Things Are Looking Up, (I think) Here in Gopher Valley

This is unscientific, because their appearance coincided with an improvement in my birding skills, but I noticed three bird species last summer that might be new arrivals: Purple Finch, Western Wood-Pewee, and Lesser Goldfinch, plus the aforementioned White-Breasted Nuthatch this fall and winter.

Hoping that we had some rare and important new species, I cracked open the Land Manager’s Guide To Bird Habitat and Populations in Oak Ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest  (note that link goes to part II). Of the six “obligate or near-obligate” species (don’t live anywhere else, or if they do, then much fewer outside this habitat), only two – Acorn Woodpecker and Slender Billed White-breasted Nuthatch have ranges in our part of the Willamette Valley. When we have a resident Acorn Woodpecker, we’ll have all two of them and the champagne corks will pop.

Moving into the more numerous “highly associated” species part of the list, we’ve seen or heard 13 of 20. The authors note that “highly associated species are those that are abundant in some other habitat(s), but reach some of their highest densities in oak habitats.” So not all of these are bell-ringers, so to speak.

The 13 in our neighborhood:

• Bewick’s Wren*
• Black-capped Chickadee*
• Black-headed Grosbeak
• Bushtit*
• Chipping Sparrow
• House Wren
• Lesser Goldfinch
• Purple Finch
• Spotted Towhee
• Western Bluebird
• Western Scrub-jay
• Western Tanager
• Western Wood-pewee

*For the record, these are pretty common in urban Seattle neighborhoods too

I think the neighbors’ 92 acres to the south are providing a lot of this habitat. We are watching closely for signs of a land sale at that location. It would be a tragedy if it was cleared, following the trend to plant crops on former woodland.

So, back to the ones that cropped up on the radar recently. Lesser Goldfinch prefers tree/shrub and shrub/tree edges and open areas. We saw them foraging on the open savanna area last summer on weeds (weeds!). They like the thistle and sunflower-family (Asteraceae) seed, and they were dancing around over the false dandelions in the savanna.

Purple finch

Purple Finch Listed as a short-distance migrant. Abundance is higher in larger patches (>25 acres). Since ours is 20 acres, the adjacent habitat is probably improving the chances of having them here. Here is a fuzzy photo of one at the feeder last summer.

Western Wood-Pewee. The guide lists this species as a “potential ‘early responder’ to overstory thinning or conifer removal that opens up the canopy of oak or oak-fir forest”. Ah-ha, I’ll take credit for that! I watched one fly to a nest in the fork of a tall skinny oak in the newly thinned woodland. They may have been here previously and we mistook it for some other sort of flycatcher, but they are making the most of the new habitat. They are really easy and fun to watch when they’re feeding because they perch near an opening and fly out and back catching insects. There is an audible ‘snap’ of their beak as they make contact.

Here is someone else’s Youtube video of one in Arizona

I was sorry to learn from The Sibley Guide that “recent population declines in…the Western Wood-Pewee may be due to major losses of wintering habitat in the South American Andes, the result of human activity”. The double liability of habitat loss for long distance migrants  in both breeding and overwintering areas is a very complicated issue for conservation.

White-breasted Nuthatches are residents (non-migrating), and they use edges and small habitat patches. So they should be better off if the acreage in woodland restoration continues to increase. If I do nothing else this year, I am going to get a photo of ours that’s in focus.

Lesser Goldfinch. Another resident and edge-user. Good prospects for our population because we go edges galore! Here is someone else’s Youtube video of one at the Tualatin River NWR not far from us – and a really great place to visit.

Highs and Lows

Feb 26, 2013:    Overnight Low 30° F    9:20 a.m. 34°F    Rainfall since 2/25/13   .55″

Feb 27, 2013:     Low 38°     9:40 a.m. 45°     Rainfall 0

I really enjoy checking the weather station stats on the indoor display console several times a day.

