October 2006

October 30, 2006

Today’s frosty morning punctuates a glorious month of gray-scale misty mornings and brilliantly colored sunny afternoons.

On campus the fall transition is nearly complete. Most of the migrant birds are gone, though even last week a few hearty hummingbirds could be hear buzzing the treetops along the dam. With the migrants gone and the breeding season over, the resident birds have expand out across campus. Juncos come together, then disband, as they search conifers and ground cover for insects and seeds. Bushtits, in their extended family groups chatter non-stop as they dart in and out of bushes and trees. If you hear them coming, stop and wait by the closest tree and you may be blessed with a close-up view of these smallest of passerines. Standing still you are just another obstacle to fly around and they will enter your tree, one after another, like so many feathered puff balls blown by the wind.

Other creatures are spreading out as well, taking advantage of the changing moisture levels. The morning fog has created a path for roaming tree frogs and they have begun moving away from their wetland reserves--calling now from vegetation all over campus. Known as cricket frogs in much of the U.S., their call reminds some of a finger rubbed along a pocket comb. The trill of their call in tune with the cackling of geese overhead - classic sights and and sounds of autumn.

Late morning now, and the fog has lifted, revealing another sun-filled day. Glorious. Word enough to describe today, this month, this autumn. Simply glorious.

with an eye on nature,

Wally

September 2006

September 10, 2006

On the eve of nine-eleven I look to the heavens and am rewarded by a thousand darting swifts. Gathering on their southward migration, thousands of Vaux’s Swifts swirl and float in the September sky above NW Portland’s Chapman school. At this age when the news brings voices of anger and hatred, it is reassuring to know that the pilgrimage of these small birds brought people together for a common good. It is reassuring to know that school children and adults came together to take action, to make small sacrifices for the benefit of nature. As I watch the whirling, acrobatic cloud of birds descend into an abandoned chimney, I am awed by the beauty of the birds and energized by the sight of families and couples, men and women, gathered together again to share in the experience and to wonder as one at the natural world. We watch mesmerized by the magnitude of the flock, we take in a collective breath as a falcon darts from the surrounding trees and snatches a meal. We cheer and clap as the light fades and the final group of birds ends its day and drops, individual by individual, into the human-made old growth snag that is their roost.

It is now dark. Time for us to leave too. We are individuals again ourselves, but we have shared an experience of beauty and, I can’t help believe, that we all leave restored, that we all leave a little more humane.

With an eye on nature,

Wally

August 2006

17 August 2006

August in Oregon is harvest time and a walk through peach orchards and cornfields brings unexpected vistas of the life and death activities that abound. A ladybird beetle cleans her antennae after devouring a thrip (a miniscule plant juice sucking insect) and waits in stillness for its next victim. A darkling beetle takes up residence inside a discarded peach seed, perhaps avoiding the mid-day sun or scraping nutrients from the dried insides. Native and alien bees alight side-by-side on flowers grown to beautify our houses, but that also serve to fill their nearby hives’ larders with sweet nectar. Solitary wasps fill themselves with another flower’s ambrosia and convert the fuel to eggs, thereby insuring future generations of pollinators. Two damselflies, with their metallic blue bodies, are locked in copulation. The male’s abdominal pincer fixed behind the female’s head, providing a pivot point for the female to bring her own abdomen below his to access the sperm needed to fertilize her eggs. The intricate dance and lock and key arrangement of appendages provide security in mating and prevent the hybridization of species. Above this scene of procreation, barn swallows click and chatter in aerial dog- fights and feeding frenzies. With the clear blue backdrop, their movements seem for a moment to be those of swimmers rather than flyers and I suppose the difference is minimal. To heavy lumbering beings such as us, the viscosity of air is inadequate, but for the feather light creatures above, air provides all that is needed for movement--another piece of evidence that it is all about perspective. But perspective is for us to ponder. For the animals in these waning days of summer, there is too much to do before day’s end. Too much to do before the sun sets and the harvest ends.

With an eye on nature,

Wally

July 2006

Eye on Nature – July 2006

With blazing temperatures behind us (at least temporarily) you can almost feel the natural world breathing a collective sigh of relief as it welcomes the end of July. The delicious evening coolness has returned and with the breeze comes an invitation for mental stillness and reflection.

