Natural World

There are a lot of people throughout Central Oregon who think it's cool to tame mule deer so they can pet them. That, Oh Best Beloved, is one of the dumbest things anyone can do.
Then there's the business of people baiting cougars by attracting deer to their back yards. That's equally as dumb. I know one guy near Sisters who feeds carrots to mule deer by hand. Some day either the deer will beat his head in or perhaps a cougar will decide man meat is better than deer meat.
Leave game animals to be just that, Dear Readers – “game.” It's unlawful to “bait” deer during hunting season anyway and in my book it's just plain dumb to bait cougar at any time. But having said all that, there's the business of feeding birds and our little Mountain Chickadee is trusting enough that it is often “tamed” and will come down to a human finger in hopes of finding a sunflower seed.

This is the time of year when birds and other wildlife unlucky enough to not have their normal colors become very noticeable, such as “leucisitic,” “albino” and “partial albino” forms. These unfortunate victims of a quirk of nature lack their natural colors that would normally protect them from the energy of our sun, keep them safe from inquisitive humans and predators, and be accepted as a member of their own social group.
Even the parents of their own young will sometimes shy away from their offspring if they're too far off their normal appearance. Once an albino robin begins to appear “different,” the parents will eventually try to avoid it. The albino bird, on the other hand, doesn't realize that it's different and keeps trying to join the group. The two photos above are case in point. They are both “loaners,” a partial albino robin, and one that almost made it, but has black eyes, not the unpigmented red eyes of a “true albino.”

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home
Your house is on fire and your children are gone
All except one, and that's Little Anne
For she has crept under the warming pan.

In Medieval England, farmers would set fire to old hop vines after the harvest in order to clear the fields for the next planting.

I don't hear from my pal, woodcarver, caver and photographer Brent McGregor as much as I'd like to, but when I do, he knocks my socks off. The photo above is an example, and the note with it also hit my funny bone: “My little buddy was in the mood for more pictures today. I'm teaching him to stand up rather than (hanging) upside down, and I think he likes it: notice the smile on his face!:))”
As I sat there laughing at what appeared when Brent turned the bat photo upside down, the sex of the bat changed from “him” to her. If you can imagine a lady bat doing a fan-dancer routine, then you can see what I see, including the beguiling grin on “her” face.
At the end of his e-mail, Brent went on to say, “Jim, this is the same bat you came out to see years ago and did the story on for the paper.”
There is no doubt that this is the same bat, and I'll tell you why. Way back in the '60s and '70s when I was working with OMSI, Portland Zoo, and later on, Sunriver, I was banding bats throughout winter in the lava tubes (caves) southeast of Bend. I wanted to see if we could discover the bats' whereabouts and travels during the summer, and to see who came back to the same cave the next winter. That experiment took me down paths I never dreamed of.

At that time, Boyd Cave, with its literal hole-in-the-ground entrance and rickety ladder, wasn't as popular for cavers at it is today. Consequently, there were two species of bats using it as a hibernaculum: Townsend big-eared bats and a group of sweet little myotis I didn't know.

I'm sure you've heard the old idioms for years, “Ants in your pants,” “Bats in your belfry,” or “Bee in your bonnet,” and such; well, how about this when my phone rang…?
“Jim, this is Karen Kassy.”
“Oh, howdy Dear Heart,” I answered, “what's going on?”
“I have something strange going on in my love seat.”
Now a guy can have all kinds of fun with that opener, playing around with the birds and bees, risky as it is, and Karen's a great one to kid around with; after all, I've known her for years, and she's an intuitive – but I didn't want to end up in the dog house, so I thought I'd best play it straight as a string.
“So what's wrong with your love seat,” I asked, stifling a laugh, but knowing full well I should keep it on the straight and narrow.

