Outside

One of seven species of parasitic Gymnosomid flies, this one the red-butted variety.Flies are everywhere and no matter what your station is in life, no matter where you go or what you do, you will bump into a fly doing something you don't understand or like, therefore, never, Oh, Best Beloved, take a fly for granted.

In the event you're not yet hooked into this little essay, here's a few things to think about when it comes to flies: First, they are the only insects that have only one pair of wings, all the others have two. To make up for the missing two wings, flies possess balancers, known as halteres, which are actually gyroscopes. Instead of having a centrifugal gyroscope to keep it stable in flight, the fly has an oscillating gyroscope. Didn't know that did you…?
Gnats are flies. Birds and bats eat gnats by the krijillions. Without gnats, a whole lot of birds and bats would go hungry. Some gnats look like mosquitoes, while others have such charming names, as: "love bugs," "moth flies," "march flies," scuttle flies," and so on. There are also "kissing bugs."
The most common fly we are all familiar with is the so-called "housefly." Houseflies touch everybody and everything. Their mouth is like a sponge, literally, and they spend their entire adult lifetime sticking their nose into everyone's food, garbage, poop and business, and the majority of these flies begin life as a maggot eating something dead. Mom was right; wash your hands!

Two nestling nighthawks in "nest." Our common nighthawks are back, but a little over two weeks late. Birds arriving "back home" late, in lesser numbers-or not at all-is worrisome these days. With the mounting evidence of peculiarities in the natural world around us attributable to global warming it's a little scary when birds like nighthawks are late coming back "home" to nest.

Nighthawks devour tons and tons of insects for a living, and they're not confined to any one continent while doing it. They raise babies in North America in summer, but as soon as the kids are on the wing, they head out for Brazil and other points south.
Nighthawks are a mysterious and often misunderstood bird that is referred to by a variety of misleading names such as "goatsucker," "bull bat," "night jar," and "mosquito hawk." They have a 12-inch wingspan, are shaped like boomerangs and very agile in flight. The fact that they appear at night likely accounts for the name "bull bat." If you can smoke that one out, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din.

One of thousands of Mule Deer fawns lying about Central Oregon these days. Please, leave them alone!Editor's note: Some folks didn't recognize Jim Anderson's column last week as a bit of naturalist humor because editors at the Source swapped the photo that served as his punch line. So if the piece on mushrooms left you scratching your head, you weren't alone. Sorry for the confusion.

This is the time of year when well-meaning – but way off base – people pick up fawns because, in their minds, the baby has been "abandoned." In almost all cases, the fawn has not been abandoned, but has been left by its mother because it's safer where it is than out wandering around while she is feeding. PLEASE! Leave fawns alone; avoid them; go away and forget them; everyone and everything in the world of nature, and our world will go a lot smoother if you do.
Tom Worcester, who lives near Sisters, can tell you how it works when a fawn is left alone. He called one morning around 8 a.m. to tell me he had a brand new fawn in his yard, and was worried that it had been "abandoned." At 10:30 a.m. he called back to say, "I had a good wildlife education this morning, this is a story with a happy ending. Momma deer came back for her baby, and the last I saw of them, the fawn was following along on wobbly legs, but keeping up." That's the way it works in Nature.

Habitat of (what could be) a new species of "mushroom" and close up of "fruiting bodies."With all this unseasonable rain we have been experiencing throughout Central Oregon, I thought it would be advantageous to go out in search of mushrooms. I understand it is during damp periods like these that mushroom fruiting bodies come to the surface, and being a person who enjoys a fresh mushroom from time to time, well, I thought, you can never tell…

I was driving slowly on the road from Sisters High School to town watching intently for mushrooms along the way, when suddenly I was excited, (and almost shocked) to see what I thought were a small group of inky caps, but what they really turned out to be is a new species, perhaps one of the most electrifying experiences I've ever had in my years of searching for new edible forms of mushrooms.
Now, I know the deadly Amanitas; some of the amanitas are so colorful you can't miss them, while others are quite common looking, but can still kill you dead, or give you a terrible stomachache. For that reason, I'm very jumpy about what mushrooms I consider "safe," or "unsafe" for consumption. Unless I see someone still walking around an hour or so after eating a wild mushroom, I stick to the ones I find in the grocery store, but sometimes I even look at them a little sideways…