To many, July marks the mid-point of summer. Oregon’s landscape has turned into a mix of brown and green. Plants of all kinds are setting seed, having grown and flowered. For many of these annuals, their future awaits the rains of autumn. Tree branches bend under the weight of ripening fruit—whether globes of summer sweetness waiting for human hands to harvest, or the samaras of a maple, their small package ready to nourish the tiny embryos inside. In my neighborhood Song Sparrows still lay claim to their territories with twittering melodies while the English Sparrows chatter and buzz and raise yet another brood. But for others, the balance of summer activities has tipped. Crossed is the line between creation and preparation. For them, circadian rhythms push to prepare for times ahead. Fledglings and adults alike take advantage of the still long days to eat and eat again, laying on fat to fuel their bodies for distant migrations or for the wet, dark days of winter.

On these bright days of summer the dampness and darkness of winter are hard to imagine. Yet by conscious thought or instinctual drive, we know they are coming. All the more reason to appreciate the warmth of summer still here.

with an eye on nature,

April 2006

April 17, 2006
Northeastern slopes of the Cordillera Tilarán
Costa Rica

Latitude 10 degrees N; Longitude 24 degrees W; Elevation 1600 m; Distance to the sea 50 km. These are the locational facts that by themselves conjure colorful images to geographers and ecologists. Physical realities that establish the conditions that currently surround me and my family: Cool, clear nights, and mild days, despite proximity to the earth’s equatorial band. Moisture-laden air from Pacific or Caribbean rising, cooling and changing to cloud, and subsequently releasing its life-giving cargo as mist. Combined these conditions lead, even during the Costa Rican dry season, to forest vegetation that is lush and alive.

The ecological stage is set by these climatic conditions, but the details of who and what exists here are set by chance and history. In the forests nearby exotic birds like toucans and trogons roam in search of fruits, nightingale thrush and antbirds snatch insects forced into flight by marauding army ants, and scintillant hummingbirds and blue-gray tanagers remove sweet fluids from the flowers of canopy trees. Around the old farmhouse we currently call home are birds adapted to open fields and forest edges. Their evolutionary origins are unknown to me, but their current behavior and appearance reveal their habits and lifestyle. Yellow-faced grassquits flick and flitter in their incessant search for insects and seeds. Clay-colored colored robins resemble their North American cousins in every way but color. Several species of hummingbird make their rapid dips in and out of colorful flowers on trees and shrub. The similarities and differences outside the windows of this and an Oregon mountain cabin reveal a rich history of climate change and evolution, speak of barriers to travel and periods in which those barriers disappeared. A rich story to be read and pondered, hypothesized and studied. A beautiful landscape to behold.

March 2006

Traveling the Interamerican Highway...

March 20, 2006

On this day of nearly equal light and dark, I am migrating south against the northward flow of birds. Traversing by bus from the high plains of Guatemala into the tinder dry lowlands of El Salvador and Honduras, we cross borders and pay fees that the birds avoid. But the political boundaries are real for the birds too. Land-use clearly changes across human demarcations. From one country to the next--forest cover is reduced or becomes non-existent, rivers become silty, ground cover disappears. Changes in infrastructure are also revealed. To the foreign traveler, changes in infrastructure are expressed in the extent to which one's passport is scrutinized and whether critical data is entered into and checked against computer databases. To the people of the countryside, the differences are more profound--the presence or absence of a village water pump, the quality of care at a medical clinic. Crossing from Nicaragua to Costa Rica, the life expectancy of human residents rises. For the flora and fauna, the differences go unmeasured, but as our bus leaves the brown vista around Lake Nicaragua and crosses into the lushness of Costa Rica, I imagine they are equally dramatic.

With a roving eye on nature,

February 2006

16 February 2006 – Antigua, Guatemala

Clear nights at an elevation of over 1000m mean crisp mornings for students walking to school and guatemaltecas starting their days. The long light of morning shines warmly on buildings faithfully rebuilt after each natural disaster, displaying their scars proudly or covering them in bright hues of blue and yellow. School children dressed in uniforms of plaid skirts, white blouses and knee socks (and dark pants, white shirts, and vests for the boys) compete for space with indigenas carrying heavy loads in baskets balanced perfectly atop their heads.

In the Parque Central, men with torn pants and worn shoes sweep the debris of yesterday’s tourists and last night’s leaf fall. Their brooms--constructed from palm leaves and long blades of grass--are effective. The park is ready for another day. Great-tailed grackles bathe in the fountain where water flows from the breasts of women whose stone figures represent the daughters of an early governor who, according to legend, had these young mothers killed for refusing to nurse their newborn babes.

At a second fountain, a woman dressed in traditional garb washes her face, perhaps reviving herself after a pre-dawn ride from a distant village. Her basket, too, is full and carefully balanced on her head, and she slowly bends her knees with back straight to reach the water. Well practiced, the act of balancing seems easy, but the strain of the load shows on her face.

