Avian Artistry
Sometimes there’s not much to add when nature puts on amazing displays like this.
Enjoy 300,000 starlings in Denmark.
When Turkey Vultures Go to Dinner
For a week OPB cameraman Nick and I staked out a prime turkey vulture feeding area in the Oregon High Desert. We really wanted the shot for our story about turkey vultures in Oregon. No luck, but we did get a fun story about being stalked, taunted even, by a bird that expert Jim Anderson told us was among the smartest birds in the world. After that story, and after being utterly skunked in our attempt to get video of vultures feeding on a carcass, we believed him. These animals do not like to hang around people and don’t want to be watched while they eat. Fair enough. We did our story even without the feeding segment. Of course, as soon as the story was put to bed, in comes Oregon Field Guide photographer Todd Sonflieth, fresh from his trip to the coast. “Guess what?” he says smartly. “On this tape you’ll find video of a turkey vulture feeding on a seal at the beach!” And he wasn’t even looking for it. Todd was on another story and just happened to be out at the beach when he saw the one thing that eluded Nick and I for a week. So here it is….. vultures eating seal. And now our story is complete.
Thanks Todd!
And thanks Jim Anderson for being incredibly patient and good humored with us as we trekked together all over central Oregon looking for vultures.
Boy catches shark
Cosmo Miller had a big fish tale to tell at school after summer vacation. In his case, it was true too.
The 9-year-old caught not just a big fish, but one people almost never encounter.
He pulled up a sixgill shark with his fishing rod from the waters of Puget Sound. He didn’t keep it. He turned it loose - after family caught a photo.
Read more and see the picture in a Seattle Times story.
It’s incredibly rare for this kind of shark to come to shallow enough waters to be caught. Sixgills are a deep water shark. In fact, encounters are so rare there are no reports of any human ever being attacked by a sixgill.
What many people don’t realize is there are plenty of these sharks right in Puget Sound. Watch our story this week to learn more about why scientists think they’re here, just feet away from Seattle.
Eric Cheng was surprised how dark many of them are. Some of them are almost black. He’s a professional underwater photographer who graciously allowed Oregon Field Guide to join him and two friends on a dive in Puget Sound to see sharks from the safety of a dive cage. Team Hydrus set up the exotic ‘tour’ with safety and photos in mind.
If you ever see a sixgill shark, the Seattle Aquarium would like to hear from you. Fill out their Sixgill Shark Tracking Form. They’ve got long term research(PDF) going on about these mysterious animals.
Bluebirds in her pockets
For 33 years Elsie Eltzroth has had bluebirds in her pockets.
She sewed big, warm, cushy pockets onto the outside of a light jacket just to provide a cozy warm setting for the birds she cares for so much.
Read More…
Lives dedicated to saving animals
Saving animals is a full time job.
Sharnelle Fe holds an injured brown pelican
This state has a number of licensed rehabilitation centers specifically geared to nurse injured wildlife back to health. Sometimes they’ll be healthy enough to return to the wild, other times they’re too domesticated to set free but too wild to treat as pets.
But there’s something that often gets overlooked, even in glowing profiles like the Oregonian’s nice piece on Sharnelle Fee at the Wildlife Center of the North Coast. The central person at many of these centers rarely ever gets a vacation. Most of these centers have at their heart one or two dedicated people. Volunteers come in too. But the day-in day-out work most often falls on the dedicated person who launched the rehab center.
Read More…
Volcano View From Space
With Mount St. Helens in our back yard, Northwesterners like to think they know what volcanic eruptions look like.
But until now, no one’s ever seen a major eruption from directly above the volcano.
Sarychev Peak in northern Russia erupts.
The astronauts in the International Space Station did and they have some amazing images.
See additional pictures and read more here about “the hole in the sky.”
Bighorn Controversies Flame Anew
Bighorn sheep are still dying of pneumonia in eastern Oregon and western Idaho. Field Guide covered this in October of 2008.
(More photos from our bighorn encounters here.)
Now one of the chief researchers in Idaho is under investigation and a new Idaho law proves difficult to enforce.
First, rancher Mick Carlson spotted an aging wild ram who was also very sick. Mick appeared in our story and told us how his family has raised domestic sheep for more than 80 years and relies on grazing his domestic herds on public lands. The trouble is, many scientists believe domestic sheep act as a carrier for a disease that doesn’t hurt domestics but can kill wild sheep. Mick doesn’t believe it. In the mean time, he’s been fighting to keep access to public grazing. Rocky Barker at The Idaho Statesman did a comprehensive report on how hard it is to track sick wild rams and to enforce a new state law. The law says instead of keeping domestic sheep off the wild herd’s lands, they’ll kill sick wild sheep to keep them from spreading disease around their own herds.
Waldo Lake in court again
Did you hear OPB’s Pete Springer’s latest report on the radio last week on Waldo Lake? This pristine jewel near Eugene has landed in court more than once. 
This time the fight is over a new ban on all motorboats on the lake. Boat engines leak oil. And Waldo has some of the most pristine waters you’ll ever see.
But there’s also a question over who controls the lake. The state vs the feds. The family of the late Stubb Stewart is suing so they can continue to motor across Waldo.
Field Guide reported on Waldo Lake many years ago, after another lawsuit forced the state to stop stocking fish in a lake which has almost no nutrients for fish.
Waldo Lake is considered one of the purest bodies of water in the world, in the same league as Oregon’s Crater Lake.
The court put off a decision in the current case. That means the Forest Service plans to go ahead and ban motorboats until the judge says otherwise.
Cats & Birds & The Way Back Machine
A.C. Dyke writes that his family owned a cat which killed 58 birds, including babies in five nests. William Brewster writes of a friend whose cat killed 50 birds a year.
The Oregon Sportsman, June 1914
I failed to include these examples in my recent story about efforts to stop cats from killing birds. But I have an excuse.
Mr. Dyke and Mr. Brewster wrote of their observations 95 years ago. I only learned of them today when OPB’s production archivist (and historian of everything Oregonian), Jack Berry, showed me an old publication he had tucked away.
The Oregon Sportsman of June 1914, edited by the legendary William Finley, recounted two stories about the deadly impact of free-roaming cats on songbirds.
Finley was prescient enough to see the impacts cats had when they were left to roam outside. Edward Forbush calculated 700,000 songbirds were being killed annually in Massachusetts alone - at the start of the last century. T. Gilbert Pearson urged in the same issue for cats to be shut up indoors.
Read More…
Oaks and mushrooms….
So I’ve been researching and shooting for a story about oak trees and oak habitat for a while now. One of my coolest discoveries? Learning that oak trees and shiitake mushrooms go hand and hand. I found this interesting because I live in an oak forest, and I have plenty of oak wood lying around. And during the course of a little internet research, I found a place that actually sells mushroom “plugs” that can be used to innoculate oak stumps and logs in order to grow Shiitake and pearl oyster mushrooms.
Now I’m not even all that into mushrooms, but the idea of using some old downed oak limbs to grow mushrooms plays to my gardening sense, so I’m going to try it. In 19 months or so I’ll be able to update you on how it goes!
Want to try it yourself? Here’s a place that sells mushroom “starter kits.”
