in the local Audubon Society when I was a child, before the national organization became a center of environmental extremism and was still only interested in birds. We carry out counts of nesting and migratory birds every year. It was a lot of fun, and to this day I can identify probably 90 percent of North American birds by sight, and probably half of them by sound alone.

And, right here in our corner of the Susitna Valley, even more of our summer birds are already returning. The juncos should return soon. May is the time when many of the summer birds return, including all our warblers and the Swainson’s Thrush which sings so beautifully from the treetops.

Birds are good neighbors. Better than a lot of people, in fact.

Alaska Man Score: Five migratory raptors.

Learn more: Alaska Man Monday – The Scots in Alaska, a Caution and the Birds

Now let me show you a new item in the gun safe!

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