Jim Anderson

Perfect swarm technique!Over the past five years or so I have had the pleasure of coming to Bend every spring (from my home near Sisters) to capture swarms of bees.

This spring I received several calls from various people wanting to be rid of a swarm of bees within their trees, and house. The first came in from a person living in the West Hills with a swarm, then came a call from a women with bees in her rental home, and then about a swarm on Minnesota in downtown Bend.
I found the calls interesting, as last year I received a nasty letter from the Bend Police Department telling me I had to remove a box of bees I had in the West Hills, as it is (allegedly) illegal to keep bees in Bend. Someone better get busy and tell the bees that, as there are probably 20 or more wild bee colonies thriving within city limits. I know that to be fact, as I found another huge colony with at least 50,000 bees in a brick building not more than a half-block from the swarm on Minnesota.

Male Pacific Tree Frog singing his Song of Spring.The frogs we hear singing their hearts out every evening are our tiny
Pacific Tree Frog, Pseudacris regilla, a common species throughout the
Northwest. They range from Northern California, all through Oregon and
Washington, British Columbia, and eastward to Idaho, Montana and
Nevada. These little guys come in shades of greens or browns, and can
be found from sea level up to over 11,000 feet, as well as our dry,
cold High Desert.
Male tree frogs begin the mating business in
early spring (and there are many of us who have heard them practicing
in our basements on warm winter nights); they migrate to ponds, where
they all start singing at once, and very loudly. The guy with the
loudest voice gets to mate first with the females laying their eggs on
and under vegetation and leaf litter in shallow, calm, clean water. And
they are a hardy bunch; they have to be to survive "spring" in Central
Oregon.
If the eggs are not eaten by salamanders or snakes,
embryos will become tadpoles within one to three weeks. If the tadpoles
are not eaten by salamanders, snakes and herons, the tadpoles will feed
on periphyton, filamentous algae, diatoms and pollen in and on the
surface of the water. If they are not eaten by bigger salamanders,
snakes, fish, bullfrogs, kingfishers or herons, about two and a half
months later, the tadpole’s metamorphosis is complete and they leave
the water as frogs and become terrestrial predators on arthropods.

Last meal for an electrocuted Great Horned Owl found on a CEC power pole near Plainview Road.The owl pictured above electrocuted on the top of a power pole, still
clutching its last meal, made a fatal error recently when it perched on
a Central Electric Cooperative (CEC) power pole (#126867) near
Plainview Road, between Bend and Sisters. The pole is located in a
Wildlife Easement under the stewardship of Ron and Jolynn Lambert.

A
pole to perch on and eat his freshly caught gray squirrel is all mister
owl was interested in; whether it was in a wildlife easement, or
carrying 7,200 volts of electrical energy didn't matter. Little did
mister owl know that he was flirting with disaster. It wasn't until he
was careless, and touched two of the wires, that in a flash the awesome
electrical energy in the line ended his life.
"I see a lot of
that sort of thing happening to Great Horned Owls, especially in
spring," Jon Paxton, a CEC serviceman said, as he pried the owl off the
fuse block on the top of the pole.
Unfortunately that is an all
too common tragedy, but it is not the fault of CEC or other power
distribution companies. They spend a lot of time and money trying to
make poles safe for raptors. The bottom line is that the growing area
requires a great deal of electricity to pump water, keep homes warm,
allow families to cook meals and also power electronic devices and
lighting. Distribution of all that energy requires transmission lines
and poles to support them and it is unfortunate that occasionally an
owl, hawk or eagle runs afoul of the needs of Man. It is impossible to
check all the poles, but with your help reporting raptor
electrocutions, CEC and other power companies will eventually cure the
problem.

This is the second installment in a two-part piece about the decision to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species list in Montana and Idaho.
After the War, there was a lot of 1080 (known to the chemical industry as sodium fluoroacetate) stored in military installations around the US; it was too costly to destroy, so someone came up with the bright idea to give it to the rat-chokers to kill wildlife – and boy, did it ever! From mice to coyotes to eagles, 1080 did the job.
What no one knew at the time was that coyotes are not wolves, even though in some places in the U.S., like Texas, they're called, "wolves." Coyotes do not act, think, or behave like wolves.
If a male coyote (known as the "dog") pairs up with a female coyote, (known as a "bitch") produces 3 to 5 pups, and protects a territory, that's just fine and dandy, that's normal behavior. But if some menace, greater than family or territorial conflict, threatens the coyote, good old Darwin's ideas kick in. The dogs then run with up to three or four bitches, and instead of producing three or so pups, each bitch gives birth to up to eight young. Instead of one pair protecting a given territory, it's "every dog for itself and let's get what we can."