Although it rained like crazy, between showers it was bright and warm, the sun was blinding, actually, as I puttered among the weeds in the garden looking for native plants that I’d sown from seed in years past. Some are not yet up, but many are bright and chipper, looking as if maybe they never died back completely, despite protracted sub-freezing temperatures this winter.

Sidalcea campestris

Meadow checkermallow, Sidalcea campestris, forms crowns early and spreads easily once it germinates.

Perhaps the ground-huggers find it easier to overwinter. The champion germinator of broadcast or row-planted natives, Prunella vulgaris marches on. Maybe that’s why it’s called self-heal. Nice ground cover and lovely purple flowers over a long period for nectar and pollen.

P. gracilis

P. glandulosa

Potentilla glandulosa and P. gracilis (five-fingered cinqefoil and sticky cinqefoil) set many tiny seeds (think strawberries without the juicy part) but did not germinate in great numbers when broadcast. Those that did, survive happily, however.

E. lanatum

The gray remains of last year’s Oregon sunshine, Eriophyllum lanatum, seen above new growth just getting started.

Baby Madrones

In the half-day shade on the west side of the shed, these Pacific madrones, Arubuts menziesii, have not been watered since sowing in winter 2010. Easy from seed (and not fresh seed at that- it was collected in 1999). I transplanted some to the hedgerow this winter, and will eventually distribute them around hoping for their continued survival.

Several thousand – literally – great camas, Camassia leichtlinii are on their second year. I separated and replanted most of the thickly sown seeds-now-bulbs that formed the first year until I wore out. So some are still in their previous crowded pots, like clumps of grass; those are the ones that are sending up the first shoots! (See below).

To say these are easy from seed is an understatement – I have to share with you the comment I received from one of my customers in the UK who purchased Camas seed from me to round out his collection,

Dear Jeanie

“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy!”

Just a quick note to say that the Camassia seeds are coming up now, a bit like mustard and cress, so I hope I have enough space in the pot I sowed them in. Wee beasties aside, I should have a veritable forest of Camassia in a few years time.

From one very happy gardener on the other side of the pond.

Regards

Chris

A gathering of robins, festooning the trees at dusk, kept me company. Great horned owls began moving from woods to meadow edge, conversing between themselves. Across the valley a western screech owl tooted out its ‘bouncing ball’ call.

My Oregon Master Naturalist Cohort

Here, belatedly, is a short video of my Willamette Valley Specialization group in the Oregon Master Naturalist Program. This was the field portion of a day learning about birds and plants of the endangered Oregon White Oak Woodland and Savanna ecosystems. (With regard to Oregon white oak vs. Garry oak, see the note on Oregonian naming practices, on my other blog.)

Quiz: Bird Beaks

Reblogged from Ramble:

Last week my Ornithology class started their bird anatomy studies with dissections of road- or window-killed birds. The project will continue, as in years past, with cleaning of bones and reconstruction of the skeleton, ending with an articulated specimen.

I took the following photographs of beaks before the class started. Can you identify the bird from the beak? Answers with some additional information are listed below.

Read more… 220 more words

Following up on the last post about owls. Here is a fun and interesting look at beaks of different birds. The all important way they hunt and eat. Although many are from the Eastern US, look for our Northwestern species: Great Horned owl, American robin, merlin, Cooper's hawk, red-tailed hawk, screech owl (eastern here but probably similar to ours), grackle (close to crow or raven), American coot, Swainson's thrush, Grosbeak may be similar to our black headed grosbeak? Great stuff!!

Great Horned Owls

When I was out on the hill killing scotch broom the other day, I heard the great horned owls spooning. There is something comforting about these big birds still choosing to nest among our firs. They are one of the most melodious owls – so pleasant to listen to.

Later I heard a sound at dusk behind the house in the woods. When I went to investigate, it stopped and started up again down by the pond. Just enough time for one bird to fly down there. I thought it might be one of the owls, since they fly away like that in the daytime, but the call was just a short, rising couple of notes. After much searching through recorded bird sounds, I finally found the little short call I had heard, not included on most recordings at all, but very distinctive.

