Eugene Weekly

May is the month of peak flowering in the southern Willamette Valley. Riparian galleries, oak woodlands and grassy hillsides are awash in a glorious array of nature’s prize beauties. This season is celebrated every year at the Mount Pisgah Arboretum with a spectacular wildflower show. The Wildflower Festival is May 17, as always the first Sunday after Mother’s Day. Music, food and crafts are all available. As part of the festival activities, I will lead a nature walk and give a talk about fringecup, Tellima grandiflora, the Flower of the Year. Continue reading →

Do birds return to the same nest year after year? All winter, when the deciduous trees are bare, I look at clots of debris high in their branches and try to pick out which are just clumps of leaves and which are nests. The obstacle to solving this puzzle is that the old nests are obscured by leaves by the time birds might come back. The trees leaf out before most birds begin nesting. It’s hard to tell if the nests are used again. Continue reading →

The gray whale cows and their calves are migrating north in good numbers this month. I finally visited the most fabulous place to watch whales: the shelter at the top of the Saint Perpetua Trail. The hike is very steep but a road allows one to drive up. Go early in the day, as the parking lot at the top is small. There are often volunteers with spotting scopes at the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center. They have information on how many whales are passing that day. Continue reading →

Looking up at a rare starry sky in January, even rarer because of a warm night, I was drawn to do a little star gazing. Orion is heading out west long before midnight. I’m going to miss him because there is no summer character in the sky that I know well enough to track the spring-summer-fall passage. Maybe a little gazing this July will find the constellation that attracts my focus. Continue reading →

A year ago the eastside Delta Ponds had already frozen solid. Ice was an inch thick under seven inches of snow and thawed completely by the New Year. In February another snowfall was accompanied by a freezing rain the likes of which we hadn’t seen for many years. It was hard on the birdwatchers and really hard on the birds. Hummingbird feeders froze. Continue reading →