Editors note: This is the first in a two-part essay about the proposal
to remove wolves from the federal Endangered Species List.

Preparing for life on the De-List?Well,
it sounds like those ranchers in Wyoming who shot and killed the
("misbehaving") wolves that (allegedly) killed their livestock (and
immediately posted photos to prove what mighty hunters they are), and
others of their ilk are going to get their way. There is a move afoot
with the feds to remove wolves from the Endangered Species List before
they even get the opportunity to enjoy roaming free in Oregon.
Even
with President Obama's call for "good science," it may just be that he
picked the wrong guy to run the Dept. of Interior. Secretary Ken
Salazar, a rancher turned politician from Colorado, wants to follow the
flawed Bush Bunch and keep the "Big Bad Wolf" syndrome alive.

Monday, March 23rd was a big day for the Land Trust's Camp Polk
Preserve; tour leaders and docents met at the preserve to learn the
details of the restoration of Whychus Creek, a project that will be
kicking into high gear this spring and summer. Crews are slated to
begin breaking ground to restore the historical meandering creek
channel, after which the meadow will be hopping with activity
throughout the summer and fall.

Back in 1964, over Christmas time,
Whychus, then known as Squaw Creek, went on a rampage when lots of warm
rain fell on a wet snow-pack resulting in the creek going over its
banks, flooding Sisters, killing 7 people and costing around $157
million to repair the damages.
Needless to say, that got a lot of
people upset and as the saying goes; the "stuff" hit the fan. The
"government had to do something!" In those dark ages, fish habitat,
stream health and riparian zones were terms very few people understood,
or cared about. Like old growth forests that would be around "fo-ever,"
"fish would be forever as well, so the Powers-That-Be said, 'Lets fix
that creek so it won't flood no more!'"

California Condor, Topa Topa, great, great grandaddy of all the condors flying free today. The Oregon Zoo can fly a feather in their cap on their condor recovery
program as the second group of young condors raised in the zoo's
Jonsson Center for Wildlife are on the wing.

Three California condors
from the Oregon Zoo will be released into the Vermillion Cliffs
Monument in northern Arizona March 7, soaring into the open skies that
will finally be their home.
Meriwether (No. 379), Nootka (No.
447) and Atya (No. 455) were hatched and raised at the zoo before being
transferred to the Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey in
Boise to prepare for their release. Meriwether was transferred in
January 2007, Nootka and Atya in October 2008.
"With every
successful condor release we're another step closer to seeing condors
fly over the skies of Oregon," said Tony Vecchio, zoo director. "One
day, Oregonians may again see what Lewis and Clark saw as they traveled
along the Columbia River over 200 years ago.

Doing what they do.There's en email going around that shows the image of a house cat
emblazoned on the nose of private jet. I've received that cat e-mail
three times a week over the last few months, and every time I look at
it, I'm reminded that outdoor cats kill birds, and the killing is so
severe at my place that I have stopped feeding birds.

I have
neighbors on three (or more) sides of me that allow their cats to run
loose constantly. If they're not at my place killing quail and juncos,
they're somewhere else killing birds, cottontails, lizards, mice and
more birds. To make it even worse, there's a black cat and buff one
that join the other two and get into a catfight about every other
night, under my birdfeeder. That's four cats skulking around my place
killing birds; think of what that means on a statewide basis.

The work beneath the gloves…You have to be alert while driving down the highway to observe some of
Oregon's more unique forms of wildlife. Take the photo above for
example. It isn't often you see one of the Giant Oregon Rock Worms, let
alone get close enough to have it almost bite your leg off – and they
can do it!

If you don't believe that, the next time you're driving
over the Santiam Pass to Salem, slow down after you go past Suttle Lake
and look at the face of the rocks opposite the lake. You can see the
long vertical tunnels some of the smaller rock worms make in the rock.
They are vertical to the surface, as rock worms keep their tails above
the ground (to breathe) as they dig down, and their flatulence is
powerful enough to blow the tunnel in half.
With just a little
imagination you can see what their teeth must be like, gnawing through
lava rock! It's no wonder my daughter Miriam was leaping away! Further
down the highway near Detroit Reservoir, you can see where ODOT and OSU
wildlife biologists have placed wire netting on the hillside in an
effort to capture rock worms and sell them to zoos in other states.