January 29, 2007

We're experiencing a spell of cool, nearly cloudless sunny days, followed by freezing nights with brilliant starry skies. Bright red female hazelnut buds are starting to break at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, although at our higher elevation, they are not yet prominent. According to Dave Wagner's 2007 Willamette Valley Nature Calendar, red fox, coyote, and opossum began their breeding season this month--in fact, a coyote chorus woke several residents here the other night (whether it was connected to a mating ritual has not yet been ascertained). Dave Wagner's Moss and Fern walk kicked off the season at Mt. Pisgah on January 20; Daphne Stone's February 4 Lichen Walk is the next that several of us plan to attend. Black bears will have their cubs in the first few weeks of February (again according to Dave's calendar); however, like most black bear populations, our local ursines are shy and we are unlikely to see the newborns here.

Tree frogs are continuing their mating calls, and increasing numbers of insects are flitting around in the midday sunshine. Late last week, a ruby-crowned kinglet performed the most prolonged, circuitous flycatching flight I have ever witnessed from that species. Others have been content to make short forays out from a small tree or shrub and then return within a few seconds, but this one chased a succession of insects in an almost swallowlike flight pattern for what seemed like the better part of a minute. At this past weekend's Green Earth Home Show (at which Lost Valley, the Eugene Permaculture Guild, and the Climate Change Coalition shared a booth), ornithologist Dan Gleason verified that I was not losing my mind, and that this probably was a kinglet. (Or, at least, that it probably was a kinglet.)

I've been starting every day with a half-hour of birdwatching while bicycling. Even with frost on the ground, the birds have been abundant. This is because the bicycling is occurring on an exercise bike I acquired recently as part of the physical therapy for my still-healing knee ligament tear. The birds are on my laptop screen. The DVD I am watching is Better Birdwatching in Oregon and Washington, and features video and audio for 128 birds commonly found in those two states. Seeing and listening simultaneously to these birds seems to help with both visual and song/call identification--the two reinforce one another. In fact, until the advent of handy bird books and recordings, familiarizing oneself with birds used to be of necessity a multisensory experience.

I'm midway through my fifth watching of the DVD. After four years of bird classes with Dave Bontrager, it is helping everything fall into place. Billed as "ideal for beginners," it is far from comprehensive. Seasoned ornithologists will have many suggestions for improvements, but so far I have few complaints--it is quite substantially better than nothing. I do notice the conspicuous absence of several key species. Perhaps a revised/expanded version will include the western scrub jay, golden-crowned kinglet, varied thrush, purple finch, Swainson's hawk, merlin, ruffed grouse, barred owl, pygmy owl, spotted owl, Anna's hummingbird, pileated woodpecker, and others (including more gulls and ducks), who are missed and certainly would be worth a few extra minutes of pedaling on my exercise bike. If popular demand is strong enough (the DVD creators' website is www.betterbirdwatching.com [1], although I'm not counseling anyone to barrage them with emails--that is up to you), perhaps a more comprehensive version will result. However, it's hard to complain about 128 species spotted in little over 90 minutes.

In the middle parts of the day, I've been watching actual birds, often from the same spot where I am typing this e-newsletter, south of my cabin, facing the meadow. Yesterday, three types of sparrow--a spotted towhee, fox sparrow, and song sparrow--kindly perched next to each other in the crabapple just east of my chair, allowing extensive comparison. They tied for first. Other quite active birds have included crows, ravens (about whose intelligence I've been hearing many anecdotes recently), black-capped chickadees, northern flickers, American robins, winter wrens, and Bewick's wrens. An osprey flew overhead outside my window soon after it appeared on my laptop screen. On a Nature Trail tour with Community Experience Week participants last week, we encountered a pair of American dippers diving, feeding, bobbing, dipping, and blinking their white eyelids in Anthony Creek. That same group of visitors also helped us clear English ivy and Armenian blackberry from the woods between the lodge and the dormitories and turn the extirpated invasives into compost for future use in our food-growing areas. Meanwhile, the salal patches formerly suppressed by the ivy and blackberry will also be feeding us, and resident wildlife, more abundantly now.

Expect more news soon about planned upcoming events, including the Spring Ecology and Social Permaculture Open House at Lost Valley on Sunday, March 18, and the Native Plants and Permaculture gathering May 11-13 (see www.lostvalley.org/nature [1] for details as they unfold). Until then, may the frogs be with you,

Chris