News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 176 - 200 of 734
It may come as a surprise, but there are NO "poisonous" snakes in the U.S. Plants contain poison; animals carry venom. Will we ever get that right...? I'm 87 years old, been an active naturalist for most of my life - and still plodding along - and I can count the times I've met up personally with a venomous reptile on my two hands. At the moment my wife Sue and I are helping to conduct a state-wide golden eagle survey that takes us about 20,000 miles a season in our Toyota... Full story
The monarch butterfly is in a world of hurt. Right off the bat it has problems because it's so unique; it's a migratory insect that flies thousands of miles to survive winter, then return to continue life in northern latitudes - and they travel right through our neck of the woods. Everyone knows birds migrate and do it in astounding numbers, astounding ways and astounding distances. They're built for it. Some shore birds stop for refueling in North America and then make the... Full story
The other day an email arrived in my in-box containing a message from a Sisters resident who was wondering about opossums in Sisters. She wrote: "My horse is showing signs of EPM but there aren't opossums in Central Oregon. The EPM is contracted through eating opossum poop, and I get my hay from a grower in Sisters." EPM, Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis, is a disease that affects the central nervous system of horses. It was first discovered in the 1960s, and considered... Full story
Of the many pleasant times I have - and enjoy - within the awesome World of Nature is when someone sends me an image of something they can't figure out. They come via email, text, or snail mail. That photo at right had me scratching my head for quite a while when it popped up on an email from Kim Long, who used to live in Bend. Kim and her family moved off to Texas a while back (the land of fossil shark teeth), but while they lived here they were regulars on bird-banding and... Full story
Sisters Country music-lovers got a first look at the talents of the Sisters Children's Choir when they performed at the Mother's Day performance of the Sisters High Desert Chorale. Lola Knox, director of the children's choir says, "You ain't seen nothing yet; wait 'til you hear them sing the Shirley Temple songs in June." The last concert of the Sisters Children's Choir for the school season will take place on Monday, June 8, at 5:30 p.m. at Fir Street Park. The choir will... Full story
"I have witnessed many students who struggle with depression and low self-esteem develop a more confident and optimistic voice while spending time writing poetry and/or songs out in nature. "Writing alongside the creek seems to breathe fresh air into students' perspectives about themselves and their place in the world. As in one of the group's songs, 'My Waters My Winds' the students' wrote, 'And the river says, No longer are you what the world tells you but what you tell the... Full story
So there I was, driving down Fir Street last Friday, about to turn into Melvin's for some of Cody's deeee-licious clam chowder, and as I looked up at Old Glory waving from the old post office flag pole something else caught my eye - a red shirt right below it. "What in the..." I said to myself, and looked again. Sure enough the shirt was still there. So, to make sure it was what I thought it was, I took a gander through my binocs: For sure, it was a wild, red, faded, worn-out... Full story
Sisters music-lovers - save your traveling for either before or after Mother's Day Weekend. That's when the Sisters High Desert Chorale is giving their annual free spring performance Friday, May 8, at 7 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 10 at Sisters Community Church. "I've always enjoyed choral singing," said a longtime chorale member. "I grew up on Vashon Island in Puget Sound where school and church singing groups were a big part of our small community. "Wherever we've lived I've always looked for choral... Full story
Professor Frank Conte, retired OSU limnology professor (emeritus) living in Camp Sherman, has a long love affair with Oregon's only salt lake, Lake Abert, located in Lake County. He used Lake Abert as a living textbook for his OSU students' studies, and sent graduates out to follow careers in water-related work over the years he taught at OSU. However, the object of Prof. Conte's affection is - as we speak - dying. This undeniable fact has plagued Conte for years, and each year his frustration has become more acute. As a... Full story
Our world is in a world of hurt. I have a dreadful feeling that not too long from now we'll discover a lot of what we call home is soaked with deadly chemicals, especially our water reserves. The corn-growers in the midwest have been dumping agricultural chemicals into the soil for a hundred years in the hopes of getting a better crop and making more money. Closer to home, some hay farmers are doing the same thing to rid their fields of "weeds," and in some cases insects and... Full story
The welfare of the wildlife community is tied directly to dead trees. Pine chipmunks can't make it without dead trees to forage on, live in, and hide from predators. It's the same story for northern flying squirrels, and ALL the woodpeckers and other birds, bats, a wide variety of arthropods, mushrooms and the essential building blocks of a healthy forest ecosystem - they're found in wildlife trees (WLT). Not enough can be said about the values of WLT in a forest community. I have a photo showing a northern flying squirrel pe... Full story
There are probably many people in Sisters who will not like the new deer-feeding ordinance passed last week, but those with gardens and landscaping they treasure may well be ecstatic. Ordinance 457, addressing pestiferous dogs and reptiles, and given the identification codes 6.12.105 Feeding of Deer Prohibited reads: (1) A person, who knowingly places, deposits, distributes, stores or scatters food, garbage or any other attractant as to constitute a lure, attraction or... Full story
