Al Agnew

Now THAT sparrow is a white-crowned! And finch is definitely a purple finch.

Nope, it's a white-throated sparrow. White-crowned sparrows have a different arrangement of the white on their heads, and lack the very obvious white throat and the little patch of yellow between their beak and eye (the area called a lore). On white-crowned sparrows that area is black.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. You can't be 100% safe, but the testing done on the Pfizer vaccine showed that out of 37,000 people tested, something like 4% did contract the virus but only one got a serious case. It's not me that I'm worried about yet, it's the slight possibility that I could still contract it, and even if I had a mild case I could pass it on to someone else. Our niece has asthma and other possible respiratory conditions that put her at higher risk, and so far has not been able to get the vaccine, and we really want to spend some time with her. So I will still avoid dine-in restaurants for a while.

Well, I don't share your distrust of the CDC. But how about the Mayo Clinic, University of CA-Davis, National Academies of Science? All say, quoting, "There is no evidence" for the virus spreading through food, and no known cases where it was spread through eating food. Like I said, and they all say, the virus is spread through respiratory droplets. You simply can't get it by ingesting food, you have to breathe it in. Does that mean that there are all these studies showing it ABSOLUTELY can't be spread by eating it? Nope. How are you going to study that, without having people eat food that somebody with Covid has just breathed on? You can't prove a negative, by the way. You can always prove that somebody DID get it through eating it. But you can't prove that nobody ever did. Just Google "can you catch Covid 19 from eating food?" You'll get a whole lot of links saying you can't. A few say that to be on the COMPLETELY safe side, to take the food out of the container it came in and into a clean container before eating it, and to wash your hands after handling the original container. A couple sites say what I said, that there is a very slight possibility that you could get enough of the virus off the food container and onto your hands, and then put your fingers up to your nose or mouth and breathe in the virus.

Wait a minute...don't you guys remember the several "polar vortexes" that hit a few years ago, maybe three years ago? Maybe none of them lasted more than four or five days, but that was a cold winter with several days of weather colder than what it looks like we will get this time. I remember a guy I knew decided to take his jetboat out on the Meramec on the first day after one of those vortexes had passed. The river wasn't completely frozen over but there was plenty of shelf ice coming much of the way to the middle of some of the pools. But he ran upstream with no problems. His problems were coming back downstream...his wake broke off a lot of the shelf ice, and it jammed up in the riffles!

Some good suggestions already given. Mid-April is usually about the time that smallmouth fishing gets fairly easy...the water temps have warmed up to around 60 degrees and the fish will hit just about anything, though they will just be beginning to spawn most years. (Keep in mind that catch and keep bass season is closed then; you can catch and release, but I suggest using fast moving lures and not targeting them on the beds.) But April is one of the iffiest times to plan a long float, because of frequent heavy rains that may raise the river to dangerous levels. It's the best time to go high, farther upstream than normal floating sections, though on some streams you can go too high and the fishing won't be good. I don't get the fixation some people have with using hammocks on Ozark streams. The best, and really the ONLY places to legally camp outside of established campgrounds, is on the gravel bars. You DON'T want to go up and camp in the woods. For one thing, once you get off the gravel bars you're on private property that you don't have a right to be on. For another, gravel bars are bug-free, and that includes ticks and chiggers, which will be active by then. But most gravel bars have no trees. Sure, you can maybe find a gravel area that might have some big sycamores growing on it, but such places are not common. And otherwise, you will have to take a frame for your hammock so you can set it up without using trees. Technically, all gravel bars on Ozark streams are okay to camp on, even though the landowner actually owns them. But some landowners won't agree, and think they have the right to run you off. My suggestion is to never choose a gravel bar that has a house or cabin within sight of it, or a lane coming down onto it, or other signs of frequent use like lawn chairs or bbq grills, or a road that you can see it from. And especially in the spring, pay close attention to easy escape routes off the bar if it comes a gullywasher. Ozark streams are known for flash flooding, and it can happen if there is a rain upstream from you even if you never get a drop of rain. Make sure the gravel bar doesn't have a low spot on the back of it that separates it from the high bank, and scout out exactly where you would quickly drag yourself, your gear, and your boats up that high bank in the middle of the night if the river starts rising. You didn't say how you planned to get your vehicles shuttled, but I assume multiple vehicles and self-shuttling. As somebody mentioned, not all public accesses are safe to leave a vehicle for multiple days. Some of them are still just road right of ways, and even the Conservation Department accesses have had crime problems occasionally. So as you're planning your float, you might want to find a campground or canoe rental place that will shuttle you or at least let you leave your vehicles there and let that be your take-out. You might also think about knocking on a door or two at the nearest houses to your put-in and take-out and ask them if you can leave a vehicle parked at their place somehow. April is a good month for solitude IF you go during the week. I'd plan on putting in on a Monday and taking out on Friday. Weekends in April with good weather can be a zoo on many rivers, but most of the kids are in school (hopefully) during the week. So I'd plan for five days and maybe 45-50 miles. That's short enough that you have a lot of choices. Here is my list of the MOST popular streams, those that have multiple campgrounds and canoe/kayak liveries...these are the ones where you will least likely find solitude, so if you have to do it over a weekend, avoid them: Meramec, Huzzah, Courtois, Big Piney, Niangua, James, Elk, North Fork, Eleven Point, Current, Jacks Fork, Black in Missouri. Buffalo, Crooked, Mulberry, Kings in Arkansas. But even they will be okay if you can go during the week in April.

