Vulture Days

California Condor by photographer Tia StrombeckVulture Days. This is the view from the condor pen on a recent morning at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge in California. Sy is researching a new book about the critically endangered California Condor. Estelle Sandhaus took this photo through binoculars. Sandhaus is the Director of Conservation and Research at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Sy is also working with photographer Tia Strombeck as they create a new entry in Scientists in the Field series.

Sy is holding Condor 771 by photographer Tia StrombeckAnd here Sy is holding Condor 771, a “sub-adult” female, to be exact. She’s getting her health and telemetry check, as does every precious California alive on Earth, thanks to cooperation between the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Santa Barbara Zoo, and others.

Art from the Moharimet School in Madbury, NH

Art from the Moharimet School in Madbury, NH

Art from the Moharimet School in Madbury, NH

Sy had a great visit with the students at the Moharimet School in Madbury, New Hampshire. Mrs. Schmitt’s third grade class sent Sy home with a pile of drawings of the animals they love. A few of them are here.


Here is the identifying plumage of the Tamed & Untamed authors.
Here is the identifying plumage of the Tamed & Untamed authors.

Tamed and Untamed is a bestseller. For the week ending October 29, 2017, Tamed and Untamed is number 6 on the trade paperback nonfiction list of the New England Independent Booksellers Association’s IndieBound Bestsellers.

Listen to Sy and Liz talk critters on KGNU, an independent community radio station in the Boulder-Denver metro area.


The New Statesman magazine octopus illustration
The New Statesman magazine octopus illustration
The New Statesman magazine asks: “Have we underestimated the octopus? Far from a childhood memory from a Disney film, or something tasty on your plate in a seafood restaurant, the wriggling cephalopod is suddenly in the news. One might be forgiven for thinking some mollusc mastermind was running a very successful PR campaign. But it’s not as if the animals have just started doing all this stuff – they’ve been around for 300 million years. It’s just that we’ve taken a long time to realise it.” Read more here.