The Daily Bucket–All-Union and Carbon free Energy Source Project proposed for SW Washington
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...
The Daily Bucket–Goose with a thousand names
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 Daily Bucket–Ducks flee flooded foliage.
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....
The Daily Bucket–The Creek ain't done Rising
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...
The Daily Bucket–Major Crimes, Mammal Division
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....
The Daily Bucket–Monkeywrenching with Paper
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 Daily Bucket: Rubies in the Sky with Diamonds, and Gold amid the tannin-stained Waters
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?...
The Daily Bucket–Even a Boring Volcano can surprise you.
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...
The Daily Bucket–Forgive My Trespasses
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...
The Daily Bucket– The Creek's Roaring and Billy's Watching
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...
The Daily Bucket–The Newest Hummingbird
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...
The Daily Bucket–Small battlegrounds
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....
The Daily Bucket–The West Side Gang moves in.
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...
The Daily Bucket–Today's Shocking Discoveries.
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...
The Daily Bucket–Soros and my friends, the yellow jackets.
“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...
Daily Bucket– Purple Haze
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...
The Daily Bucket: Saving the Redwoods #3; We Knocked off a Gas Station.
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 Daily Bucket–Low Water Flushes Tall birds.
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...
The Daily Bucket–Frog Court Confidential
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...
The Daily Bucket: Good for the Hawk, Bad for the Robin.
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 Daily Bucket–She Comes in Colors Everywhere.
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...
The Daily Bucket–Why are the damselflies drinking with their butts?
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...
The Daily Bucket: My Grandson, the fledgling Robin.
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...
The Daily Bucket–Save The Redwoods
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...
The Daily Bucket–Did Feng Shui Save the Fledglings?
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...
The Daily Bucket-The Second Heron
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 Daily Bucket–Surprise!!
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...
The Daily Bucket–Let all the Little Creatures Come Forth
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...
The Daily Bucket– The Innocence Project Appeals to Frog Court.
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...
The Daily Bucket–The Robins Persist
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...
The Daily Bucket–Frog Court–Capital Crimes Division (Trigger)
“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...
The Daily Bucket–Life Springs.
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....
The Daily Bucket–Twisted!
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...
The Daily Bucket– Where Dozens once Hoped, Hundreds now Surge.
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...
The Daily Bucket: The Great Cycle of Life Accelerates
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...
The Daily Bucket–Tern, Turn, Turn
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 Daily Bucket–Ready, Steady GO!
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,...
The Daily Bucket–I Shouldn't Wear White, and You Can't Afford a Ring
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...
The Daily Bucket–Odyssey of the Ancient Lotuses
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...
The Daily Bucket–Working on some Night Moves
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...
The Daily Bucket–Eagle Eyes
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...
The Daily Bucket–A Tree for the Redwood Man.
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 Daily Bucket–Trigger Warning
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...
The Daily Bucket–The Daily Eagle.
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...
The Daily Bucket–I Fly to Pieces
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...
The Daily Bucket–The Foliage Frogs of Fall.
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 Daily Bucket–Surburban Serengeti
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...
The Daily Bucket–The Artichoke Frog
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...
The Daily Heron Bucket
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...
The Daily Bucket–You Can't Hide Beautiful
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...