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...
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 thousands of manicured yards and miles of streets in the surrounding suburban areas. The Lake and its tributaries discharges to Rock Creek, which slithers down...
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. Cough. They’ve assigned me a kid nick-named “Lucky” I’m supposed to train to take my place. I’m looking through his resume. He’d flunked out of...
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...
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 Creek Greenway, west of Portland Oregon. Fortunately there are many anglers who are simply crazed about catching fish and who would wade through Hell fire for...
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...
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 Oregon, 20 miles west of Portland. We had a year-round heron, and every autumn, an egret visited and fished for a few days, angering the...
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 pictured). I suspect coon. I found knocked over plants in another pond. I put rounded rocks into abandoned birds’ nests and set them on the...
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application.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 Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...
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 new fancy clothesline. It’s passive solar at its best. Except the Rain Gods, laughing, then made it rain twice. But not much, just enough to...
It’s especially hard to organize folks these days. You can’t call a meeting. It’s tough to talk and listen with masks on. Yet suburban folks west of Portland Oregon are organizing against a developer’s plans to build a Chevron gas station/mini-mart adjacent to wetlands, big trees, and a Park Greenway....
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 curved into the water seemingly under the lip of the pad. It’s called ovipositing. I’d seen lots of damselflies joining at the end of their...
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 about developments, reflecting back on 40 years of environmental challenges, wishing someone was doing some more challenging. And then something happened. I am terrible at this...
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 our fish while we gardened 30 feet away. Another one would watch from a neighbor’s roof for half an hour before coming in for lunch,...
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,...
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 night the bottle let me down, and a savagely bright dawn poured through the dirty windows in my Private Investigator’s office. I stared at...
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 objections from the littler birds, and mounted the Sacred Roof Arch for his own announcement. “Listen up! When Billy Heron’s gone, Cocky Robin is the...
“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...
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, separating the region from the Coast and the Columbia River. I used to work near Banks, Oregon, and the vast acreages of of flooded croplands...
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 would migrate to the golf course ponds every late Fall, leaving the frozen ponds of eastern Oregon behind for the season. Egrets (and herons) are...
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...
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 golf course, a park, and farmland, so there is considerable open water, undeveloped area, and large trees. All that space, and open water, and lots...
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 today. He starts the espresso machine, but cannot make coffee fast enough to clear out almost seven decades of fog from his head. He sighs...
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...
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 Dept. stocks the lake with rainbow trout. Ducks are always there, and at least one goose. I am heartbroken because I haven’t seen a heron for...
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 want me to act as if we have no bond You want me to forget (to forget) You ate fish from my pond. (from my pond)...
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 list. But until I make it to Africa, I can still watch the flocking of the native birds visiting my backyard in suburban Portland, Oregon. They...
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 wanted pictures. After harvesting a half dozen ‘chokes from the two plants, I cut one plant down to a frazzled stump, and let the other...
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 one less fish. I never should have named the fish. The Heron, who we call Billy, has visited every morning this week except one, and it...
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 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...
Lucy Siale, a 16 year old Bay Area resident, called for, organized and MC'ed Oakland's 1000+ strong DACA rally yesterday, Saturday, Sept 9th at Oscar Grant Plaza. x Lucy Siale, the organizer of the #DACA rally, goes to high school in Walnut Creek, where she is planning another rally soon....