Juxtaposed against this timeless scene a group of cyclists, clad in leather, punctuate the relative quiet of the morning with the sound of speed. They move around the square and stop at one of the several restaurants for breakfast. People from around the world cross paths here in the heart of Antigua. Almost as if time traveling, you see them all. Sights and sounds, actions and voices - a feast for the senses this chilly morning.

January 2006

9 January 2006 -- Western Oregon

The new year rushes in on a flood of precipitation--stream banks
breeched and gullies raging. Above the water, high winds add an
arborist's touch to the renewal. Weak and broken branches litter the
ground; their disappearance shedding light on once darkened spaces.

Safe inside, we celebrate our cultural New Year and welcome another
chance to set goals, establish habits, reach for new dreams.
Outside, nature continues to write its own resolutions. High water
scours new pathways for spring snow melt, breaks old beaver dams to
flush young salmon out to sea, and starts succession of a lowland
forest anew.

And like our own annual promises, nature's resolutions are
ephemeral. High wind pruning of campus trees is quickly cleared by
active grounds staff; fresh herbaceous growth soon conceals old
stream channels. From afar nothing is new and from near nothing is old.

But also like our own annual promises, the mere existence of these
happenings yields growth. Whether large or small, short-lived or
long, the seeds of change have been planted and a new year has begun.

Welcome to a new day, a new week, a new quarter, and a new year.

December 2005

December 14, 2005

Under a layer of protective leaves, sheltered from the biting wind, thousands of miniature life forms thrive. Springtails and spiders, moths and millipedes, dipterans and dermapterans. Much smaller than the debris that shelters them, they live quiet lives of desperation—avoiding the jaws of predators who are giants by comparison, but themselves are tiny to human observers.

And smaller still, life thrives. Lost to our sight completely is a world revealed only with the aid of magnifying glass. Roundworms--known to graduates of Bio 213 as nematodes--exist in near anonymity. In soil and leaves, fruit and muscle, their numbers are unbelievable and astronomical…6,000 per milliliter, 90,000 per rotten apple, 9 billion per acre. They are, perhaps, the most abundant of multi-celled animals on earth.

Simple, yet elegant, these threadlike animals exist unseen and unknown to the billions of back-boned beings that tower above them. Into our awareness they come only when they infest, infect or kill, yet most are benign. To observers willing to dirty their fingers and remove the barrier between them and us, these creatures await our discovery and our wonder on a cold December day.

with an eye on nature,

Wally

November 2005

"daylight savings edition"

November 1, 2005

True to our nature we seek to make time linear. We record our lives with events between birth and death. We count years of service, days before holidays, hours of work. Observation of the seasons tells us another story, however—time is circular. Leaves fall each autumn. Birds sing each spring.

Yet watching the water level of the campus marsh ebb and flow from day to day, I cannot help but think that circular is no closer to the truth than linear. Indeed, time is relative--not E=mc^2, but time lived fast and slow, repeated yet unique. For the salamander, time measured in cellular activity must wax and wane with the whim of clouds revealing and concealing sun. For the tree frog, whose brain essentially shuts down when nothing moves in his field of vision, does time start and stop as well? The metronome for the dragonfly clicks at double time as it darts across the emergent vegetation and the measure of time for the one-day life of a mayfly is unimaginable.

And time stretches eternal as well. Deep in the genetic inheritance of this year’s progeny lie copies of instructions faithfully passed on since the beginning of life on earth.

Linear, cyclic, relative. Arrhythmic, sporadic, eternal...Time... Worth a moment of ours.

with an eye on nature,

Wally

October 2005

17 October 2005

As if by flick of a switch, fall has arrived on campus.

The trees, those not evergreen, have switched off the cellular factories that have been working dawn to dusk all summer. Chlorophyll, the dominant light absorbing pigment, now no longer needed, is breaking down and moving out of the leaves. Left behind, carotene and xanthophylls are revealed by the absence of green and our campus comes alive in yellow and orange.

These cellular changes mark the end of a season. Sealing the doors of the abandoned factories, the trees cut off their connections to the stem. With the next gust of wind, the leaf drifts down. For the leaf, the light is out. But like so much in nature the end of one is the beginning of another. Under the newly fallen leaf, in soil freshly moistened, the spore of a mushroom awakes. Feasting on the carbon gifted by the tree, the fungus builds its soft self. Unnoticed and unremarkable, the fungus performs its vital function-- returning sequestered nutrients to the earth thereby insuring their use by another generation of sun catchers.

The light may be out for the leaves, but their glow brightens our campus for at least a few days before the wind moves them on to their next role in the ongoing play that is life on earth.

with an eye on nature,

Wally