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If you haven’t spent time with bats, you’ve missed out knowing some very lovely and helpful animals that share this beautiful old Earth with us…our Home away from Home. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Central Oregon’s bats way back in the early ’50s when I met up with one of our wonderful epidemiologists […]
I‘m not an alarmist, but I am a naturalist who has been a guest in this world we call home for nigh into 94 years. When I was a kid on the farm in West Haven, Connecticut, my grandfather swore by a chemical named, “Black Leaf 40,” a so-called “safe” biodegradable agricultural insecticide used around […]
From the first day I set foot in Oregon—literally—rattlesnakes came into my life. It took place after I was leaving the old Hampton Station, out east of Bend on Highway 20, having stopped there for a cold Pepsi. It was the last week in September and a huge line of thunderstorms was ahead of me […]
Last year, my wife Sue and I completed a 10-year survey of the Golden Eagle populations in a huge area of Central and Eastern Oregon. Throughout the survey Sue told me again and again, “Let’s wait a little longer,” when we came to a nest site with apparently nothing going on. Sure enough, sometimes it […]
Many years ago, like back before WWII, there was a butterfly called the Xerces blue, scientific name, Glaucopsyche xerces. It lived in sand dunes on the edge of San Francisco in California and — like the Monarch butterfly that must have milkweed for its babies to feed on — the Xerces blue caterpillars depended on […]
If you want to peek in on the life and times of a pair of beautiful, wild, Golden Eagles nesting locally, all you have to do is go to goldeneaglecam.org. There, Petra, the female, and Rocky, the male, are back again this year. I don’t think anyone knew about the eagles until Janet Zuelke and […]
One of the things I enjoy about birds is watching them, the other is discussing them. Well, I guess I’d better include eating them as well. Before I came down with my present heart condition, my diet was completely different — meat was high on the menu and Col. Sanders’ fried chicken was at the […]
The negative issues connected to lead used in sport hunting go back to the Year One, and it’s taken over 100 years to really understand what a horrifying impact that stuff has on wildlife resource as well as the world around us. A photo I once took of a lead-filled duck gizzard is just one […]
Those Bushtits in Sue’s photo, pigging out at our suet feeder, always bring the thrill of feeding wild birds alive in our souls. Don’t know about you guys, but if you’re having a slow and not-so-fun day, Bushtits will bring joy into your life! Both Elise Wolf (a bird rehabber in Sisters), and my wife […]
The topic of a lot of my phone calls, emails and text messages this fall has been about hummingbirds and feeders in winter, and to be perfectly frank about it, it’s a worrisome conundrum. Right off the bat, sugar water is not the only food for hummingbirds; sure, they get an instant shot of energy […]
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