Closer to Home

Another perfect morning.  The newly arrived golden-crowned sparrows scatter when the garage door opens.  Look in your yard, you might see sparrow-like (since they are,) ground feeders with what looks like a dark horizontal stripe on the heads and a golden stripe on top - thus the name.  They're quick to return to the grassy spot under the sunflower seed feeder after I've moved on.  A spotted towhee is hiding in the rhodie nearby.  Black and rust with lovely white spots on his side (thus the name) and marvelous red eyes.  He utters what has been described as a softly querulous question, sort of a wheeeeet? rising from low to high. He's a skulker, hopping from limb to limb, usually just out of easy sight.  On the other hand, the gold finches don't care who sees them.  Talk, talk, talk.  They squeak and chatter from tree to tree in small, loose flocks that go fly, swoop, fly, swoop.   Their brilliant yellow backs are hard to miss ~ some call them wild canaries for that reason, but they're no relation.  Actually, I think canary song is prettier, but caged birds, oh man.  Can't go there: birds in prison.

The mallard couple is making their cautious way from water to lawn.  The female leads, but the male is taking care to look all around for any stray dogs before proceeding.  She isn't nesting this year for some reason, and the male has stayed with her. They have a sweet bond.  Right now she's grazing around under the niger seed feeder and he is watching around for any threat.  When they've both fed, they will make their way to the water's edge, settle down next to each other and enjoy the sun for awhile.  The great blue heron, statue-like in the shallows, rolls an eye toward them but doesn't move a feather.

Other than this couple,  there are only lonely looking male mallards on the outlet. The other hens have apparently  gone to nest.  They've carefully selected protected spots in the thick new grasses that form floating islands or border the outlet.  But protection only goes so far, since raccoons and otters have no trouble finding these nests if they're in the neighborhood.  It's heartbreaking to watch a critter harvest an egg, break it and savor the contents as the parents watch helplessly nearby.  "Nature red in tooth and claw",  I guess. Tough to see, but it's the way it's gone since long before we were around.  Usually the ducks will have a second (or third) clutch of eggs, and many ducklings DO make it into this world, to charm us with their appearance of very busy fluff-covered floating  golf balls.  If you see a hen with her brood, you may see that she counts them almost continuously.  There can be 10 or more, which keeps her busy counting.  Her head almost bobs as she notes each one.  If danger is sensed, her  low, quiet  call to the gang brings them all quickly around her for further orders. 
Even the hen with the lame leg has had luck this year.   At least I hope she is nesting.

Now it's the quiet of late afternoon on the water.  A soft breeze blows small riffles across the surface, wrinkling the blue sky reflected there. Big yellow skunk cabbages glow like the goldfinches along the bank.  What bird or person could ask for more.

Why Shade-Grown Coffee?

There and more and more choices for coffee purchases out there these days.  How much we are willing to pay  for that steamy cup depends on how important good coffee is to us.  I love strong, muddy French Roast all day long.
But now there is one more thing to consider.   Some enlightened companies are offering shade-grown coffee.  This isn't just a special way to grow extra-tasty coffee beans, although that happens, too.  What it means is that the native people are NOT cutting down the jungle in order to make a living from planting coffee.  This is actually an old way to grow coffee.  Planters got away from it and started chopping down the jungle to make more room for coffee.  It actually prefers to grow in the shade.  Cutting jungle means loss of habitat for many birds and animals, and the coffee doesn't like it, really.
So now many growers - but not all- are going back to growing in the shade.    This means that the jungle stays and coffee bushes, which aren't really very tall, can thrive under the fifty-foot tall lush, living canopy of green. 
I've seen it ~ it works.  The collared trogon, to the right, is a denizen of  high forest canopies.  He looks like an elaborate holiday ornament.  He's about eleven inches long and will sit silently for hours, just like in that photo, always in the shade. 
The day we spent birding a shade-grown coffee plantation, the Mexican men and women were quietly harvesting the berries (beans) in large sacks.  They smiled and greeted us - they're used to birders in their co-op owned coffee fields.   The birds sang and darted high in the canopy.  It's quite an experience to see something like that really working, instead of having two competing interests.
Shade grown may cost a few pennies more, but consider it  an investment.   The coffee workers don't have to face a choice of cutting down ancient mountain forests or making a living.  When the choice involves survival, survival  trumps all, as it should.   This is a perfect example of creativity and compromise.
  Try some shade-grown, it's great.  And you can feel virtuous about your habit.

