Rye Development is proposing a massive pumped storage power plant uphill from the site of the closed Goldendale smelter, next to the Columbia River. This facility will…
Posts published in “BackyardScience”
The local internet buzzed. The local goose had tangled itself in a loose strand of fishing line, with a barbed lure tearing at her throat.…
The January rains struck parts of NW Oregon with near-biblical storms. Bethany Lake flooded to new heights. Two inches fell overnight and never let up.…
By January Bethany Lake in NW Oregon, just west of Portland, gathers storm waters from hundreds of acres of avoided wetlands. Effluent also drains from the…
Name’s Red. Red Woodman, Major Mammal Crimes Detective. This is supposed to be my last day on the job is I can make it through.…
Edward Abbey memorialized environmental resistance to mindless development in his tome The Monkey Wrench Gang. It essentially endorsed sabotage to thwart degrading of the natural…
The hummingbirds dash around my back yard, as hard to track as a feathered 3-card monte game; are there 2 or 3 or 4 hummers?…
But there are 40-odd cinder cones of once-active volcanos clustered near the bucolic town of Boring, just east of Portland Oregon. These, and the related lava…
For starters, this “No Trespassing” sign isn’t on private property. It’s on Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation Lands that are open to the public as the Rock…
Hard rains just swept across NW Oregon and vicinity. The creeks climbed their banks. I watch Rock Creek, and its tributaries that flow through Bethany…
I toss in my sleep, grabbing for the water bottle. I have to push the straw deep for the last few drops of precious cool…
For six years, tadpoles have morphed into tiny chorus frogs in my backyard ponds. But once they’ve turned into frogs I seldom see them again.…
For 20 years, I’ve tracked the movements of herons and egrets where I’ve worked and walked. I’d been working at a golf course in Banks…
A backyard pond turns oily. A DIY oil test confirms it’s more than iron oxide, I found tiny broken eggs and cat-sized poop nearby (not…
“Oyez! The Summer Session of Frog Court is called to order, Judge Jeramiah Bullfrog presiding,” honked the Bailiff, who was a Canadian goose. In strode…
But even bold purply flowers, like this welcome offering from my hacked-down artichokes, seem washed out, as if horror author Stephen King’s Tommyknockers are draining…
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short: Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet…
The skies have not yield a moment of rain for months. But I knew how to make it rain. I hung clothes outdoors on our…
I’m Red Woodman, Senior Investigator for what we call the “Frog Court.” If I can just get through today, I can retire with a pension. But…
Trigger warning for sadness. The sun shown through the russet and tawny and cream of what seemed to be a feathered explosion in the robin’s…
The World is colors everywhere here and there And the sky’s blinding blue is right in front of you. The burgeoning flowers send new blossoms…
But of course the damsel flies are not really drinking; they are laying eggs. They contort on the edge of a lily pad with their abdomen…
I am so happy to walk into the back yard and have fledgling birds whirring about, clumsily. New life! I put extra food on the…
I’m just an old race horse out to pasture, pawing the ground when the race track bugle sounds. I still read the local public notices…
My prodigal son and his advanced science teaching degree came home awhile ago. While schools are closed, He’d been hiking in the Rockies. His discoveries…
I’d always felt there was more than one heron that’s been visiting my backyard ponds for the last ten years. One would land and catch…
The inch-an-hour storms have driven the anglers away from my Neighborhood’s Bethany Lake. It’s full of hungry trout but the anglers flee the storms, heading…
Multiple robins have occupied my yard for months now. Somehow their presence seemed to make the Spring come a few days sooner. I cannot tell…
I reached for the grimy tumbler. It was empty. Not even any ice. I reached for the whiskey bottle. It was empty too. This was…
But just a day or two after Billy Heron, the patriarch of my back yard gardens and ponds left, Cocky Robin brushed aside the murmured…
“Oyez, I call Frog Court into session,” rumbled Chief Justice Jeremiah, himself a very large bullfrog. “Bailiff, read the opening Declaration.” The impossibly tall Bailiff…
These frog eggs sacs presented a vivid image within a few dys of the mating. Shingy white eggs quivered, suspended in a light green jello.…
Many edible plants grow in Oregon, including nut trees such as filbert or hazelnut. Our overlords, the squirrels, have commanded us to plant a variety…
Although evening temperatures skirt 32 F, the native Chorus Frogs of NW Oregon continue to meet and mate. I spotted an single egg sac with…
On February 3, 2020, several chorus frogs assembled around my back yard ponds and began singing, successfully, for mates. I dug out these ponds six years…
We skedaddled out of Panama City heading kind of north on highway 2. But the paved road turned to dirt after 150 miles. By then…
The Tualatin Valley of Northwest Oregon forms a shallow bowl, about 50 miles in diameter, with 1000-2000 foot tall eroded volcanoes walling in the lowlands,…
I began tracking the migrations of the Great Egret (ardea alba), when I worked at a golf course near Banks in NW Oregon. An Egret…
A year ago, I attempted to resurrect a handful of lotus seeds, that had sat, forgotten, on a high shelf, for almost 20 years. I…
Sundown in Portland Oregon was at 4:32 pm. At 4:40 pm, I walked past my kitchen window and startled a Great Blue Heron who was…
I walk from my house to Bethany Lake, west of Portland Oregon, on many days. The Lake is adjacent to a wide utility easement, a…
He wakes up at dawn and peeks out the window, looking for the heron feeding at the fishpond in the first light. No heron yet…
The Great Blue Heron is one of the largest birds in North America, standing 4 feet tall with a six foot wing span. When the…
I often walk around Bethany Lake, 10 miles west of Portland Oregon. Swollen creeks pour into it from two directions, after the rains start. The Park…
I fly to pieces, Every time that I see you preen I fly to pieces, I can’t forget what I’ve just seen. A little one-legged clean-up, You…
Some years I stop seeing my tiny backyard frogs by August. The Spring-hatch of tadpoles have all morphed, and the older frogs have dispersed to nearby…
The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania is especially known for its mammoth annual migrations of 1.5 million wildebeests and 250,000 zebras. It’s on my bucket…
I ventured out into a crisp Autumn morning with my camera. This was the first year we’d successfully grew artichokes in our backyard and I…
At 8:59 PDT, a Great Blue Heron glided from a nearby roof into my backyard, next to my gold fish ponds. Every few minutes there is…
Yesterday I went looking for an especially beautifully colored chorus frog that had shown up in my Lamb’s Ear. To my prolonged amusement, this lovely…
