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The horrible thing you never knew about ducks

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The horrible thing you never knew about ducks

On the Venn diagram of strange animal mating behaviors — from lobster golden showers to garter-snake orgies — duck sex is on the border between cartoonish and sadistic.

That’s right, our beloved mallards engage in some seriously disturbing mating behavior. The “dark side” of duck mating has its own chapter in the new book “The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us” by Yale ornithology professor Richard O. Prum. It’s a controversial subject, earning notoriety in 2013 after news leaked that the federal government contributed $400,000 to study the mating habits of ducks — dubbed “duckpenisgate” by Mother Jones.

Ep. 194 – Austin Troyer – Grazing Reclaimed Mine Land

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Ep. 194 – Austin Troyer – Grazing Reclaimed Mine Land

6/14/21 by Clay Conry

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/124417387
Episode: https://chtbl.com/track/115875/https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/http://storage.googleapis.com/providers.globalagnetwork.com/podcasts/working-cows-podcast/episodes/Working-Cows-Ep.-194-Austin-Troyer.mp3

Austin Troyer is a first generation rancher in Ohio. He and his wife have gotten their start by finding undervalued land and putting the work in to make it usable. We talk about the process of obtaining these leases as well as getting them ready for livestock and finding the right class of livestock to take advantage of the topography and forage.

This is a fascinating podcast about recovering formerly mined areas for cattle grazing – not only turning mined areas into good use but also helping to rebuild the soil with hoof action, grazing encouraging growth and manure fertilizing the land.

NY unleashes predator bugs to eat hemlock pests | Adirondack Explorer

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NY unleashes predator bugs to eat hemlock pests | Adirondack Explorer

Hemlocks are the fourth most populous tree in the Adirondack Park, and woolly adelgids are so small they can spread easily on the wind. The DEC continues to survey, but getting to remote locations and spotting infestations early is difficult, to say the least.

So the state is using all of its tools in the toolbox—or in the cooler—to treat the trees on Lake George. In addition to applying and injecting insecticides on the trees, the DEC is coordinating the introduction of three new species on Lake George, all of them bugs that love to eat adelgids