Up late one night reading Carol Grant Gould’s enchanting “The Remarkable Life of William Beebe; Explorer And Naturalist,” I happened upon the story of Beebe meeting Henry Gaylord Wilshire, the somewhat eccentric socialist millionaire for whom Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles is named (because he owned the property upon which much of it was constructed).
A friend of mine once asked “why don’t people watch insects the same way they watch birds?” It’s a fair question. After all, many insects – such as butterflies and a good many beetles – are distinctively patterned or colored in such a way that an amateur could learn to identify them on sight – […]
Unlike James Taylor, I will soon be going to California not only in my mind but in an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737. I’ll be there for a week to attend to some business for Celestron in Los Angeles and to speak at the San Diego Bird Festival. Thus in keeping with my preferred practice of taking along a book or two with relevance to my destination, I’m planning to pack copies of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of California by Alvaro Jaramillo and the recently published third edition of Insects of the L.A. Basin by Charles L. Hogue and James N. Hogue in my shoulder bag.