Soaring Red Kite

A graceful red kite (Milvus milvus)in flight against a cloudy summer sky.

The English word “kite” is from the Old English “cyta” which is of unknown origin.

Red kites are generalist scavengers and predators. Their diet consists mainly of carrion,  large domestic animals such as sheep and pigs, roadkills, and shored fish. They also take small mammals such as mice, voles, shrews, stoats, young hares and rabbits.

The species is are native to the western Palearctic, with all of the currently known 32,200–37,700 breeding pairs being in Europe. Historically, the species  was only resident in the milder parts of its range in western Europe and northwestern Africa, whereas all or most red kites in northern mainland Europe wintered to the south and west, some also reaching western Asia, but an increasing number of northern birds now remain in that region year-round. Individual birds have been seen as far north as Finland and south to Israel, Libya and Gambia. Formerly also breeding in west Asia and northwest Africa breeding is now confined to Europe.

In the United Kingdom red kites have been known to steal food from people in a similar manner to gulls. One such occurrence took place in Marlow, Buckinghamshire (a town near a major reintroduction site for the species in the UK in the nearby village of Stokenchurch), in which Red Kites swooped down to steal sandwiches from people in one of the town’s parks.

Red kites were not popular because they are scavengers. Shakespeare’s King Lear describes his daughter Goneril as a detested kite, and he wrote “when the kite builds, look to your lesser linen” in reference to them stealing washing hung out to dry in the nesting season. In the mid-15th century, King James II of Scotland decreed that they should be “killed wherever possible”, but they remained protected in England and Wales for the next 100 years as they kept the streets free of carrion and rotting food. Under Tudor “vermin laws” many creatures were seen as competitors for the produce of the countryside and bounties were paid by the parish for their carcasses.

By the 20th century, the breeding population was restricted to a handful of pairs in South Wales, but recent conservation efforts have resulted growing populations in several areas.

A Soaring Red Kite

This image is available at one of my fiancée’s online stores.

Weathered Flying Moose Aviation Sign

A weathered wooden sign advertising the services of mythical Flying Moose Aviation of Talkeetna, Alaska. It features one of the company’s blue-and-yellow aircraft equipped with extra-large “tundra tires” for landing on rough terrain.

Flying Moose Aviation: Flightseeing, glacier landings, cargo, hunting and fishing charters. We fly, tell us where you want to go.

Weathered Flying Moose Aviation Sign

As usual, this image is available at one of my online stores.

Matanuska Moose Milk Logo

The new logo of world famous and entirely mythical Matanuska Moose Milk dairy farm in Willow Alaska; not too far from Anchorage, a humorous logo.

As usual you can find this image at one of my online stores.

Drink Moose Milk! It’s Good For You

Sockeye Salmon – Alaska Postage

The latest in my series of postage stamps of a notional independent Alaska.

Sockeye Salmon Postage Stamp

The sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka), aka red salmon, is found in the Northern Pacific Ocean and rivers discharging into it.

Oncorhynchus is from the Greek ὄγκος (onkos) meaning “barb”, and ῥύγχος (rhynchos) meaning “snout”. Nerka is the Russian word for the anadromous form. The name “sockeye” is an anglicization of suk-kegh (sθə́qəy̓), its name in Halkomelem, the language of the indigenous people along the lower reaches of the Fraser River (one of British Columbia’s many native Coast Salish languages). Suk-kegh means “red fish”.

You will find this image on many products at my online store

Brick House In Bielefeld

I saw a nice brick house a few weeks ago in Bielefeld, Germany and thought it would be an interesting project to recreate it digitally.

Here is my original photo:

Red Brick House In Bielefeld

And my recreation. Click on the image for a full-sized view.

Carved/Engraved Puffin and Raven Doodles

I love wood; much prefer it to metal and glass and ceramics. And I admire people who are adept at woodworking and woodcarving.  I would like to take up carving myself, but there is a limit to how many media one can work in and be at all accomplished.

My way around this problem is to work with 3D art, and traditional techniques which give the impression of carved or engraved wood.

Here are a couple of recent examples, doodles, to see what I could do. I believe they came out quite well.

Click on each image for a full-sized view.

Engraved Raven

Engraved Puffin

Combining Howler And Bryce – Greenland

Here’s my latest experiment in combining the best features of Howler and DAZ Bryce. An arctic coastline, perhaps Greenland; with the familiar Flying Moose Aviation de Havilland Otter to indicate scale.

The mountains were rendered in Howler. I really like the degree of control one has in developing the texture, or image map, afforded by the use of an image editor such as Howler. Howler’s 3D Designer has two adjustable light sources which can be of different colors, typically orange and blue shades, resulting in very realistic lighting.

The seaside rocks and water surface were rendered in Bryce. I was not 100 percent successful in integrating the two images; a bit of tinkering will be required the next time to improve the results. This image is a study or sorts; I want to make a similar scene depicting the houses typical of coastal Greenland with a whale breaching in the foreground, and improved floating ice.