As moguy said the bottom one is an American goldfinch in winter plumage. The other one...either a male house finch or male purple finch. Like Billethead, I'm about 90% sure it's a purple finch. They've been pretty scarce around here for the last 10 years or more, but getting a good influx of them this winter.

The little woodpecker in the fourth photo is a female downy woodpecker. Males look the same except they have a small spot of red on the back of their head. Hairy woodpeckers look almost exactly like downies, but are bigger and have a heavier beak. The woodpeckers in the bottom photo are indeed red-bellied woodpeckers...two males and a female next to the starling on the ground. They have a very washed out area of red, not always obvious, on their lower bellies, hence the name, but I've always thought it's not a real good name for them.

In your top photo, it's an eastern towhee. Used to be called a rufous-sided towhee, but the western version has a lot more white on its upper parts, so they finally separated them into two different species. Right behind it is a white-throated sparrow. The woodpecker in the second photo is a mature male yellow-bellied sapsucker. Starling in winter plumage...they have those white spots in the winter, and not in the summer.

Nope. Cooper's hawk. Red-shouldered hawks have a much shorter tail and black and white wings. That's an immature Cooper's hawk.

Heck, this ain't cold. We spent three weeks at our house in Montana a few years ago in January, which happened to coincide with some fairly cold weather. Never got ABOVE -12 for five days straight, and the two coldest nights were -30. I got to thinking...there is as much difference between 32 degrees and -30 degrees as there is between 32 degrees and 94 degrees! After those five coldest days, it warmed up to -5 at 10AM the next morning, and I walked out of the house and thought that it felt warm enough to not wear a jacket.

It's a respiratory virus. Present knowledge is that there is no evidence you can get it from eating food, even food that has the virus on it. That's NOT the reason restaurants are problematical, the reason is that you spend an hour or more in a restaurant without wearing a mask, among a lot of other people who are not wearing masks. One study showed that whether someone gets it from somebody else in a restaurant is dependent upon the directional flow of the heat/ventilation system. The first few months of the virus, when we knew little about it, it was believed it COULD be spread by being on food, but even then it was more touching the food, picking up the virus on your hands, and then putting your hands up to your face and breathing it in.