Until I can record our own owls on my phone to post (can’t say I’ll ever get a good photo), let me introduce you to the professionals: Feathered Photography and bird calls at the Neighborhood Naturalist.

Good Tools, How We Love Them

20& to 30% slopes, very little level ground, lots of noxious weeds, stuff to carry for planting. I thought long and hard about equipment to get stuff up the hill (in the wet, in the blazing sun). I spent years carrying herbicide in containers, on my back, in a wheelbarrow, etc, dreaming of just the right conveyance. We need to haul rocks for daylighting our stream crossings. I need to get the mushroom logs down to the house.

Things that you ride, like ATVs, tip over, and they don’t have tracks – which I think is essential for secure maneuvering. Big machines like the skid steer, (which is a dream come true) are huge, and expensive. The one thing we tried that seemed comfortable was this baby:

This Canycom power wheelbarrow has a dump bed, (those are the kids dumping each other) and carries 450 kg. Wooooo Hoooo! Now we’ll get some stuff done.

Death in Nature – a look back and a new link

I recently read this article in the New York Times, and it reminded me that I had also written a blog post on the same topic. Of course the great scientist, Bernd Heinrich, has thought way beyond my musings, but there are parallel observations nonetheless.

Here is my humble previous offering.

And here is the real deal, scientifically speaking. I must read that book!

Time. Maps. Closeup views

A previous post showed the general lay of the land over time in our neighborhood. Here is a closeup of changes we have wrought since we’ve been there. If you click on a photo it will take you to gallery view.

1994

July 2000

August 2005

2006

November 2011

You are in the the mid-upper left bare spot

The first conservation treatment brought in a mower to cut down huge old growth scotch broom – scourge of Northwestern natural areas. Smaller trees were sheared on the west side, and near the middle of the 20 acres (2006-2007) to create the savanna and oak woodland. The relatively filled-in appearance after 1994 is likely due to a lot of regrowth of weedy brush (broom and blackberries) over disturbed ground.

Our latest treatment began in 2011. This is where you can see change on the landscape more clearly. We had more trees sheared, and a lot of larger diameter trees were removed – 2011 and 2012 photos show the opening of the oak woodland/savannah in the center and lower left (SW corner) near the pond, where the “boulevard” was opened along an existing pathway with removal of many smaller firs and some oaks).

Although the first treatment brought major changes on the ground, the activity is more obvious from the aerial perspective in the last couple of views – possibly because of the size and number of trees removed with the last cut. Over 100 oaks, and about 100 firs were removed, and they were larger than the ones that were sheared initially.

Another change that is more visible recently is seen in a faint diagonal opening just above the middle in the land of moose and squirrel. This is where fir trees were girdled and are now standing dead trees, plus three large snags intentionally left alive but with most limbs removed. Dead trees and a trail just above them look somewhat like the 1994 view before trees and brush filled in.

So, some real habitat changes now, encouraging the ‘traditional’ residents of the oak savanna and woodland. Got those white-breasted nuthatches (two at least) so maybe they will build a nest this year!

Perhaps I will take you on a video tour soon…

Reblog: IT’S 18 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT — WHERE’S THE PEANUTS????

I’m reblogging a post from this wonderful southern Oregon bird blog, because it is so appropriate and I can’t really add anything:

IT’S 18 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT — WHERE’S THE PEANUTS????.

It was 20 deg F last night, and stayed cloudy all day, preserving the thick layer of frost on all things leafy.

We had lots of birds flocking in to gobble birdseed, suet cakes, and leftover apples hanging in the trees. Notably, also a brand new bird siting (for us) – a Townsend’s Warbler partaking of the granny smiths. They winter along the west coast. It was a treat to see a new visitor we would likely not see in the summer. Here’s a great video http://youtu.be/hpQlILzavms Check out the eyeliner!! I only wish the videographer would keep his cat indoors, such an obvious example of why he should do that.