Click on the image for a full-size view.

Contempt

Here is more proof that both Amazon and the thieves it allows to sell stolen images in the Amazon Marketplace have nothing but contempt for customers.

Below is a screen shot of an absolutely atrocious copy of my work. Though the image was obviously taken from the Zazzle product page, it looks as if it is the typical degraded  copy of a copy of a copy…. You can see the address in the screenshot though I am sure it will be removed by Amazon when I report it. This particular seller offers a large number of stolen images which are just as degraded.

That the seller would offer such poor imagery, that Amazon allows such poor-quality products to be sold. Well, they must think you are idiots.

Compare it with my original image:

New Element Salmonium-235

Buyer beware! Lawlessness rules the land. The robber barons and thieves only want to separate you from your money and do not care who they harm to do so.

Alaska Dog Sled Mail Postage Stamp

A newly-issued, twenty-nugget postage stamp from mythical independent Alaska commemorating the renewal of the service. This is the highest-denominated Alaska issue that I have seen thus far – delivering mail via dog sled to bush communities during the winter can be extremely grueling, even dangerous.  Though a modern, lightweight racing sled is depicted on the stamp, mail would have been carried by larger, more robust, freight sleds.

 

I have wanted to portray a sled and dog team for some time. I am still letting my ideas percolate and may end up depicting a less-polished looking, native-built sled.

It is believed that the use of dog sleds dates back as far as 3,000 years ago, when some populations migrated northward due to pressure from communities were forced north to Siberia by nomadic herding peoples. Sled dogs have been used in Canada, Samiland (Lapland), Greenland, Siberia/Russian Far East, Norway, Finland and Alaska.

Historical references of the use of dogs sleds in North America predate European contact. The use of dogs for transportation was widespread, both among the Inuit and other peoples farther to the South. The Alaska Gold Rush saw an increase in the use of sled dogs as transportation and for freighting supplies. This, along with the use of dogsleds in polar exploration, led to the late 1800s and early 1900s being called the “Era of the Sled Dog”.  Dog sleds were important for transportation in arctic areas, hauling supplies in areas that were inaccessible by other methods.

Dog teams delivered mail . In Alaska dog sled mail delivery  Dogs were   hauled 500-700 lb loads. By 1901, dog trails had been established along the entirety of the Yukon River.

Regular dog sled mail deliveries to interior communities in both Alaska and northern Canada, which would otherwise have no mail service during the winter season (October to may) was common during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Dogs were superior to other forms of transport during the winter months. Capable of delivering mail in conditions that would stop boats, trains, and horses, they could cover long distances, work day or night, and traverse both frozen lakes and rivers and pass through trackless forests. The historic 2,300-mile Iditarod Trail was the main dog trail that carried mail from Seward to Nome. In recent years, competitive dogsled races have carried some commemorative mail.

Teams of 6-8 dogs pulled loads of between 500 – 700 pounds of mail. The dogs wore moosehide booties to protect their paws from the ice. Mail delivery by dog sled ended in 1963.

Dog sleds were used to patrol western Alaska during World War II. Sled dogs today are still used by some rural communities, especially in areas of Alaska and Canada and throughout Greenland.

The Danish military  continues to conduct long-range reconnaissance patrols in the wilderness of northern and eastern Greenland. Known as the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol (Danish: Slædepatruljen Sirius), the patrols are usually conducted by two sleds, and may last as long as four months; often without additional human contact.

Progress Report

Due to ongoing, concerted effort by artists and designers who offer their work on Zazzle.com, along with behind-the-scenes activity by Zazzle itself, Amazon.com now claims to recognize that the sale of stolen intellectual property in the Amazon marketplace,  and Amazon’s facilitation of such activity, must be solved.

Amazon has provided a streamlined method for Zazzle artists and designers to submit copyright infringement reports. Thus far Amazon seems to be responding quickly and removing infringing products.

This is a good start, but so far I have not been unable to determine if Amazon continues to retain the stolen images, associating the with the product details of the infringing products which were removed, thus providing the opportunity for them to be reposted.

Permanent removal of these images and instituting procedures to make it much more difficult for thieves to upload stolen images to its servers is a non-negotiable demand of the Zazzle artists and designers.

We continue to submit copyright infringement reports and contact Zazzle artists and designers who are not aware that their images are among those that appear on millions of bootleg products, fakes, which are offered for sale on multiple Amazon domains. We also continue in other actions which I will not further explain here.

I again want express my thanks to Mr. Bezos for reading my email and arranging that an Amazon representative speak to me personally. I do, however to reiterate, as I made clear to the representative, that the army of mad Zazzle storekeepers continues to grow on a daily basis. We will continue in our efforts until the thieves are permanently driven from Amazon.

There need not be an adversarial relationship between Amazon and the many thousands of Zazzle artists and designers. The ball is in Amazon’s court.