Eagles, up close and very personal

I've been following the Decorah (Iowa) eagles on the eagle cam put up by the Raptor Resource Project.  They are nesting 80 feet up in a tree on Decorah Fish Hatchery property.  The camera shows eagle family life 24/7.  This project was conceived by Bob Anderson, who is a complete bird hero.  When he dies, he will be lifted up on the wings of a thousand birds, which is the dream of all of us bird lovers.  Bob Anderson has been instrumental in bringing back peregrine falcons in the mid-west.  But you can Google him and learn all of the details.
  I want to think about the Decorah eagles.  These mature bald eagles have been a mated pair for several years.  With the idea that we would be interested in watching eagle life, some very enterprising staff of the Raptor Resource Project (Bob Anderson again) climbed 80 feet up into the tree and installed a camera a few feet  above and to the side of the eagles' nest before they showed up this year. Of course, the eagles  have no concept of  'camera'. 
The eagles successfully brooded and hatched three young eaglets.  Right now they're not quite a month old, very fuzzy, dark grey babies, with just the hint of pin feathers coming in.  These will be the 'real' feathers that will mark them as young adults and enable them to fly.  We have watched through howling winds, snow, frost on the camera, you-name-it awful weather.  And as humans, we worry.  She has snow all over her! Why isn't she feeding that smallest one?  Isn't he squashing the third little guy, where is he anyway?  Do these big raptors really know what they're doing??  Then we see one of them (they're hard to tell apart: mom is bigger, but the camera is close and it's hard to tell them apart) oh, so gently offer a tasty bit of fish to one of the youngsters with a bill that can and does tear and wreak havoc on prey. Patiently, the parent leans down, turns her head and holds a bloody strip of something until the wobbly little one gets the idea and snatches it away.   When the wind blows, the parent gets busy and pulls hunks of the 6 foot wide nest in close, forming a deep pocket where the three little ones hunker down, with the parent as windbreak.  Not even a small feather is ruffled in the breeze.  They'll be just fine.
These camera are genius.  They pull us into the world of these creatures where we can watch, soap-opera style, as the family matures.  It's not always pretty.  It's nature, after all.  Sometimes a youngster dies, sometimes a parent does not return to the nest.  It makes us care and that is a good thing, as Martha says.  It's so much easier to ask people to help protect a species, or birds in general, when we have all watched their struggles and victories. We know them as our neighbors, which is just what they are.   Bird cams have proliferated over the past few years. There are hummingbird cams, peregrine cams, red-tailed hawk cams.  Just Google and you will find them.
At work, when things become surreal, I bring up the Decorah eagles for a moment.  There is the parent, sitting either on or near the eaglets, looking out over the land with her noble gaze.  Sanity.  Try it.

Just a Crow

Or "just another damned crow..." is more likely.  We tend to look at crows and starlings as 'trash' birds~ too many of them, too pushy, noisy and grabby.  All true.  How very adaptive they are.   All of those black birds are pushing out our native birds, raiding nests, piercing eggs, hogging food.  Yep.  And we have created the world that supports these survivors.  Many of the beautiful, colorful songbirds that used to be so common, Meadowlarks, for instance, require an environment that exists in very reduced areas now.  We have built, filled-in, added-to, chopped down, fenced and mowed a lot of bird habitat.  Many argue that this is our right as humans.  Whatever you believe, we have created a populous, paved world where many species simply cannot exist.  But crows can.  Starlings can.  I have to admire that.  Crows are so smart.   They look out for each other, defend each other and problem solve. Examples:  there is a family of crows that hangs out on the mowed lawn near where I work.  Crows are really hard to tell apart, but one of these crows has a deformed foot.  I have gotten to recognize this crow.  He and his crew are always around and one or two other crows stay close to the crow with the bad foot.  They watch me as I walk by, and bad-foot crow hops sideways away from me, watching me all the time.  The other two get closer to bad-foot crow till I'm safely past.  There are lots of stories about crows taking care of each other.  "Crow Nation", a wonderful book about crows, tells incredible stories of families of crows and crow relationships.
If you see a big mob of very noisy crows in a tree, look closely in the center and you may be able to pick out an owl or hawk who is trying very hard to be invisible.  Usually the crows just will not quit till the intruder flies off in a huff.  
Crows in Japan learned to crack nuts by dropping them on busy streets and waiting till cars ran over them.  Then, because they figured out the danger of traffic, they learned to wait at the curb with the people till the light changed, THEN go out and harvest the cracked nut.  I watched the video of this. Wow. 

