About Time

April is the month we’ll be saying goodbye to most of the wintering waterfowl. I am going to miss the buffleheads. The resident early birds have already started nesting while many migrants are just arriving. They will be checking to see if the old nest is suitable for refurbishing for another season. If it is, they will soon start singing songs of domestic joy. The bushtit flocks don’t break up while nesting and feeding young. They do forage by themselves now, unaccompanied by their usual winter companions, juncoes and chickadees.

Why do mosses and lichens fall out of the trees in winter? Close to the end of every year, clumps of moss and lichen appear around almost every oak and maple tree in town. These are the branch species, different from terrestrial mosses and lichens. It is most prominent in parks where the lawn hasn’t been mowed since late fall. For years I attributed the lichen rain to wind storms, but that never struck me as the whole story. A comment in the Mount Pisgah Arboretum newsletter by its caretaker made a light go on in my head.

They’re baaack! The mosquito ferns have reappeared in the ponds on the east side of Delta Highway. They have been inconspicuous for three years, a normal population fluctuation. We recognize them by the dark, reddish-brown surface mat on the ponds. Duckweed stays green all winter but the mosquito ferns get color in the fall. That they are still reddish brown and not shocking purple tells us that by the beginning of December we still haven’t had a hard freeze.

The American wigeons are back in the Delta Ponds. I believe these are the first of our winter migrants to arrive. I look forward to the increasing diversity of waterfowl. On our side of the Delta Highway we have had only mallards and Canada geese for a long time.

Turtles can be seen in the Delta Ponds on the west side of Delta Highway but it appears the cormorants have usurped them from their favorite logs. With increasing cold weather and less sun showing, the turtles will burrow into the mud at the bottom of the ponds to brumate.

September is a harvest month for Willamette Valley inhabitants. We are not having as good a time as we might wish because the lead-up has been slow. The long, cold spring followed by a cool, wet early summer has slowed tomatoes from ripening and reduced eggplant production. Even the zucchini are not growing into baseball bats as quickly as usual. Corn grew slowly until there was a burst of hot days, resulting in a sudden glut and the lowest prices in years.

The chickadees have fledged from the nest box hanging outside our breakfast window. We miss the daily watching of their activity. It’s like letting go of children who head out into the world on their own, leaving us parents. We feel special connection to the chickadee mommy and daddy who brought tidbits of suet and bugs at a frantic rate in the final week.

I know summer is close because the sun shines in our north windows. A sunny morning is a good time to go turtle watching in the Delta Ponds. They line up on anchored logs in early morning. The warm weather brings the cottonwood trees into final stages of bud burst. Inside the leaf buds — but not the flower buds — is a resin that smells very sweet. It is the American source of Balm of Gilead.

When the snowstorm blew in on March 21, it was deja vu all over again. I wanted to gather specimens for my annual moss class and I was stuck inside. On March 11 last year I got stuck in snow on the road up to Roman Nose while hunting class material. It’s an object lesson that global warming means climate change, not just warmer and drier. Drowning worms in gutters give witness to near record rainfall.

How many times do I get reminded that every year is different from the year before? This year is proving to be a strange one, leap year and politics aside. Momentous times are heralded as we enter the Year of the Water Dragon.

Here we are in rainfall recovery, finally catching up on years of below average rainfall. But now we gripe because so much fell all at once that our streams and rivers overflow their banks.