Just read in National Geographic that there are still unknowns about the vaccines' effectiveness, especially in whether you can still have an asymptomatic case after getting the vaccine and pass it on to someone else. They recommend to keep wearing masks (which only makes sense, because I've always worn a mask more as a courtesy to others than for my own protection, and unless you get a big V tattooed on your forehead, nobody knows whether you've gotten the vaccine or not. I know it will still tick me off to see people in the stores without masks, because I can't guess whether they are possible carriers or not.). And to keep social distancing. But I know I'll begin going into stores again, and quick shops. Maybe not restaurants yet. I told Mary that the first thing I'm going to do after the next two weeks is up and I'm as fully protected as you can get with the vaccine, is to go into the nearest quick shop and buy some packages of Twinkies. Twinkies have always been one of my guilty pleasures, and I have to discipline myself not to eat more than a couple packages at a time, and not to buy them except about every fifth time I go into a quick shop. Well, I haven't had a Twinkie since March.

Felt fine today except for sore arm. Did some hiking, a couple miles and a lot of fighting brush and up and downs...tonight I'm really dragging. Mary had a severe headache for a while this afternoon, and her back is bothering her now. Still, she's doing better so far than the first shot.

Mary and I got our second one today. She thought a while ago that she was a little nauseous. I seem to have a bit of a headache. It's been about five hours. We'll see. She was nauseous for about 4 hours after the first one, I didn't have anything but a slightly sore arm for a day.

Great info! That's one thing few people realize...the Ozark forests of today are vastly different from those the first European settlers found. I read one study that suggested that typical forests in the Ozarks pre-settlement consisted of large, old growth trees spaced widely apart, like 40-50 feet between trees. The Native Americans didn't cut down trees very often. The settlers did. They burnt every year, too. And when the massive logging boom happened in the early part of the 20th Century, the hills were denuded, and what grew up to replace the old growth was an extremely dense forest. You watch the state park people trying to re-create savannas by prescribed burns, and it's actually obvious that it isn't going to work well, because the forests are still way too dense and grass can't thrive beneath the canopy (except river oats, which can produce some dense stands here and there). I don't know how we'd ever get back to the situation pre-settlement, unless we did a whole lot of thinning of the forests and planting native grasses as well as frequent burning.

What a relief!

Stable is most likely to be good. Most of the rises on Ozark streams are sudden. Graph shoots almost straight up, peaks, then does a gradually slowing curve downwards. Catch it on the right point of the downward curve, when the water has cleared just enough to be fishable, and it can be terrific or terrible. It's more likely to be good but not terrific when it's getting close to a flat line.

Let me see if I can explain myself respectfully and calmly. First of all, yes, I don't think we'll have a Covid pandemic for the rest of my life. But at this point, there is no clear time frame for when it will be over. And I don't expect it to ever be over, just at some point well covered by vaccination, which will probably have to be renewed every year. Second, I'm taking precautions. But what I hope I can make you understand is, this is DIFFERENT than anything medical we've ever had to deal with. We are not talking about immunodeficient people here. We are not talking just about people with serious existing health problems. I now have had three people, healthy but my age or a little older, that have died from it, and several more that spent time in ICUs. We are talking about those kinds of people, healthy, no serious existing health problems that would be expected to kill them in the next few years. Those are some of the people at risk. Those are some that are dying from this. I am 68 years old, high blood pressure controlled with medication, occasional irregular heartbeat that has been examined more than once and determined not to be of medical significance at this point. That's it. I should expect to live for quite a few more years. Yet I'm at risk for this virus. Now add in people who live with people like me. Or people who live with people who DO have serious health problems already. Not only do the people at risk have to take serious precautions, but the people living with them do, too. So what you are proposing is that all of us and all those other people, who never had to take any real precautions before, now have to take drastic precautions, as in isolating themselves, so that you and everybody else who isn't worried about this can do whatever they want. Why is it so horrific for you to wear a mask in the grocery store? Why is your convenience more important than other people's health? Or, even the very real levels of stress you cause other people who have to be in the same store or quick shop or room with you, if nothing else? Your peanut butter analogy makes absolutely no sense. Peanut butter is not contagious. You can't be a peanut butter carrier and pass the allergy on to someone else. This is the key thing I keep harping on. Wearing a mask isn't about protecting you as much as it is protecting others from you. It might be a little inconvenient for you to not drive 60 mph down residential streets, but doing so endangers not just you but others. Come on. Have some respect and empathy for other people on this, even if you don't care about it yourself. Please. And that respect and empathy also includes wearing a mask just because it will ease the mind a bit of a lot of people who have to be around you. Is that so much to ask? Think of it as being polite enough not to light up a cigarette in the grocery store. Smoking it might not harm you, probably won't harm others, but why annoy the crap out of a bunch of people who have to share the space with you when all you have to do is wait until you walk out the doors? And by the way, I didn't make this a political thing. You did, apparently assuming that every liberal and no conservative is "for" mask wearing. This shouldn't be political. It should be a matter of living in a civilized society and caring just a LITTLE bit for your fellow man, and last time I checked, that wasn't a liberal or conservative thing. I'm done.