In our yard, I got tired of the crows stealing all of the suet from the feeder.  It would be gone in a day.  I found a feeder where the suet fits inside  a woven metal tube.  The tube sits in a protective mesh which lets in the small birds, so they can safely feed, but not the piggy birds.   The neighborhood crows came, they looked, they stood on it, they stood below it, they pondered.  Then they flew off and never tried again to breach the suet.  They figured  out that they couldn't do it. 

And here's one last thought.  Walking on a street in town and passing crows on a lawn means that you have been close to a wild creature who lives by his wits and survives. I think that's worth our respect.  Even if it's just a crow.

I have to go chase them off the other bird feeder now.    

Shelter from the storm

It was a nasty day, raining and cold as it has been for far too long.  But it felt like a day to see what birds have been moving in, via migration, and what birds may have been blown in, due to bad weather.  We're lucky to have 3 large bays near us.  There is Willapa Bay, of course, and Baker Bay and Young's Bay.  Baker Bay is just out from Chinook, Young's Bay is near Astoria.  You cross Young's Bay on the way to Warrenton.   Bays are where seabirds will seek shelter from heavy weather, and where many other water birds just spend winter, away from the weather.  The brilliant white and black ducks that have been wintering in Young's Bay, that you can see pretty well from the car, are called Buffleheads.   I understand that the name comes from someone deciding that they have big heads for a duck, sort of like a buffalo.  Whatever.   The white glows in the mist and rain, until the male arches his lovely neck and dives, searching for food.  The female, harder to see, is black and has a white spot on her face, just behind the eye.  Most female birds are 'drab' compared to the males, as they're the ones who have to sit on the nest and try to be invisible.  Bright white doesn't work in that situation, unless you live in the Arctic.   
Birds that live far at sea are sometimes blown into the bays during strong winds.  They can be seen in the bays and just offshore in the ocean.  A good place to look is the viewing platform at Parking Lot C at Fort Stevens State Park.
There is a beautiful small bird called a Fork-tailed Storm Petrel, who live almost  entirely at sea.  Pearl grey and about as big as a robin.  These birds feed by hovering just above the water, with feet extended, delicately touching the water, so that it appears that they're dancing on the waves.  A few years ago I was lucky enough to see one of these birds just off Parking Lot C, doing his dream-like dance above the very rough water.  Not dream-like to the bird of course, who was fishing for lunch.  But for a human, maybe a metaphor for a tough day.
I didn't see any Storm-Petrels today, but birding is kind of a zen thing.  If you just focus on having to see something, you'll often be frustrated.  I try to just go with the journey.

More on earning a living

The quickest way to Portland from the Peninsula (in non-tourist season anyway,) includes a long, straight run on Highway 26.  If you drive it, you've noticed that this highway has become incredibly busy as development  moves from  Beaverton, Hillsboro, North Plains and on westward.  I always keep my eyes open for  the red-tail hawks that are commonly found sitting hunkered on the big overhanging lights along here. They may even clutch the power line in massive claws, teetering back and forth - not a very fierce and dignified hawk posture.  But these are excellent lookouts  for  meals.  The grassy median and the roadsides are a great place for mice and voles.  The hawks can see the slightest movement below them, even with all the wind movement from the traffic. They will launch downward with great concentration and speed to grasp their prey with strong talons.  If you see this happening, watch for the next thing.  Once the prey is secured, the hawk will spread her wings out and forward on either side of the unlucky catch.  This is called 'mantling' and from the fierce look-around by the hawk that accompanies this action, I'd say it's a serious warning for other predators to back off.
It's getting trickier for raptors to navigate Highway 26 these days.  There are more lanes, faster traffic, bigger trucks.  The hawk has to time her swoop for a meal so that she isn't falling directly into the path of a car traveling at 60-plus mph.  Obviously, sadly, some don't time it so well. But  I see very few road-killed hawks  along 26.   I credit their sublime ability to move in the air, to gauge distance and speed.   More often, they're seen pulling off tasty bits of lunch as traffic roars by in both directions.  Again, just trying to make a living.  A female hawk may fly up and away with her captured meal to take to her nest to feed young.   This is fun to watch when a big long snake is the prey and the hawk flies, snake dangling,  over a convertible. 
When you drive 26, be on the lookout in the distance and you may be able to enjoy seeing wild nature at work during rush hour.