Every once in a while, Old Mother Nature knocks my socks off. While heading home last Thursday night with a small swarm of bees I gathered out of a water-meter box in Bend, the scene above began to take shape.
At first, I didn't get it, and had no idea it was going to get better, but as the eye of God began to close, and darkness slowly eased across the western sky, those gigantic ice clouds, perhaps 50 miles or more high above the Earth, began to glow with eerie luminescence. By 10pm the light show was absolutely breathtaking. It left me with the feeling that a giant hole had been torn open in our Galaxy, and I was looking into another Universe.
Wanting to photograph the event, but not having my tripod with me was a problem, but I took a chance anyway, I had to capture that moment. I placed my tough old, true-blue, through-and-through Canon Rebel on the roof of the canopy of my Chevy S-10 (the replacement for my elk-killed Westy) and shot away. Not bad for a shaky old codger…

Do your osprey have large talons?The osprey (Pandion haliaetus), has never had an easy life, and probably never will. It eats fish, and anything that eats fish is- somewhere along life's trail-going to have a collision with Man's interests or Nature's. To make it worse, it's that way wherever Osprey live, and, except for Antarctica, they are found worldwide.

Long before Man came onto the scene, osprey and eagles had been conducting a one-way battle for fish that works like this: Osprey spends hours hovering over water that has fish swimming beneath the surface. Osprey spots fish. Osprey catches fish. So far so good…
Those of you who have watched osprey dive after a fish have been thrilled as I have to observe the headlong plummet they make toward their intended target. They've got a lot of things going for them at this point; one is a built-in filter in their eyes that cuts the reflection from the surface of the water, sort of like a Polaroid lens. Diving head first, and with that remarkable eyesight, they can keep a sharp eye on the unsuspecting fish. Just before they hit the water, however, the Osprey does a split-second position shift. The wings are raised directly overheard, and instead of diving headfirst, they are now feet first, and it is in that attitude they hit the water.

Our common, Side-blotched Lizard, Uta stansburiana.I need to make an apology. Throughout all the years I've been preaching from this pulpit, I have never once (that I can recall) mentioned one of our more handsome reptiles, the side-blotched lizard of the genus Uta. For this I apologize, profusely!

You'll note I used the genus name along with the common name, as this is what I was told the lizard's name was when I met up with my first specimen at Fort Rock years ago. I was strolling along the ancient lake terrace just above the present parking lot, counting Prairie Falcons nests in the towering crags, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something orange-ish suddenly scamper away on the rocks. The reason I actually noted the movement at all was probably the flash of bright orange.
My first glance didn't reveal what it was, as the movement stopped when I stepped closer to the rock outcropping. Then I saw it, a lizard with a bright orange throat and belly. Wow! It was beautiful!
Looking at it closely I saw what appeared to be a hole in the lizard's body, just behind its front leg. When it stopped, however, I could see that it wasn't really a hole, but a dark blueish spot. With the stealth of a Navy SEAL I crept up on the lizard and in a lucky grab I had it in my hand. I had no idea of its name, common or scientific, and no one to ask. (My good friend and herpetologist, Al St. John of Bend, author of Lone Pine Publisher's superb publication, Reptiles of the Northwest, was about 10 years old at that time, busy chasing snakes around McMinnville.) But down in my rig, I had a brand new copy of Stebbins' textbook, Amphibians and Reptiles of North America.

My VW "Westy," killed by an elk. That poor old busted VW "Westy" in the photo was a lovely old thing. It was built in 1984 by some pretty smart German engineers, it has a newly rebuilt engine in it, and only a little over 140,000 miles on the odometer, and now, according to Farmer's Insurance, it's dead after meeting up with a yearling elk.

After driving hundreds of thousands of (mostly) wildlife accident-free miles around Central Oregon for over 50 years, my luck changed. I killed a yearling elk, and here's the way it came about:
A week ago, my wife, Sue, and I were down at Lava Beds National Monument helping out in the first annual Butterfly Count. We finished the compilation about 7 p.m., and after a great chicken barbecue, decided to head for home – a four hours drive from Lava Beds. That meant that two-thirds of the trip would take place in crepuscular conditions, then darkness.
Perhaps the wreck wouldn't have happened if I had done what I always did when I was flying for a living and paid attention to the Federal Air Regulation that states, "The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft." What that means is that the pilot (driver) shall make him or herself aware of all conditions that will affect that flight (trip). Had I done that, perhaps that yearling elk would still be alive, and so would my Westy.