About 15 years ago, my son and I dug out two back yard fish ponds with a back hoe, to my wife’s surprise. A backhoe. (not in my backyard.) This pond was about 12 X eight feet. We stocked it with dime-a-dance aquarium goldfish. The goldfish grew rapidly. I operate...
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? Any hummer that sits in our Bartlett pear tree is automatically named Bart. It fights any other hummer using any one of five feeders below...
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 Lake, ten miles west of Portland Oregon. Upstream of Bethany Lake, a half mile wide grassy meadow has transformed into a nicely braided creek with...
“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 two robed judges, who were six foot tall bullfrogs, trying to walk on two legs, but instead hopping from foot to foot. The third bullfrog...
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 home with a full creel and soaking wet clothes. Bethany Lake’s stocked rainbow trout are fattening up, hopefully on bullfrogs. And when the anglers flee,...
“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 stood and began reading: “In accordance with resolution of a civil suit involving a Reagan cabinet member and prescription drugs, The Department of Fish and Wildlife...
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 20 eggs two weeks ago, but now I can see 30 egg sacs, some containing 50 or more eggs. The male and female frogs must...
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 eating goldfish out of my backyard pond. Then we both pretended not to see each other. I began watching from a small bathroom window, and...
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 birds evolved from the dinosaurs, the Herons emerged, but herons changed very little over the last few million years. Their wide wings resemble the extinct...
The Great Blue Heron abruptly appeared at my back yard this morning at 10:13, and promptly ate two large goldfish in two minutes. Good bye, Goldie. It strolled to another spot on my ponds, and ate two more. Having roiled the waters, it switched ponds. Ask not for whom the...
At 5 am, the heron seems to take form out of the backgound grey half tone morning skies. It approached from the east, and plopped next to my backyard pond. Billy the Heron swiftly captured a fish so large that it unnerved my mate Salmonwoman, who watched from a kitchen...
For the fifth year in a row, the tiny native Chorus Frogs have returned with the Winter Solstice moon, to breed in my back yard ponds. The new generation of frogs were born as egg sacs on the Equinox moon. And now, they are morphing from tadpoles into full-pledged, if tiny,...
There are two things that I saw in the last hour that drove me to the keyboard today, in what should be my “day of rest,” cuz I’m like, ya know, so damn busy the rest of the week. But when duty calls, ya gotta step up and represent. First, I never realized...
For over a decade, Great Blue Herons have visited my backyard ponds in NW Oregon. They’ve eaten some of my goldfish, driven away all of the hated bullfrogs, and provided many viewing hours of their heart pounding beauty as they strut between the grapes and lavender. My house is in the middle of...
Herons are taking fish and frogs “to go” out of my backyard ponds, for trips to their nearby nests. I watch a heron go after the goldfish in the ponds. It will eat and swallow the first fish, but will “mouth,” and not swallow their second catch, and immediately fly away with the...
I am not going to rehash the insipid intellectual wasteland that was the Trump State Of The Union speech last night. Since I quit drinking a couple of years ago, I find that I no longer have the stomach to suffer through his shit more than once. But there was...
