This 'n That Thursday

I've decided to set aside Thursday as a day to make responses to comments left on my posts for the week. I don't want to leave questions unanswered; it's common for a blog-owner to post comments in response to the comments left, which I've done myself...but then I keep thinking, does anyone go back and re-read the comments section of a blog's posts a second time? Hmm. So, without further ado, here's what I'd like to respond to from the past week...


First off, I've had a lot of compliments on my blog music..thanks! My player gadget is from Playlist.com. That is where I discovered what I had playing, up until a few days ago...the Latino -Native American music of Alice Gomez. http://alicegomez.com/about.html She has many CDs available. I wish I knew how to share music from my hard drive to my blog. The instr's are for a rocket scientist! Anyway, now you know. My current music is also Native American. It includes that of R. Carlos Nakai, of Navajo-Ute heritage. I was originally looking for flute music, as I had decided it was less distracting while you read, to have music-only playing (no singing). I would have SD Native American music playing if I could find any at Playlist.com, but I cannot.

With my recent bison post, I was asked by someone, living outside of the US, about how the bison population is doing overall, and are they protected. The population estimate, prior to 1600, was from 30 to 70 million, covering most of No. America. By the 1890's, due to unregulated hunting (to put it nicely), the bison were reduced to less than 1,000. Today, the estimated number of bison in N America is at 500,000, with about 250,000 of those based in Canada. Every state in the US has a bison population. Much of the bison is being raised on private ranches for meat...and the demand is rising...bison meat has less calories, cholesterol, and less fat, and more iron than beef, pork, chicken, or salmon. The bison on state or federal land, such as those in Yellowstone Nat'l Park and here in Custer State Park, are quite protected. That's not to say that the herd keeps growing...Custer Park has an annual round-up and sells off some of the bison including calves. Oh, P.S...yes, I do take my bison photos w/ the 300 mm macro lens. The photo above was taken of a lone large bull, yesterday at Custer Park.


I received some compli-ments on this photo of a soaring hawk. I wanted to say thank you very much for the thumbs ups...when I took this, I knew it came out decent (for once!)...and I'd just been whining that I was never going to get a good shot of a soaring hawk (I see them a lot). I just have one thing to say... Practice, practice, practice!! And, oh yea...practice!



Tuesday I shared a pic of my friend Jayne by the creek that spills down Roughlock Falls...(this is the upper falls; pic taken in June)...a comment was made about liking the name of the falls so I thought I'd share the history of the name, below...

I found this pic of a sign at the falls online, explaining the history of its name...you might need a magnifyer...

Some of the comments regarding the fairybell fruit were about how it was unfamiliar to a reader. I took this shot last year, it shows both the reddish and the yellow fruit...refreshing your memory here...

Now, this is the fairybell wildflower... photo was taken along Roughlock Trail in June '08. You can tell it's from the lily family.

Butter-and-eggs, from the figwort family, is also called common toadflax, a name some of you are more familiar with. I'm just clarifying that they are the same flower. They started out as a garden flower in the Black Hills, like many others, and escaped into the wild. Can't say as I blame them!

So there you have it, the first of 'This 'n That Thursday'. I promise to try to make the rest of them shorter!