Fast forward

Suddenly it's April.  Still the same weather as February, well, OK, no snow, but that rain is cold.  The birds have turned up the volume quite a lot since the quiet of winter.  On a walk out for the paper this morning I heard a Virginia rail in the marsh- rails are marsh birds, very skulky and unsociable. They look kind of like a small brown long-legged chicken.  Only the head is very different, with beautiful red highlights and a long, tapered bill for digging into that marsh mud for food.  In Bird ID books, rails are filed under "Chicken-Like Wading Birds"  which describes them exactly.  They take high, careful steps through the mud and you could swear they're frowning if you're lucky enough to actually see one.   And quiet.  But this time of year, the male is interested in finding any available girl rails, so he calls from the deep new marsh grass.  It's sort of  a kuk-kuk-kuk- getting faster as he goes.  It's a wonderful, noisy sign that spring is here.
There was also a woodpecker, probably a small one, drumming nearby.  When you hear a rat-a-tat really fast, it's a woodpecker.   If one picks your house to drum on (lucky you) you can at least know it's self-limited to the breeding season.  They're letting other woodpeckers know that this territory is taken.  Most of the cures for this house-drumming that I've heard of seem doomed to fail.  Finally the hormones ebb and the woodpecker is more focused on raising a family somewhere nearby.
The skunk cabbage on our pond edge is slow to bloom this year.  They're like blazing yellow exclamation points along the wet roadsides, but here, they're just beginning to venture a lance-like leaf into the sun.  I have a plant ID book that describes skunk cabbage as "a robust, hairless perennial"...sounds like some of my best friends. 
Tonight the pond is mirror still, oyster colored.  A wide soft arrow in the water is created by a beaver heading north.  Just eyes and nose above the water, he must be heading home after work.  All the birds and critters around us are trying to make a living, just like us.  They struggle and work hard to feed families and try to get along and be safe.  And they do their best to live peacefully among us.  Sometimes we cross paths with someone, maybe a skunk or even a black bear, and hackles rise briefly all around.  But none of the critters that live among us wish us any harm.  I hope we can return that favor.

Loomis Outlet in February

The Mallards are coming in for their morning feed.   As soon as the garage door starts to rise on the other side of the house, they murmur quietly and file one by one ashore for breakfast.  I fill a coffee can with cracked corn and swish it noisily as I walk around the front of the house.  The murmur is louder and a bit more urgent.  It's been a long, cold night.   When they leave the water, some of the ducks hunker down on the snow to keep their legs warm. Hard to believe but the water is warmer than the air.  So they sit, then walk a few steps, then sit again.  Once they get to the grain they eat quickly and quietly, savoring the corn.    
In the meantime, the Anna's hummingbird is impatiently buzzing the rhodies near his feeder.  The sugar water has frozen during the night and the hummer knows that I will switch the feeder out for a warm, liquid one.  I'm just not moving fast enough!  Quite a lot of dashing to and fro around me, perching, then more looping.  Imagine how in need of nourishment that tiny body must be after so many hours of cold.  Hummingbirds go into 'torpor' at night which means that their metabolism drops to almost nothing.  They can be found sitting in  protected places after dark with little caps of snow on their heads.  One would think "Well, there's no hope for this one..."  but when daylight comes, slowly, slowly they begin to move, fluff feathers, toss off snow, and take off for another day of foraging for bugs, since few flowers are yet in bloom.
So the day has begun in the best possible way.  Being around birds, hearing their conversations, seeing that the lame mallard hen is still looking good and eating her share.  The rest of the day will be punctuated by birds.  The sparrows that ground-feed in the side yard, the crows that try to bully away the mallards, it's like a big wonderful soap opera.   I hope I can interest you in tuning in.