Nature Center e-newsletter #10

July 2, 2006

First, we're happy to announce two newly-scheduled upcoming events with visiting naturalists:

Local ornithologist Dave Bontrager will lead another Bird Walk at Lost Valley on Tuesday, July 25, from 8 AM to 11 AM. Dave's last bird walk here (see below) got rave reviews, and we expect this one to fill quickly. With decades of field research and teaching experience, Dave makes each walk not just an exercise in bird identification, but an exploration of the world of birds, their behaviors, relationships, and interactions with their habitats. Enrollment on this walk is limited to 15 participants and pre-registration is required. We are asking for a $3 donation per person from those who are not Nature Center Members. To register, please call 541-937-2567 ext. 116, or email nature@lostvalley.org [1].

Entomologist Sharon Blick, also known as The Bug Lady, will lead a workshop entitled "Discovering Bugs" on Friday, August 4, from 9 AM to noon. Participants will catch live bugs with nets and observe them while learning their names, adaptations, life cycles, and importance to humans. We will explore insects of the meadow, garden, soil, and stream, and then release them unharmed. Come discover the little things that run the world! This workshop is open to both adults and children. Pre-registration is not required, but is helpful to us so we know how many to plan for. We are asking for a $3 donation per person from those who are not Nature Center Members. To register, please call 541-937-2567 ext. 116, or email nature@lostvalley.org [2].

Summer is in full swing here at Lost Valley. Continued bed preparation, planting, and harvesting in the vegetable gardens have left many nature enthusiasts here pleasantly sore in the body, but no less appreciative of the unfolding of the seasons. Once again, rainy periods followed by heat waves (with temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit, now cooling down to the 80s) have given the burgeoning plant life and everything that depends on it an extra boost. How else to explain blackberry shoots that appear to grow approximately one inch every hour?

Dave Bontrager's June 27 bird walk was well-attended by both humans and birds. Among the species we saw and/or heard: turkey vulture, ring-necked pheasant, band-tailed pigeon, mourning dove, rufous hummingbird, red-breasted sapsucker, northern flicker, western wood-pewee, willow flycatcher, Hutton's vireo, western scrub jay, American crow, tree swallow, violet-green swallow, barn swallow, black-capped chickadee, bushtit, Bewick's wren, winter wren, Swainson's thrush, American robin, cedar waxwing, orange-crowned warbler, black-throated gray warbler, western tanager, spotted towhee, song sparrow, black-headed grosbeak, lazuli bunting, purple finch, lesser goldfinch, and American goldfinch. We observed the site of a brown creeper nest under the shingles of a cabin, where we'd seen a fledgling emerge just a few days before, and also saw a wood duck nest box buzzing with honey bees (not wood ducks). We talked about bird songs, mating behaviors (including the 2-to-3 percent of couplings that end in "bird divorce"), territoriality, habitat, and diet. We also visited the creek restoration site, where two recent work parties have managed to eliminate most of the resprouting Armenian blackberry in order to allow the bird-friendly native shrubs and trees we planted in their place (ninebark, vine maple, red osier dogwood, snowberry, tall Oregon grape, osoberry, and salmonberry) to flourish.

Speaking of berries, most of the wild strawberries and osoberries are past prime, but since mid-June the salmonberries have been ripe and abundant (especially upstream from us along Anthony Creek and its tributaries). These plump, bright orange, raspberry-type fruits are more tangy than sweet, and a bit on the acidic side, but nevertheless a treat. The few red huckleberries and twisted-stalk berries I have sampled have been delectable.

Recent wildlife sitings have included a garter snake swallowing a salamander (species unknown, but, counting the legs, significantly larger around than the snake) along a path near the lodge. Much more significant to us was the discovery on summer solstice of a gravid (pregnant) female western pond turtle crossing the path near the clothesline, apparently looking for a place to lay her eggs. She had reportedly made another appearance a couple weeks previously. Before this year, we had last seen a western pond turtle on our land approximately seven years ago, and discovered her hatched eggs in a compost pile that December. In both cases, the turtle seemed to have been living in and around Anthony Creek. This species has viable populations in only a few places in the Eugene area, and its presence here is another reason to continue with our habitat restoration and protection efforts. In the wake of the pond turtle sighting, this morning's sighting of a black bear--large, very black, and eager to scramble down the slope once we'd seen each other at a distance of about twenty yards, about a mile up Anthony Creek Road--was breathtaking, but relatively run-of-the-mill.

Since the last e-newsletter, we've had a visit from botanist Tanya Harvey, who helped us identify several additional species of native plants on our land. We continue to move slowly but surely toward being able to publish a preliminary plant species list. We also gave three nature walks to children from the Peace Village summer camp who visited us on June 28.

The Nature Center page on the Lost Valley website (www.lostvalley.org/nature [2]) has been reformatted, and will continue to undergo improvements. To make an online donation to the Nature Center, you can now go to www.lostvalley.org/donate [2], click on the "Donate Now" button, and then choose "Nature Center Membership" under the "Areas of Giving" pull-down menu.

Happy Summer and we hope to see you out here!

Chris