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Last Friday morning, Nov. 20, 2009, I tuned in on CSPAN 2 as the United States Senate began, um, let us say, deliberating its proposed health care reform bill. The Greatest Deliberative Body in the World and all that.

Minority Leader McConnell began to, well, deliberate. Talked about 10 or 15 minutes. During his time, he must have mentioned that the current bill was 2,074 pages long in about every other sentence. With appropriate gestures. There were cutesy variations: “massive,” “enormous.”

To McConnell’s credit, he did refer to actual specifications in the bill as he interpreted them, in those 2,074 pages. But, as I slurped coffee and listed to him, what I was absorbing subliminally was the drumbeat of ... all together now, 2,074!

Then I lost the thread of his address and started to think McConnell was flogging his sales pitch to exhaustion. It followed naturally at this time of year that I then recalled I hadn’t yet made my traditional pitch for my books. They are for sale. In better bookstores everywhere. Any bookstore that doesn’t carry them is, by definition, striving to be better and can get them for you anyway.

Let’s face it: There is no better value, ounce for ounce, than one of my books. Oh, maybe a Christmas present you made yourself out of recycled or waste material, but who has time these days?

Out of consideration for you, dear reader, I shall simply list the names of my books and not repeat their name again and again and again. This time.

The list: Valley So Sweet; Curmudgeon Chronicles; Winter Wings, with Thomas Mangelsen; Birds of Grand Teton National Park and Surrounding Areas; and, with Darwin Wile, Finding the Birds of Jackson Hole. Can’t go wrong for gifts or presents for yourself.

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We resume regular columning:

PIKA (Cony; rock rabbit)

Small rat-sized, grayish to buffy or brownish, with short, broad, rounded ears and no visible tail. Found only in the rock slides and near timberline in high mountains.

From: Peterson Field Guides: Mammals.

Although the Conservation Research Center of Teton Science Schools launched a collaborative study of pikas only a few  months ago, the above summary of pika habitat may need revision. Biologists and citizen scientists, agency personnel, Teton Science Schools staff, student groups, naturalists, hikers, climbers and casual observers have all added to existing documentation and hearsay and have documented 152 pika sites (from 201 reports from 25 nature mappers) that can be surveyed and tracked as weather permits.

One finding so far is that pikas were found from expected high elevations (12,578 feet on Mount Moran) to an unexpected and surprising 5,801 feet (Snake River Canyon). Pika populations were documented on slopes facing north, south, east and west and were more widely dispersed than once anticipated.

The pika project is off to a fine start. So many individuals, agencies, schools, managers and nonprofit organizations are cooperating that they can’t be listed here. Heading the project is Embere Hall, research director, Conservation Research Center, Teton Science schools. Phone: 307-734-3740, or e-mail: Embere.Hall@TetonScience.org. Contact her to find out more, or to volunteer.

There’s a bonus: Pikas are cute.

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Come Thanksgiving and in these parts, it’s time to acknowledge that winter has arrived. No need to wait for the solstice, but you can if you think you can get away with it.

November and swans are coming down to the valley floor from parts near and far. On Nov. 20, Susan Patla surveyed Flat Creek on the National Elk Refuge for swans and found 150 adults and 28 cygnets. Down from a high of 208 on Nov. 17. Flat Creek is freezing up in sections.

Most of the Flat Creek swans appeared to be trumpeters. Interestingly, fewer tundra swans than usual seem to have stopped off in Jackson Hole so far this autumn. An impressive exception is female tundra swan U640. She was banded July 26 on Buckland River Delta in northwest Alaska and was on Fish Creek in Wilson on Nov. 19 (Jean Brash, David Barrett). The Buckland River flows into the Chukchi Sea and is “nearby” Kotsebue, Alaska. U640 left after a short stay; perhaps she will be spotted elsewhere.

On Jackson Lake, waterfowl can impress at this time of year: Rafts of readhead ducks or coots, a few relocated mergansers and eared and horned grebes, swans (on Friday at the Jackson Lake Dam, 64 adults, five cygnets, some 100 far out on the lake proper, Susan Patla).

Also on Friday below the dam, Susan Patla carefully studied a first-year Thayer’s gull. If accepted, this is likely a first Thayer’s gull for Teton County and Grand Teton National Park. (You will need a modern field guide for this one.)

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A couple of notices: Reports of elk and their movements, particularly in and about homes, developments, towns and agricultural lands, are encouraged. Such information will be useful to planners, particularly helpful with respect to the comprehensive plan decisions. Send to Wyoming Game and Fish Department, 307-733-2321, use Nature Mapping Jackson Hole site or (last resort) me.

– The Teton Valley, Idaho Christmas Bird Count will be Jan. 3, 2010. Call Susan Patla, 307-733-2321.

– The Jackson Hole Christmas Count will be Dec. 20. Susan Marsh, 307-733-5744.

© Bert Raynes 2009

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Bert Raynes writes weekly on whatever suits his fancy with a dash of news on nature and its many ways.