News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 734
The most wonderful thing about writing this column is the phone calls and emails. Last week, the phone was ringing off the hook (and vibrating in my pocket) with all you wonderful people calling to tell me about the outbreak of "monarch butterflies" that have taken over the foothills of the Cascades. But I'm sorry to say, those are California tortoiseshell butterflies, not monarchs. California tortoiseshells winter over as adults, and somehow this is an advantage to their survival and helps them to build up their numbers. The... Full story
Yes, those are Pandora moths flying about your porch lights at night. This isn't the first time they've been in Oregon's night skies, nor will it be the last. Pandora moths are cyclic in appearance, taking between four and five years between outbreaks. The earliest record of their numbers dates back to 1894 when federal Indian agents noticed the Klamath people roasting Pandora caterpillars. Conversations with the Klamath elders indicated the caterpillars were a welcome food... Full story
Just about the time you think you know who the key players are in Whychus Creek, along comes an inquisitive, 9-year-old soon-to-be-fourth-grader from Sisters Elementary School who drags home a weird trophy from his exploration of the creek that drops jaws. If he had his way, Daniel would get home from school and immediately head for Whychus Creek for any number of activities. He's already a fly fisherman who knows how to do it, when to do it, and where to do it. But if the... Full story
Looking at the toad photo, you may be wondering, "What does that toad have to do with counting butterflies?" It has everything to do with counting butterflies, because everything out there in that amazing World of Nature is connected. For 28 years, my wife Sue has been conducting butterfly surveys in Big Summit Prairie, over in the Ochocos, and around the Metolius River here in Sisters Country. On each trip we have anywhere from five to 20 people with us, ranging in age from... Full story
The tachinid fly is a humdinger of an insect. When a beautiful giant of the fly world came to rest on my wife, Sue's, back near the Chewucan River I whispered in her ear, "Don't move, there's a magnificent fly on your back, I need to photograph it." Swat the next fly you see, hard enough to stun it but not kill it, and slap it under a magnifying glass. The scientific order of flies is Diptera, which in Latin means, "two wings." In the world of science that's a huge "order" of... Full story
Lynne Wood, the manager of the Friends of the Sisters Library used book store known as The Book Corner, sent a note out to her volunteer force: "FOSL's yearly book corner outdoor book sale is being held on Saturday, July 8 on quilt show weekend. This is one of our BIGGEST fundraisers and we will need LOTS and LOTS of help!" Little did Jean Wells know when she and her crew put together the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show that so many businesses and public institutions would climb... Full story
You gotta try. Even though the chances are sometimes stacked against success, you just gotta try. That's what goes through your mind when you bring an electrocuted hawk to the vet for repairs. The hawk was found in Christmas Valley, struggling through the sagebrush and grass beneath a line of power poles alongside an irrigated hay field. I was with my sons and grandchildren on our way to see how many golden eagle babies there were for us to band in a nest out east of... Full story
In 1927, when L.L. Patterson was our governor, the western meadowlark [Sturnella neglecta] was chosen as the state bird by Oregon's school children in a poll sponsored by the Oregon Audubon Society. It's a familiar songbird of open country across the western two-thirds of the North American continent, and it lives in Oregon on both the dry and wet sides of the Cascades, all the way south to California, east to Idaho and north to Washington state. And yes, it's also the State... Full story
There are two ground-nesting birds common to Central Oregon who need help when it comes to surviving during nesting time - the killdeer and common night hawk. Both lay eggs (almost always four) that you really cannot see because they look like the pebbles surrounding them, and often get mushed by people, cattle, wildlife and whatever, because they are all but invisible. The other day, while leaving Sisters Gallery & Frame Shop where I had a great discussion with Helen... Full story
The Audubon Society of Portland, U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Friends of Cape Falcon, and others interested in the welfare of birds will begin another season of monitoring seabird nesting colonies adjacent to the Cape Perpetua and Cape Falcon marine reserves. In order to better understand seabird productivity at these sites, Audubon and their partners are looking for volunteers to help count noses - and that could be you! All you have to do is make contact with Portland Audubon and... Full story
At my bird-feeder in the front yard of my domicile I have a mystery going on. Without an acceptable reason, house finches and house sparrows have taken a nosedive in populations, along with my white-crowned sparrows. In previous years, white-crowned sparrows have been in good numbers, feeding alongside the juncos and quail (with a now-and-then desert cottontail and at least a chipmunk or two getting in their way). Even the rufous-sided towhees appear to be among the missing,... Full story
Sisters High Desert Chorale Director Connie Gunterman will bring the highly regarded singing group back to perform two free performances Mother's Day weekend at Sisters Community Church. (Donations are welcome.) The first performance will be on Friday evening, May 12, at 7 p.m., and next on Sunday, May 14, Mother's Day at 2:30 p.m. The performance will begin with the chorale doing "Water is Wide," followed by "A Gaelic Blessing," a choral composition by composer John Rutter,... Full story
