Sunday Outings

I woke up early on Sunday morning to lead another Audubon Field Trip and Dawson Creek Park.


Despite the steady drizzle, the ten of us enjoyed some great views of the park's birds and blazing foliage. As usual, many of the participants came to see the acorn woodpeckers, which did not disappoint. As we rounded a corner, an outgoing acorn woodpecker clung to the trunk of a tree a few feet in front of us long enough for everyone to get a great look.


We climbed the hill that offers the best views of the woodpecker colony so everyone could watch the industrious birds harvest acorns and store them in their granaries, putting up food for the winter just like the rest of us.


The other highlight encountered was a pond full of wood ducks. A few participants had never seen this species before, so they were delighted to see them swimming in the pond among mallards and perched in the willows.

Our most unusual bird was a female summer tanager, a species that is usually south of here by now. I was hoping to find some diving ducks and songbirds that should be arriving for the winter, but the wood ducks and acorn woodpeckers kept everyone pleased.

Here is a list of the birds we found:

Pie-billed grebe
Canada goose
Cackling goose
Mallard
Wood duck
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
Mourning dove
Anna's hummingbird
Acorn woodpecker
Red-breasted sapsucker
Northern flicker
Steller's Jay
Scrub jay
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
American robin
Cedar waxwing
Western tanager
Spotted towhee
Oregon junco
Red-winged blackbird
Lesser goldfinch


After the field trip, Sarah and I drove up to New Earth farm to help Farmer Steve dig potatoes.

It's been at least 20 years since I've dug potatoes, but the smell of the soil brought me back to our old house on Pine Street, where my brother and I grabbed the potatoes my father turned over with a shovel.

Our technique was the same as back then, but there were more people shoveling, grabbing, and filling buckets.

We ended up harvesting 1,200 pounds of purple majesty and always golden potatoes.


Sarah and I brought home a few potatoes that were inadvertently sliced with shovels. I cooked them into a great potato-leek soup, ushering in the start of soup season.

Sorry Cubs!

It seems I jinxed the Chicago Cubs by picking them as my playoff team, as they just lost their series with the Dodgers. Maybe next year, guys!


In happier sports news, my Oklahoma Sooners beat Baylor to remain undefeated and number one in the country. The other teams I am tracking did not do so well. Next Saturday Oklahoma plays Texas in the most important game of the year for both states. The Friday before the game is actually a holiday in Norman, Oklahoma with classes canceled from grade school to college, so everyone can travel to Dallas to watch the game. I won't be making the trip myself, so I hope they broadcast the game here in Oregon.

Now that I have shared my sporting news, I will soon return to biological postings.

Go Cubs!

In my attempt to shield myself from toxic election news, I have been listening to sports radio instead of NPR. Today I heard about a song that Eddie Vedder, lead singer of Pearl Jam - the greatest band on earth, wrote for the Chicago Cubs. I checked out the song on YouTube and I now have a favorite team in the playoffs that started today. My perennial favorite, the Atlanta Braves, failed win many games this year, so I needed some direction from Eddie.

If you want to become an instant Cubs fan, just click on the link below and sing along!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqHTScDBsDU

Harvest Time

During the last few weeks, we have been getting great shipments of produce from our CSA farm. Judging from the eggplants, purple tomatillos, purple pole beans, purple majesty potatoes, and purple bell peppers, our farmer Steve seems to have an inordinate fondness for a certain color, but we'll take any whatever vegetables he's offering.


This weekend, we attended the annual harvest party at the farm, which involved a huge potluck feast, fresh-pressed apple cider, a scavenger hunt, and a square dance.

These goats were thrilled to have so many people around to feed them green beans.

There is only a month of farm pickups left, but there appears to be enough tomatoes and other crops to last the rest of the year.


These peppers and marigolds complement each other well.

I've been busy revising a paper (awful work) so I had not been to our borrowed garden for some time.

This morning I found tomatoes such as these Belle Starrs pulling their vines down to the ground.


While others are climbing for the sky.


I picked a good load of tomatoes, beans, tomatillos, and my first-ever winter squash (top left). I dont know if I should eat it or display it as art.

This week, we will be making more tomato and tomatillo sauce for winter storage. At least our freezer economy is in good shape.

Nest Season Roundup

With the arrival of fall and some beautiful gray clouds, my informal nest monitoring season has drawn to a close.


This year, I checked out 118 nests, about twenty fewer than last year. These nests were built by 39 species of birds, and, as usual, the three most common species were American robin (26 nests), bushtit (18 nests), and barn swallow (9 nests).


In February, I found the first nests of the year which were built by great horned owls (with nestlings pictured above) and great blue herons. I found a few bushtit nests in March and many robin nests in April.


In mid April, I was able to view and paint an Anna's hummingbird nest built in a small oak tree a few blocks away.


In May, I viewed my first-ever cinammon teal and black-headed grosbeak nests.


As in previous summers, the latest nesting species was the barn swallow. The last active nest of which I found built above the door of an outhouse along Tillamook Bay.

I was able to determine the fates of only 39 nests. Of these, 23 were successful.


Sixteen nests, including this dove's, were not.


Of robin nests with known fates, five nests, like the one above, were successful while seven failed.


I had a hard time determining the fates of bushtit nests, because their contents are encased in a sock-like mass of lichen and spiderwebs.

Douglas fir trees were the substrates in which most nests were built (18), followed by buildings (16), cedars (9), snags (4), and ash trees (4).

I find that nests are the clearest windows into the biology of wild animals, so I am already looking forward to next year's crop. Until then I have plenty of gull, cloud, and college football watching to keep me busy!

Neverending Surveys

This weekend, we surveyed our two beaches for washed-up seabirds. The surveys lasted for several hours each, as we found 48 birds between the two beaches.


We found this pair of wings at Bob Straub State Park in Pacific City. The wing cord was 18.5 cm and it looks like they belonged to a cinnamon or blue-winged teal, but we are not sure which. Anyone know how to tell the two apart? The wings had a light blue patch between the elbow and the wrist, white spots on the secondary coverts, and some green coloring on the secondary coverts.


The most common birds by far were juvenile common murres that fledged during the last few months. The carcasses were near adult size, but their measurements were a little short of adult averages.


The sternums of the birds were mostly cartilage, in various stages of ossification progressing from the anterior end downward. In previous years, the dieoff occurred when fledglings were much younger, so it was interesting to see them in this stage of development.

News Fast! ..and Spiders Too

I have decided to implement a "News Fast" from now until November to prevent the Election Anxiety Syndrome from which I suffered in 2004. After feeling quite ill during the later part of that year, I realized that I get too emotionally invested in my candidates of choice that I get overly angry at media coverage. I end up wasting time composing letters to the editor in my head, as well at fuming over what the opposition has to say.

After spending way too much time watching and reading about this year's conventions, I decided enough is enough. For the rest of the election period, I plan to take it easy and try to avoid polls and analyses that really have no importance to me at this point. The hardest part of the News Fast will be cutting out NPR, which I usually listen to for up to seven hours a day. Anyone who has spent any time driving with me in the mornings will know how difficult this will be.

To fill the voids, I plan to listen to more music and read about sports online instead of politics. Any other suggestions are welcome. I have already started the detox process and I will post updates on my progress as the month progresses.

In local nature news, our spiders are still feasting in their webs.


Near our parking lot, two spiders that appear to be different species have constructed webs in a great location.


Honeybees have been buzzing all over the flowers of this ornamental shrub, and each spider was processing their prey as I walked past this afternoon.


As someone who has spent a lot of time trying to capture birds in mist nets (often unsuccessfully), I can appreciate the spiders' knack for choosing the right location.