I once had a sheep-raising pal—one of the Shumway boys—lead me to an active great horned owl pair that was using an old red-tailed hawk’s nest in the top of a juniper that had been blown over near Alfalfa. Telling this tale, you have to realize that old pals have different ways of looking at humor, […]
Well, it’s that time of year (again). If you’re fortunate enough to have a home close to the same habitat great horned owls need to make a living, you’re also hearing them now as they cuddle up and sing love songs to each other. The owls usually begin their courtship in November, about a football […]
Wow! A “unicone” on the cover of last week’s Source, and no one told me!
The photo seen here was taken just last week on private ground adjacent to Hwy. 20 east of Sisters. It’s spotted knapweed gone to seed—one of the three species of knapweed, pushing too many of our native plants aside, using precious water and nutrients doing so, and generally becoming a huge nuisance. They gotta’ go! […]
Passing through the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center in John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, near Picture Gorge, Ore., you’ll find the geologic equivalent of Noah’s Ark. Apparently, proto-cheetah, zebra, rhino and nearly every other conceivable terrestrial vertebrate wandered the Oregon countryside, according to a comprehensive fossil record starting 55 million years ago. Ever dreamt of […]
Let’s begin this story with the high points regarding the spider genus, Latrodectus and the family Theridiidae, most of which are commonly known as widow spiders. (If you visit Africa, however, you’ll find they have the common name of button spiders.) The accompanying drawing by my son Caleb is an African brown widow recently reported […]
Eloise, the surviving trumpeter swan from an original pair brought to Aspen Lakes, has lived quite a life. She survived the death of her early partner and has lived long enough to gain some friends among the residents. It was love at first sight for Robin Gold—one of the residents at Aspen Lakes in Sisters, […]
Way back in the ’50s and ’60s, I was a thorn in the side of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Predator and Rodent Control program—a misnomer if there ever was one. Their main target was the coyote. The trappers thought they could eliminate the coyote on the “open range”—as they termed the millions of […]
So there we were, a full busload of 6th graders touring with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, pounding on fossil-laden rocks in a quarry just outside the sleepy logging town of Vernonia, west of Portland. The year was 1965 and school was out. I was the staff naturalist (and bus driver), and with […]
I‘ve mentioned this (at least) once before, but I have to give credit where credit is due. My grandson, Daxon, is a piece of work. If he isn’t building huge paper airplanes out of life-sized newspaper sheets, he’s coming into the house shouting, “Hey, Grandpa Jim, look what I caught!” And the best part of […]
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