Come on, people! Please, please stop feeding those mule deer that are constant moochers in our backyards. Shout at them, throw rags at them, squirt them with the garden hose - do everything (legally) possible to convince them that living in town is NOT good for their health. If the deer in town don't get hit by a semi going down the main drag they bunch up and spread AHD (Adenovirus Hemorrhagic Disease), and that is really a killer. Kincaid Smeltzer, whom I frequently bump... Full story
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is a state agency designed to help keep our planet Earth - and us - healthy. Currently, DEQ is encouraging Oregonians throughout the state to take part in a nationwide effort on Saturday, April 29 to collect unused, unwanted or expired medications so they can be disposed of properly. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in association with hundreds of law enforcement, public health and other organizations, is... Full story
If you have a daughter or a son who is between the ages of 5 and 10, and wish he or he knew more about music, and/or could actually sing or play a musical instrument, call Lola Knox. She will sign up your daughter or son with her Sisters Children's Choir. Knox will teach your child music, and to sing. If you want to give your child the opportunity to really get involved with music, she can also teach piano, stringed instruments, percussion, and woodwinds. The Sisters Children'... Full story
Ray Spencer, a old galloot like me who works out of San Diego, California, loves to collect photos of birds. He sent me a photo of a baldy in one of his daily postings that about knocked my socks off. Not only is it a great image of a sub-adult bald eagle flying overhead, but the two orange patagial wing tags (with the number 41 printed on them) are really visible. Ray started his "Shot of the Day" fandango on January 1, 2004, sending a daily email with a photo (or two) of... Full story
The last thing the staff and customers of Lowe's in Bend expected to see last week was a lone common poorwill (a bird very closely related to a nighthawk) standing in the middle of the garden center. You have to admit, that bundle of feathers with red eyes just doesn't fit into a bird category unless someone knows a little more about birds than "robins eat worms." One of Lowe's employees picked it up and thought it was a baby owl. But a customer just happened to see the bird... Full story
There've been some interesting phone calls arriving on both my home and travelin' phones that are giving me cause to suspect the alien barred owl population (from the eastern USA and Canada) may be on the rise, and people are confusing them with our native great gray owls. Great grays are owls of the open spaces of the high country with evergreen forests. They like to hang out on the edges of meadows, hiding in the thick foliage of evergreens, waiting for gophers and other... Full story
My old pal from Sisters Country Conrad Weiler and his dear wife, Joan, hit me with a wonderful surprise a week or so back. They sent me an email from Panama. There's ol' Conrad, standing in the bow of a ship carrying him and his lovely wife through the Mira Florues Lock, just before they went on a tour of the Gamboa National Forest. As I sat in front of my faithful old MacBook OS10 reading the mail and wishing I were there with them, the name Gamboa went bouncing through my ancient brain and with it came an image of Rebecca... Full story
Perhaps you've seen "The Eagle Huntress." It sparked an interest in the ancient and noble art of falconry. If you've wondered how raptors and people become good buddies and watch out for each other, now's the time to learn. Hank Minor, a newcomer to Sisters Country, and his beautiful older teen-age eastern red-tailed hawk, Maggie, are going to be on center stage on Saturday, March 18, at the new Raven Makes Gallery located at 182 E. Hood Ave. in Sisters. Hank and Maggie have b... Full story
There's been a lot of talk about the Sisters Airport over the last few months, which got me to thinking that perhaps a lot of people don't know much about the history of the operation. I doubt very much there's anyone in Sisters Country who remembers the 1950s, when the airport was a key location for reporting Russian bombers that Congress and the War Department knew would be coming over the North Pole some day to bomb us. However, the airport had its beginning way back... Full story
The photo accompanying this column was taken near Sawyer Park in Bend. The tags made the hawk (a juvenile red-tail) stand out like a sore thumb, even to someone who really isn't interested in birds. It caught the eye of bird photographer Chas Savage. He knew it was important for him to capture an image of it. Afterwards, he went to the Banding Lab website, reported his sighting and discovered it was tagged at the Portland Airport just a couple of weeks earlier. At last... Full story
Dorro Sokol was a fine lady, especially when it came to making Ice Worm Cocktails. Really! Way back in the early 1990s, Dorro and a few other stalwart Sisters Country residents enrolled in Carol Moorehead's Sisters Campus COCC Continuing Education class I was teaching on the Bard of the North, Robert Service. Oh, what a grand time we had sharing his poetry with one another and learning about his life. We thrilled when he took his small river boat and explored the upper... Full story
Who would ever have thought the once-huge populations of the king of Oregon's Great Sagebrush Sea, the greater sage grouse, would suddenly begin to vanish from its ancient domain, and be considered a candidate for listing as an Endangered Species? What happened to cause this terrible decline? That is what wildlife biologists, range managers, politicians, birders, game-bird hunters and a lot of other people would like to know. There were a few clues here and there when the... Full story
Sunday afternoon a musical event took place in the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration that was truly remarkable. Ten-year-old Nicolas Oncken, violinist, and his accompanist, Stephanie King, played together in a recital that audience members thought worthy of Carnegie Hall. Thanks to the friendship that exists between Nicolas's mom, Akiko, and Sharlene Weed of Sisters Habitat for Humanity, the idea for Habitat to sponsor the recital became reality with the proceeds going... Full story