Who would have known that way back in 2002, when a newly hatched golden eagle nestling blew out of it's nest, that tragic event would be the beginning of the only known golden eagle family video streaming around the world. Yet, that's how it all began. Janet Zuelke, who was watching it all happen, was beside herself not knowing what to do. She watched helplessly as mother eagle tried in vain to coax her only child back into the nest by offering it tasty morsels of jackrabbit. The poor little guy, however, was too young - not... Full story
Looking at the life history of the monarch butterfly in the accompanying montage one can see what changes and conditions they have to go through to maintain their place in nature. However, those are only part of what happens to the butterfly - to achieve this miraculous work there is the irreplaceable need for only one plant the caterpillar can eat: milkweed. Then, after the caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly, other flowering plants are necessary for nectaring. This... Full story
Spring is here - which means soil in the Seed-to-Table farm plot in Sisters is warming up and ready to plant. This spring Audrey Tehan, director of the Sisters Seed-to-Table program, with the help of her staff and students, has prepared a new one-acre farm plot for use for the Seed-to-Table program to grow produce for the school lunches, food bank, and to sell to the community, so they can start generating some revenue to come back into the program. Last Wednesday, March 11,... Full story
My wife, Sue, began looking after the eagles of Oregon when she started looking after me when we were married at Dee Wright Observatory back in 1974. It was one of those things that comes with the marriage, as I've been looking after the welfare of golden eagles of Oregon from the time I rolled into Bend on my Harley back in September of 1951. When Sue was given The Order of The Eagle by Frank Isaacs, secretary of the Oregon Eagle Foundation (OEF) Saturday, February 21 - durin... Full story
The Sisters Science Club filled The Belfry to capacity Tuesday evening, February 17, when Connie Millar, USFS research ecologist PhD from the Pacific Southwest Research Station at Berkeley, California, presented her research on climate change. Millar spent about an hour sharing her work in the Sierra Nevada mountains where she studied a variety of trees and their response to the changes of weather phenomena happening in that area, as throughout the world. As she demonstrated how the forests of the Southwest are changing, she... Full story
The Sisters Library's speaker program will climb into the wild blue yonder on Sunday, March 8. Friends of The Sisters Library will be presenting another Diane Jacobsen Memorial Speaker Series at 1:30 p.m. in the community room of the library. Teacher Jon Renner will provide a bird's-eye view of what Sisters High School's flight science program is all about. A photographic presentation will highlight the students as they are learning, and they will share their experiences. The... Full story
Vern Goodsell, Sisters Country airplane builder, rebuilder, aircraft body-and-fender man, and all-around aviator, is at it again. This time he's working on a Marchette Bird Dog, a high-wing observation spotter plane that saw many hair-raising times during World War II, Korea and the Vietnam War. The Cessna L-19/O-1 Bird Dog was the first all-metal fixed-wing aircraft ordered for and by the U.S. Army after the U.S. Air Force was created in 1947. It had a lengthy career in the... Full story
As one looks out into the night sky it's possible to look beyond Neptune, where lies a region known as the Kuiper (produced "kyper") Belt, a part of space filled with icy objects. This frozen expanse holds trillions of objects, remnants of the early times of the solar system's beginnings. In 1951 astronomer Gerard Kuiper expanded upon earlier findings and predicted the existence of a belt of icy objects that now bears his name. The Kuiper belt is an elliptical plane in space... Full story
"Sloth" and "Slothful" are terms that have been bothering me for a long time because they suggest a description that the sloth doesn't deserve. Sloths living today - and even those of yesteryear - have these descriptions in Webster's Dictionary and other like publications, to wit: Idle; lackadaisical; lazy; shiftless. Even my hero Henry David Thoreau's definition of slothfulness - "An unclean person is universally a slothful one; envious, slothful vice, never makes its way in... Full story
One of the most interesting parts of being a big mouth in the local naturalist business are the emails I wake up to each morning. The photo at right - from a guy in Sisters who says, "I guess the name was appropriate when I was flying a rescue chopper out of Saigon" - was included in an email the other day. When I opened it, I thought: "Holy Cats, ODFW's ear-tagging mule deer just like wildlife biologist Paul Bond was doing back in the '50s when he was conducting a migratory... Full story
Sisters Country singers have a chance to have a lot of fun and share their talents at the same time. Irene Liden is preparing to begin rehearsals for the High Desert Chorale's free May 22 and 24 performances at Sisters Community Church. Prospective singers are invited to come to Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Sisters at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, January 26, sit down with the section they want to sing in, and have at it. No auditions and no musical background is necessary;... Full story
Every night, just as you lay your head on your pillow and slowly sink into a peaceful sleep, open your eyes and think, "Where's the flashlight!? Where's the fire extinguisher and my whistle?" Why? Because you'll have a better chance to live through the "Big One." Scoff if you will, but like it or not, our beautiful Central Oregon - with it's glittering snow-capped volcanic peaks, faulted rims, sheer cliffs, magnificent scenery and Great Sandy Desert that was formed over millio... Full story
Many in Sisters Country are familiar with David Asson as a member of the Sisters City Council. Perhaps not many are familiar with the other side of David: his fascination with putting up hay in Idaho as a kid, his life-long interest in haying machinery, and the book he's written about haying, titled "Bringing In The Hay." Asson will sign copies of the book at the Friends of the Sisters Library Book Corner at the library on Saturday, January 10. When Asson was asked about his... Full story
