There are probably not too many of you wonderful readers who play games with millipedes and centipedes every day, and probably wouldn’t care if one got into your old socks—but in case you’ve ever been curious about them, please read on. I gotta’ tell you, I’ve been seeing and wondering about ’em since I was […]
Jim Anderson
Posted inOutside
Saving a Bend Sanctuary
The effort to save Worrell Wayside, slated to become more parking
Dear Readers, there is a move afoot to destroy a unique—and meaningful—little natural area in downtown Bend, and make it into a parking lot, for crying out loud! Worrell Wayside, a county park set aside nearly 25 years ago, “preserved and protected for public use,” sets on an outcropping of relatively recent volcanic rocks from […]
Posted inOutside
Reno Air Races… in Church!
Memories of a life in aviation from our resident naturalist
Ya’ just never know how the mind of a 94-year-old naturalist/writer is going to work at 11 o’clock Sunday morning in church. There I was sitting in the pew, listening to a beautiful newly married young woman talking about her conversion, when suddenly I saw a 1936 GB R-1 air racer waving in the air […]
Posted inOutside
The Endangered Monarch
The iconic butterfly is endangered because its habitat is imperiled. Here’s how to help.
Headlines in conservation magazines, and even in newspapers have been crying: “Monarch butterflies on the verge of extinction!” And they are, all the way from Maine to California. Their populations have dropped over 90% in the West and up to 84% in the East. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which recently […]
Posted inOpinion
What’s 25 Years When You’re 94?!
The Source’s longest-running contributor looks back on “Natural World”
Holy Cats—25 years is a long time when you’re enjoying yourself! If my memory serves me correctly it was that long ago that Source Weekly publisher Aaron Switzer and his dear wife, Angela, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a weekly nature column for a newspaper they had created. Was I? You bet! […]
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The Barred Owls are Coming
The owl cousin threatening to eat the spotted owl out of its house and home
First it was rumors, “The Barred owls are coming, the Barred owls are coming…” Next, it was the dire warnings that the barred owls were going to either chase all the Northern spotted owl out of the Northwest, or breed with them and bring forth a whole new sub-species called, “Sparred owls.” Then the warning […]
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Oh, the Poor Old Porcupine
Tales of the local “porky,” a misunderstood creature of the east Cascades
Our poor old porcupines have been in man’s gun sights since the first pioneer deemed it a pest. The porcupine is, unfortunately, a tree-eating mammal and Man’s greed said, “That thing has gotta go!” That attitude about porcupines only got worse the more we cut up trees for houses, killed beavers for coats and hats, […]
Posted inOutside
All Hail the Mighty Beaver
North America’s largest living native rodents will improve ecosystems, if we let them
It’s no wonder Oregon is known as The Beaver State. Aside from the coyote and wolf, no other mammal—including the cow—has figured so dramatically in the commercial history of our state as the North American Beaver. Wars were fought over beaver, and much of western Oregon was impacted by the trapping of beaver and the […]
Posted inOutside
Backyard Badgers and Ground Squirrels are Fair Game, but They Shouldn’t Be
Open season on these ‘pests’ harms ecosystems
You’ve seen them. They’re big furry critters about the size of a bear cub that sort of roll over the surface of the earth as they rush from point “A” to point “B.” If you get too close to them — as you investigate what that blur of fur was that scuttled behind the sagebrush […]
Posted inOutside
Let’s Talk About Stares
The European starling and its ability to invade
Before we get into the havoc alien starlings, or stares, are causing here in the U.S., I have to comment on the nutty title for this piece. At one time, way back in the mid-1800s, when Shakespeare was prominent in the intellectual world, the European starling, Sturnis vulgaris, was known in Ireland as the stare. […]