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...
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 water. Even the dregs are sweet. And in that moment between a memory and a dream, I was not sure if I was a hummingbird...
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 colors from view. I’ve offered some purple, now for the Haze. In some ways this is scarier than a Nebraska tornado cloud. No where to...
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 a whole bunch of new cases just hit my in-basket and I came to work to find a guy sobbing over a couple of baby...
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...
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 areas, beyond my vision. This year, however, The frogs ‘ Spring-hatch was plentiful, and I often found 5 or 10 frogs on every morning walk....
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...
A single water bead, as pretty as a jewel, perhaps a moonstone. Now it’s your turn. You’ve been reading The Daily Bucket, a nature refuge. We amicably discuss frogs, animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters, and life’s patterns. Phenology is how we take earth’s pulse. We discuss what we see...
I have 5 hummingbird feeders, and my neighbors have feeders also. I have at least 3 hummingbirds patronizing my yard. However they appear to simply chase each other from feeder to feeder all day. It’s too much fun to sit outside and watch them all day. But I’m getting nothing...
The ”Frog Court” originated as result of a sealed court settlement over an unfortunate incident regarding Nixon EPA Administrator Anne Gorsche, prescription drugs, a government limo, and a lost weekend in the early 1970s. The quiet settlement established the Frog Environmental Regulatory Commission, or FERC. FERC’s mandate is the protection...