Oh, so as a a high risk person, I should have to live in a bubble for the rest of my life so that you can be free of any inconvenience. Do you even realize how incredibly self-centered that attitude is?

I shouldn’t even comment on this, because this kind of crap just makes me so angry I can’t see straight. So I will just say that I hope that someday you can emerge from your bubble of tin hat willful ignorance, because there is NOTHING in that post that is either factual or responsible.

Maybe because that data is false and misleading?

So some are blaming the "media" for all the confusion about wearing masks. Nope. Get specific. The blame goes to the segment of the media that grabs snippets of information and quotes and uses them to further an agenda against the person being quoted or the subject he's quoting. There is PLENTY of real, accurate information on wearing masks out there. All you have to do is evaluate it. I get notices every week on the latest info on Covid from National Geographic. Usually interesting and always pretty accurate. I read the online version of a couple newspapers. As long as it's NEWS and not editorials, it's pretty accurate and tracks well with Nat Geo. If I have a question about it, Google is your friend...I can usually find the answer in someplace like the New England Journal of Medicine. People with agendas are still quoting stuff that was said or written about mask wearing back in March or April, when we still knew very little about this virus. And to be honest, the medical people didn't do a good job of explaining the mask rationale back then, instead opting to downplay their importance because N95 masks were scarce and they didn't want people snatching them up while medical workers with Covid had to do without. You can track the change in the rhetoric about masks...it tracks well with the increased knowledge of the disease, but also tracks well with the increased supply of N95 masks. But come on. Use just a little common sense. Talk, cough, sneeze, sing without a mask and your breath travels unimpeded. Do it with a mask on and it's slowed down to almost nothing, thus doesn't travel far. THE MASK IS NOT JUST TO PROTECT YOU, IT'S TO PROTECT OTHERS FROM YOU. By now the only people who should not know that this disease can have asymptomatic spread are morons and hermits. Wearing a mask is a consideration to others, and it doesn't matter one tinker's darn if you think you don't have it, or you've already had it, or even if you've already been vaccinated. THE PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW YOU AND HAVE TO BE IN THE SAME ROOM WITH YOU DON'T KNOW THAT. Wear the mask as a courtesy to them, if nothing else. As somebody else said, nothing ticks me off more than a moron not wearing a mask in an indoor public place. He is shouting, "I'm a self-centered moron who doesn't care about anybody else." Mary and I get our second shot of the vaccine in a week or so. We will STILL wear a mask in public indoor spaces, not because we are still freaked out about getting it ourselves, but because we wish to be responsible members of society that have at least a modicum of respect for other people.

Another reason to look first at the median flow. Median, like I said, is a good approximation of normal flow, but it varies by month and season. What is normal for April is going to be high and possibly muddy for August. On the Eleven Point gage, the median flow for February is around 650-700 cfs. For April, it's 950-1000 cfs. For August, it's 420-480 cfs.

Nope. Don't look at the mean, look at the median. Mean is the average of all flows, and high flows skew that average upwards. So a flood flow (7600 cfs is the maximum flow for that day) is FAR above the normal flow, while a low flow (192 cfs is the minimum for the day) is not a huge difference from normal. Median is the flow for which half the years on that day it's below that figure and half it's above it. It's the median flow that is a good approximation of normal. The little triangles on the graph denote the median, so it's a quick way of telling how close the river is to normal. Mean flow is about the most useless figure on the gage site for a floater or angler.