Buffalo Dan's Bison

As I've mentioned in previous posts, bison have two mating seasons each year: a minor one in spring and a major one in late summer.  During these periods a healthy dominant bison bull will become singularly attentive to any female nearing or in estrus and extremely aggressive towards any perceived interference. Last spring, our bull was quite aggressive towards me during the early spring mating period and then calmed down quite a bit during the summer.  With the onset of late summer, Jess and I weren't sure what to expect, but figured I would probably be the victim of more hatred.  Now, with mating season in full swing, it is clear that the situation not what we had expected. Though our bull is showing the normal signs of sexual interest in receptive females, it appears that he could care less about me.  I seem to have ceased to be a source of concern to him. There could be any number of explanations for his change in attitude, but I think the change is largely do t

This is not a thermal image.  Rather it is the result of blending two images in such a way that the pixel values from one image are subtracted from the pixel values of the second image.  If the pictures are captured within a relatively short time of each other, the blended output will often show changes as minute as footprints in grass.  The two pictures that were used to create the blended image.  They were taken within about 10 minutes of each other.  Right now I am able to create these blended images with GNU Image Manipulation Program software by using the blend mode option.  Down the road, I may decide to simply automate the process via Python, but I don't see any reason to do so currently. 

Ancient agricultural terraces and buildings situated at the very top of Wayna Picchu (near Machu Picchu).  I guess I shouldn't complain about the work I have to do on my ranch.  Last week I took a break from work at the ranch and went on a tour of Peru with my family.  The trip was fun and educational, especially from an agricultural perspective.  I have to say I was very impressed with both the ancient and the modern Peruvian farmers. It would be impossible for me to capture the vast amount of agricultural accomplishments of the Peruvian people in once small blog post.  The best I can do is give my overall impression and post a few pictures with brief descriptions.  In a world trending more and more towards large-scale mechanized production of blandly identical plants and animals, many Peruvians seem to have managed to maintain a smaller-scale less industrialized method of farming a larger variety of foods.  It's something I wish the we had more of in the US. Anci