We still have the one White-Breasted Nuthatch hanging around with the Red-Breasted ones, who practically sit on your shoulder in their frenzy to eat enough to keep from freezing. I noted a Stellar’s Jay scaring off the WBNuthatch as it was cracking a sunflower seed it had wedged in the bark of the dougfir. The Jay snatched it. Turns out those jays can cling to the bark too, the bullies. The WBNuthatch may disappear once the weather warms up, but I hope it finds a mate and settles down for the summer.

Here is the bird lineup near the house currently:

Townsend’s warbler (new to us), white breasted nuthatch (recently noted), Stellar’s jay, black capped chickadee, chestnut backed chickadee, (oh- they are sooo dapper!), dark eyed junco, golden crowned sparrow (took awhile for Tom to settle on that i.d. as their crowns are not very golden in winter), spotted towhee, mourning dove, varied thrush (heard the policeman’s whistle of its call briefly in the evening, and then it visited the ground under the feeder); heard but not seen – golden crowned kinglets.

A Map Of Time, Time In Maps

1994

2003

2004

2011

2012

This is a gallery of landscape changes in our little corner of the world. In a very short time (1994-2012), the local vegetation has been altered by land management quite dramatically. From our perspective (our 20-acre rectangle) it often seems overwhelming.

In 2005 we had a comfortable buffer of forest around us for the birds and wildlife we like to watch. We knew it was tree farm country, so logging was a given but, patchy as it was, it didn’t seem too traumatic. You can see the tree farms mostly blanketing the area in the earliest GoogleEarth map.

Then came a shift in land use – ‘conversion’ is the term – from timber to vineyards. Watch the photos as the trees begin to disappear. Vineyards and orchards sound like a sort of idyllic alteration, but think just a minute about what that entails. Conversion from old growth to tree farms is a step away from diverse, patchy habitat of a particular kind: spotted owls, flying squirrels, really big trees with a lot of carbon stored in their massive trunks, a lot of cavities for owls and other specialists. Old growth trees (250+ yrs) that store and hold – sequester – more carbon than any other type of forest. You can see that even in the earlier views, the connectivity between patches is important – those are corridors that allow wildlife and plants to move across the landscape either to escape the clearcutting or to find food or mates.

Timber farms, especially smaller ones cut in patches on a long rotation, (time between cuts), shelter many important organisms while they grow, and if those plants and animals are lucky, they can shift over to another patch when the clearcut begins. Technically, people are required to leave a certain number of trees and snags, but the rules about that are so lenient that it doesn’t really amount to anything ecologically important in most cases on private land. Federal forests are another story, as they are managed differently. The other thing about forestry is that there are relatively long periods between soil disturbance.

Now, step it up one notch with conversion from timber land to row crops, vineyards, or a hazelnut orchard. If you look, you can see that to the north and east of our 20 acres, all trees were removed, conifer, oak, even the ones that were formerly left by commercial forestry. Stumps were bulldozed, burned, and the land plowed. Two major changes that occur now are the absence of trees and shrubs, and soil disturbance on a regular schedule. Weed control and monoculture demand constant spraying, plowing, or both. All these activities restrict plant life and, importantly, affect the insects that can survive in disturbed habitat.

Unless a farm, orchard, or vineyard is conscientiously managed to leave patches of undisturbed habitat for native ground nesting bees, predatory insects, and other beneficials, the landscape is a depauperate one compared to a natural one.

In the gallery above, you can view the transition from 1) patchy timber harvest to 2) clearcuts on a larger scale (there is a large absentee landowner to the north and east of us who is progressively extracting all the monetary value from his timber, then selling off the land) then 3) conversion to vineyard to the east and north. Note the extremely clean patches and rows of plowed and planted crops. Oak trees that were left after cutting douglas firs were stripped off the land and sold for firewood. Thankfully, a few trees were left around a low spot on the east side, that is the source of a stream that flows across our property and down to Deer Creek. However, our hydrology is permanently altered. Erosion from the force of high water flows, and lower flows in summer are byproducts of vegetation stripped off the soil surface.

Next week – the closeup view of our patch before and after we acquired it.