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 […]
Longer days, warmer temperatures, and puffy white clouds mean that spring is finally here in the high desert. As the season progresses, so do our local wildflowers moving from tiny, early bloomers to larger, bolder blooms. The high desert is alive with color in May and June, so soak in this brief season of green, […]
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 […]
Water—or lack thereof—is a hot topic these days. According to the latest Oregon Climate Assessment, more than one-third of Oregon has been in a drought for the last 20 years, and we aren’t likely to return to what we all think of as “normal” water conditions. The situation in Central Oregon is especially dire for […]
Humans excel at classification. One of the wonderful tricks of neurocognition is finding similarities and patterns. Classification is the process by which things are differentiated so that similar things can immediately be recognized and with a basis of understanding established. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and polymath, had some of the earliest definitive writing classifying and […]
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 […]
There are many examples of engineering marvels in the natural world which humans have yet to replicate. One of these astonishing feats is the skill of a woodpecker. These incredible birds slam their head into trees at up to 20 times a second—the equivalent of going from zero to 26,000 mph. At this acceleration the […]
As we come into spring and our landscape tasks, it is timely to review what products we will be using to make our landscape happy, beautiful and safe. For aesthetic purposes, pesticides are widely used on lawns, landscapes and open space. Many of these chemicals harm human health and the environment with both immediate and […]
Lovers of the natural world know that the signs of climate change are everywhere. Record warm temperatures and low snow in winter, early wildflowers in spring (or winter!), smoky skies and fires in the summer, and the new lexicon of heat domes, atmospheric rivers, and bomb cyclones. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we see […]
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