Natural World

If you’ve driven the freeways between Brainerd, Minn., and Spokane, Wash., you will recall seeing the “World’s Biggest Turkey,” the “World’s Biggest Cow,” “World’s Biggest T-Rex Skull” and other “Biggest” this-and-that.

A lot of kids, when suddenly confronted by a snake, freak out. My oldest son, Dean, from the moment he could crawl wasn’t that way – he’d go after it. His younger brother, Ross, is that way, and so are my other four, for that matter.
Dean, however, was always one jump ahead of everyone else. Not only did he have the ability to make instant decisions as a child, but his curiosity and reflexes have benefited him as an adult – today, he is an F-16 Viper pilot and is presently on a year-long tour of duty as a peace-keeper in Afghanistan.

Welcome to the world of insects! If you're ever bored or think life is the pits, grab up an old sheet, place it under the nearest bush, tree or flower patch, take a stick and gently beat the plants and see what drops out. I’ll give you two-dollars-to-a-donut there will be things flying and hopping around on the sheet you have never seen before, most of them a wonderful mystery.
If no one will give you an old sheet, buy a stout butterfly net and go “sweep-netting” in the grasses and tall plants in your backyard. When you stop, you’ll find the net teeming with animals of wonderful variety, and like the creepy-crawlers on the sheet, you probably won’t know many of them.

The photo above that Dick Tipton shot of the Osprey getting hammered by a Western Kingbird is the epitome of what lengths small birds go to in order to protect their home and family from larger birds, whether the threat is real or not.
There is no way anyone could convince the energetic kingbird that the osprey means no harm. To a small bird with an open nest – such as kingbirds use – larger birds mean trouble as they carry off nestlings and eat them.

Let's face it. Man, in his continual struggle to make a living, stay healthy and put a little money in the bank has a hard time of it, and those who decide to make a living as farmers sometimes have it even tougher. They often have to put all their eggs into one basket (pun intended), or put another way, create a monoculture, like raising fields of alfalfa hay and nothing else but weeds, for example.
In mid summer, the efforts of all the water, fertilizer and changing pipes at the crack-of-dawn and general TLC to raise a crop of alfalfa are beautifully obvious. However, trouble is brewing because things farmers don't like are attracted to his alfalfa. But not to fear, help is near.

That devil-may-care brown (black, really) bear is still hanging around Sisters, and, unless it keeps a lower profile, no good is going to come out of it. It showed up about three weeks back, poking its nose into people's backyards looking for handouts and driving the local dogs nuts. By its size and behavior, it appears to be a yearling, which in human terms makes it a teenager, and teenagers, (speaking from my time in that category) can get themselves in trouble without even trying.
The greatest fear for both the safety of man and beast is that some misinformed, well-meaning person in or around Sisters will start feeding it (as is done all too frequently with mule deer), either on purpose or unintentionally. The best thing that can happen to any bear in town is to get out of Dodge as quickly as possible.

The hummingbirds that spend summer with us are returning, and with them returns the dilemma over whether or not red food coloring is harmful to them. The bottom line of this argument can be summed up best by stating: “It doesn't do them any good, so why use it and take the chance that it will.”
I have spent years trying to pin down the rumor that FDA Red #40 is harmful to hummingbirds. To my knowledge, no one has done any in-depth research into the use of red dyes in hummingbird food.

Here we go again, trying to find an equitable solution to the ecological deadlock of the growing population of both pet and feral outdoor cats that destroy birds and other wildlife. Some cat owners say, “Hey! They're cats, and cats hunt birds, for crying out loud.”
On the other side of the argument are those concerned by the number of birds destroyed by outdoor cats and would rather see cats indoors – or dead. There is no question that cats kill birds and other wildlife; I see it daily (up close and personal at my bird feeder) where I live at Sun Mountain. Others are out in the backyard, going after sagebrush lizards, bluebirds and cottontail rabbits. On top of that, I regularly receive phone calls and emails from alarmed Source readers and fellow birders who witness cats killing (or stalking) birds and other wildlife. The quote, “They're cats, and cats hunt birds,” is irrefutable.

The title of this week's column comes right from the U.S. Forest Service ad people, a slogan they created to let everyone who uses our forests know that dead trees are vital to forest health.
And with that statement, a word about the above photo. Those little pine chipmunks are having a party. They're imbibing a liquid that resembles “white lightnin'.” And they are only a small number of an incredible array of wildlife foodies I found running up and down that old cat-faced wildlife tree getting smashed. Honest! Read on…

I have a good friend, Alex Weiss, who is a world-class builder, finish carpenter and poet with whom I share good feelings about the nature of our grand old planet Earth. He and I shared an evening together with Friends of the Sunriver Nature Center last week – Alex reading poetry about coyotes, me telling stories about coyotes and everyone really enjoying the foot-stomping, toe-tapping music of Cinder Blue, a splendid musical group out of Redmond.
Alex strayed from coyotes a couple of times and read some of his delightful poems about other facets of nature. When he laid one on me about tortoiseshell butterflies, he hit my soft spot: