Mountain Quail ….

January 17, 2012 by greenbelt

In March 1806, on the return journey up the Columbia River, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition shot a previously un-described species of quail near Beacon Rock, 10 miles east of today’s Portland. Lewis wrote “last evening Reuben Fields killed a bird of the quail kind.. it is rather larger than the quail or partridge as they are called in Virginia….this is a most beautiful bird.” A specimen of this bird was subsequently given to the famous illustrator, Charles Willson Peale, and included in a series of sketches of wildlife encountered by the expedition. That illustration is currently kept by the American Philosophical Society, the first learned society in North America and founded by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1743. Their web-site explains that they pursue equally “all philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things….”. This most beautiful bird was eventually described taxonomically as Oreortyx pictus (oreo = Greek for mountain and pict = Latin for painted) or Mountain quail in 1826 by the great northwest naturalist, David Douglas. He collected a pair of Mountain quail near Elkton but subsequently lost the specimens with “ a multitude of treasures botanical and zoological “ while attempting to cross the raging torrents of the Willamette River.

Mountain Quail

I have held, within my hands, hundreds of wild Mountain quail and they are indeed an astonishingly beautiful bird. The nape, mantle and rump feathers are a powdery gray-blue graduating to dark greenish-brown secondary and primary wing feathers. The most striking features of their plumage are their russet-brown flanks interrupted by bold white vertical stripes and the long erect, black top-knot of twin feathers that arises from their foreheads. The bold white, slightly curving stripes remind me of the elegant sweeping strokes of a calligraphy brush and the top-knot of feudal samurai horseman with their helmeted flags.

I studied Mountain quail from 1995-2002 as a graduate student and researcher at Oregon State University. They are a highly private species; secretive and shy, yet found in many diverse and rugged landscapes in the Great Basin and Pacific Coast. Hikers wandering on high rocky, ridge trails in the Sierras may encounter small coveys of Mountain quail. I have flushed them in steep brushy side-draws in deep canyons of the Snake River, in nearly impenetrable Manzanita chaparral and in open Oregon white oak forests in southwestern Oregon, and in young Douglas fir forests of the Coast and Cascade ranges. They assemble in large coveys during dry summer months near watering places in the sage dominated communities of the high deserts of Nevada and California. Sometimes they appear (many miles from their nearest known populations) in unexpected places such as deep in the Owyhee Canyon, in scattered ravines of the Trout Mountains or foraging in a backyard feeder in downtown Lakeview. Mountain quail are in the Coast Range and foothills and even valleys along the edges of the Willamette Valley. Someone remarked that they found one staring into a lower ground basement window of Strand Agriculture Hall on OSU’s campus. They were a mystery bird with big gaps in their life history and much speculation in the literature about their habits. That, in part, was my attraction to them. They also have a long narrative history with Oregon, beginning with Lewis’s descriptions near Beacon Rock, continuing through Douglas lamenting the loss of his specimens, and through many other references from many distinguished 19^th and 20^th century naturalists in Oregon. Their numbers have fallen dramatically in Idaho, Nevada and parts of eastern Oregon. Some believe they should be listed as “endangered” in parts of their range.

Snake River Canyon

Our work on Mountain quail illuminated some incredible stories. In most avian species, males generally play no parental role or a very passive one. However, Mountain quail are true paragons of shared parenthood. Females lay two simultaneous clutches (in different nests) and the male will incubate one clutch without assistance and the female the other. Once the chicks are hatched the male shepherds and protects his brood and the female does the same, with the entire family coming together a week or so after hatching. They are ground-nesters. I found nests tucked neatly between tall grass clumps, under down logs, between rock crevices and deep inside root wads. Their plumage provides nearly perfect cryptic camouflage that blends into the background around the nest. The parents are dedicated nest-sitters. Sometimes you must gently poke them with a forefinger to get them to leave their nest while you count their eggs. They hover nearby and always return after you leave. I have observed nests that were likely depredated by a snake who consumed all but one egg and the parent faithfully completed incubation of that single egg. Another remarkable consequence of dual nests is that the female produces up to 27 eggs over one nesting period, a prodigious accomplishment (perhaps unparalleled) in the avian world. Mountain quail have great vocals…. from the throaty warbling and chirping assembly calls between covey members to the loud, sharp yelps of territorial males. In confined spaces they exude a slight earthy odor that one associates with chickens (they are from the Order Galliformes or fowl-like birds). I love their beauty, unique behaviors, and how you can feel their warmth through their gorgeous plumage when you hold one. My brief time spent with Mountain quail offers an example of how we are surrounded by many other life histories aside from our own and that occasionally we can read a few sketchy pages in the stories of other species and further illuminate “…..the Nature of Things…”.

Mountain Quail

Posted in Blog, Outreach, wildlife | Tagged Lewis and Clark, Mountain Quail | 1 Comment »

Lean times …

December 30, 2011 by greenbelt

Outside, beyond the Christmas lights, the cookies and fireside snacks, the long season of short days sets in. Leaves mat and blacken the ground, stars appear before bedtime, and frost etches bent grass in the fields. It’s a hungry time too—the easy seeds are gone, the berries a summer memory. Even the rosehips are blown, and the few remaining apples lie shredded in the weeds along the drive. I suppose birds make their peace with the season and its lean times, although more of their larder vanishes, irreplaceably, every year, pushed to the margins, paved or ploughed: and every year, there is less to lose. The geese at any rate are happy with the new grass and our penchant for golf courses and monoculture. But others, like those around our house, feed with a greater intensity this time of year, and have dropped all pretense; they wait impatiently at first light on low branches for me to hang the suet or replenish the sunflower seeds. The hawks know this too and pluck the unwary in mid-air, flying from behind the porch pillars. We have one especially bold and handsome Cooper’s hawk who sits on a post by the porch scanning the undergrowth for terrified towhees. But hummingbirds are the boldest (why don’t they go somewhere with flowers?), perhaps feeling the sharpest pinch. Especially on frosty mornings, when it’s scarcely light enough to tell one tree from its neighbor they zip out as I hang their nectar, and I find myself eye to eye with a pair of fearless Anna’s clicking impatiently for me to finish. It’s not a bad way to start the day.

The season also draws others to the house, four-footed and furry—sometime between four or five yesterday in the morning last week we woke to serious chicken noise—everyone raising a ruckus. In summer, that can mean pretty much anything, but in winter it only means no good. We’d more or less decided to get out of the boutique chicken business (we have only a few) and turn their shed into a greenhouse once they were gone. And it looked like that process was beginning, so I was less than enthusiastic about defending our Aracanas. Especially at four o’clock on a very dark and foggy night. But defend I did, or tried. Their shed was empty when I stumbled out to it—one chicken hunkered in the corner of the yard, none others to be seen, and piles of feathers everywhere. After futilely poking around for a while, I walked out into the wetland, switched off my light, and listened. I’m not normally out there at that hour—the fog was so thick you felt you were inside it. No lights, not even on Neabeck Hill across the field, and looking back toward the house there was only a sickly glow from our neighbor’s mercury vapor ‘security’ light (which, I’m sure, is visible from space). As I grew accustomed to standing there, noises returned—a few bird calls, something mechanical out on the highway. When a determined rustling approached, I switched on my light, thinking it was a lost chicken and found myself looking at two deer, about twenty feet away, gazing at me as if a man with a shotgun and a flashlight were the most ordinary of things to run across in a field on a predawn morning. I tried my best coyote howl but they remained unimpressed, lowered their heads, and kept searching for something to eat. Lean times indeed.

Posted in Blog, wildlife | Leave a Comment »

Late Fall in the Valley …

December 15, 2011 by greenbelt

Working on my computer, trying to complete paper work that I have neglected during our extended October summer …. I keep looking up and out of my office window at the Willamette River and the rain and wind-blown leaves. The dark overcast skies, brisk winds, and leaf colors seemed to have just appeared. I don’t remember any transition from the tee-shirt sunny days of working in my garden and hiking along forested trails to our late cool, fall rains and leaf raking. Unlike some, I gravitate to our fall/winter weather. I resemble my late golden retriever who used to settle comfortably by the fireplace, his nose pressed against the fire screen during the first fall rains and stayed there until the daffodils bloomed in early spring. I love the summers in the mid-Willamette Valley with the rich blue skies, warm sun, beautiful gardens and hummingbirds, but I also need some time to sit and dream and that is what the fall and winter offers. Becca and I prefer our late fall/winter walks to be along trails in broad meadows such as Bald Hill Farm or Fitton Green, in part because we like the contrast of colors that an overcast sky lends to the oaks and upland meadows, and in part because we like contemplating open winter landscapes.

An uparallelled view from Fitton Green to Marys Peak

Nate and Rachel (my son and his lady friend) arrived a few days before Thanksgiving as the Valley was beset by late fall storms. During their week in Corvallis, they walked everywhere never forsaking rain coats and always placing muddy shoes near the heat vents when they returned. Nate grew up in Corvallis so expecting to walk in the rain is second nature. Every day, they hiked trails either on MacDonald Forest, Oak Creek, Bald Hill or Finley Refuge. On Thanksgiving Day after eating lots of food at Chris and Sarah’s house, most of the dinner group donned raincoats and boots and walked through their backyard and onto the Bald Hill Farm trail. We walked down the trail that crosses Mulkey Creek skirting mud puddles and a few fallen branches. Chris and I paused to discuss how, before the land was farmed, the Creek probably pushed water onto a large wetland in an adjacent field. He thought the marsh could be easily restored and while he talks, I briefly imagine the presence of red-winged blackbirds perching on cattails in the spring. While continuing our walk, I thought about my friend, Eve and Rob, who love the Mulkey Ridge Trail. Eve and Rob arrived in Corvallis from Miami via Prescott and Santa Barbara a few years ago. They are avid and passionate naturalists. If I happen to be in the downtown Beanery at 11:00 am, there is a 99% chance of sitting down with them and discussing their backyard that is being transformed into a native plant garden or hearing about one of their birding trips to Central or South America or Isaac’s Tai-Chi class at Starker Art’s Park. There is a 99% chance during the summer and fall that you will find their ancient red Land Rover parked at the Saturday Farmer’s Market and that they will be carrying a recently purchased bag of beautiful edible mushrooms. Their photos of life along Mulkey Ridge (such as the gorgeous Calypso orchid, the female Douglas squirrel perched on a branch and shredding a pine cone, the large beautiful erect pileated woodpecker next to its tree cavity, and the community of mushrooms, lichens and ferns on a rotting log) are stunning and sublime.

Mossy trees along the Mulkey Creek Trail by photographers Eve and Rob Gill

Nate and Rachel are heading to the Coast a few days late because HWY 18 was closed by storm-blown trees. They are going to hike the Cascade Head Trail from Knights Bridge Park, one of my favorite coastal walks. Hiking through a steep conifer forest, you emerge onto spectacular headland coastal meadows that are being restored by the Nature Conversancy, in part to protect and enhance a community of rare Oregon silverspot butterflies and their primary host plant, the blue violet. At the top of the headlands, if you are lucky and the fog is not obscuring the view, you are rewarded with an incomparable birds-eye view of the Salmon River estuary, the Oregon coastline and perhaps the resident elk herd foraging in one of the lower meadows.

Cascade Head

Jessica asked the Greenbelt Staff to consider describing in a few words what they are thankful for during this Holiday season. The most difficult part of considering that question is narrowing down the list. I think at the very top of my list is that I feel especially blessed to be able to live in a beautiful part of the world among a community of wonderful friends and neighbors.

Posted in Outreach, Properties | Tagged Bald Hill Farm, Cascade Head, Fitton Green, Macdonald Forest, Oak Creek | Leave a Comment »

Nature’s Gallery

November 30, 2011 by greenbelt

This time of year we live in the gallery—every turn shows nature lavishing on us its ironic exuberance, made all the more poignant because we know winter will soon slowly unpaint the scene. Shakespeare’s observation on this brilliant decline– “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long” comes to mind, as does Hopkins’ “Million-fuelled, nature’s bonfire burns on.” And it is glorious, there’s no question. We stop in our tracks at the sight of big leaf maples bursting into gold. Miraculously, this all comes back to us year after year—or will, if we take care of the canvas. . . .

Out my window I see a catalpa (native, but not to here) metasequoia (another exotic, and ancient), ginko (practically a living fossil, lonely among these newer upstarts) and dove tree (Davidia. . . ditto on the exotic) stretch the spectrum from yellow to crimson, and flame for weeks. But what we mostly have around our place are garrayanna oaks, which seem almost mute in comparison. Underachievers in the foliage pageant despite their girth and crown. But it isn’t a beauty contest, or shouldn’t be—trees emerge from their particular environments not to enrich our aesthetic but in answer to a more fundamental calculus. Those garrayanna support colonies of acorn woodpeckers, flickers and brown creepers. By comparison, the ginko is yard-bling, not even singing for its supper.

Getting back to Shakespeare—we have just one spring, one fall to the seasons of our lives (sorry for the spoiler here), but nature soldiers on. So with each year we tend to look a little longer at these turnings, a little more closely, more appreciatively. If spring around here is a lesson in greens—the pale young leaves slowly overtaking the moss and lichens on the oaks, the dark firs providing a basso continuo to the melody of new fescue and orchardgrass—fall is a study in scarlet and gold.

Walk through the farmer’s market in late October—it’s nothing but scarlets and golds, an edible fall landscape. Take delicata squash. It’s been around a long time, and may have graced the tables of the pilgrims or at least subsequent generations, once they made the trek further west: vibrant, hearty, and redolent of what the good earth produces. (Apparently you can even wear them—check out at the 16^th century painting by Giambattista Moroni (c. 1565) Portrait of a Widower and His Two Daughters—surely the younger daughter is wearing a delicata squash skirt. And her knowing smile suggests she’s just had one for supper—baked, with a pat of butter in the center—bought at the Saturday market from Gathering Together Farms). Unlike the rest of the rapidly fading fall pageant, delicata keep long after we’ve set the clocks back, loaded the woodbox, and settled in for the rains. They turn your plate into a September sunset, reminding you of where we’ve just been, asking “Are we not blessed indeed?”

"Portrait of a Widower and His Two Daughters" by Giambattista Moroni (National Gallery of Ireland)

Posted in Outreach | Tagged garryana oaks, Gathering Together Farm, Giambattista Moroni, Shakespeare | 1 Comment »

Valley of Fires

November 14, 2011 by greenbelt

Just before noon one day in late October, Claire, Jessica and I jumped into my 22 year-old Subaru and drove to Lupine Meadows, a 58 acre property bordering West Hills road at the south end of Bald Hill Farm. Jeff Baker, the Greenbelt Stewardship Manager, had just called to say “it” was to begin. The “it” was a prescribed fire that Greenbelt was coordinating on part of Lupine Meadows to enhance the native upland prairie habitat. The Greenbelt Land Trust purchased the Lupine Meadows property in 2005 to protect the existing populations of endangered Fender’s blue butterfly and its host plant, Kincaid’s lupine.

Willamette Valley prairies and fires are like floods and floodplains…there are long histories of connections, expectations and dependencies. The Kalapuya people in the Willamette Valley ignited local fires to maintain favorite foods such as tarweed, camas, biscuitroot, and yampah. They also burned some prairies in late spring and fall to create lush meadows of succulent grasses with wonderful names such as blue wildrye, Roemer’s fescue, and Lemmon’s needle grass for elk and deer. In 1826 the great Scottish botanist/explorer David Douglas traveled for 15 days through the Willamette Valley on his way to the Umpqua River and complained that there was “not a single blade of grass except on the margins of rivulets to be seen” because all was burned. He worried that their horses had little fodder and game animals had abandoned the Valley.

Jessica, Claire and I park along the edge of the small hill that forms the northern end of Lupine Meadows and head toward the white wildland fire trucks that ring the lower end of the hill. Jeff with his yellow hard-hat, fire-proof trousers and yellow thick long-sleeved shirt is stalking the parameter. A half-dozen wildfire specialists from the Grand Ronde Tribe and USFWS are scattered across the burn site. They mowed a 10 foot strip around the fire zone. Several men in the interior of the fire line use back-pack drip-torches to ignite the dried grass and flower stalks. Another man follows a truck holding a hose snaking from a large water tank on the back of the truck and waters the perimeter to keep the fire from leaping into an adjacent area. We are the tourist photographers, trying to stay out of way but fascinated with the event and determined to record all we can. The fire crew is working uphill and as they get closer to the top more of the prairie catches fire…..flames create large columns of white smoke that rise high above the hill. I take a picture of Jessica as she snaps a shot of Jeff. Claire is crouched down below the grass stalks trying to get ground level photographs of burning grass. I look across the road worried that the smoke might disturb the neighbors or obscure the road. A yellow school bus drives by, the school children staring out the windows at the smoke with open mouths.

We, like our ancestors, have a love-hate relationship with fire. Stephen J. Pyne, my favorite fire historian, notes that the “Earth is a uniquely fire planet, and Homo sapiens a uniquely fire creature” who have “literally set about slowly cooking the earth.” He believes that “many aboriginal tribes consider a land unburned a land uncared-for.” However, industrial societies fear fire in part because we build our homes and schools in areas that evolved with fire and created vast forest plantations that exclude fire. My father often stalked the rooms of our house late at night sniffing the air and worrying about smoke….remembering a friend who died in a dormitory fire when he was a cadet at Marion Military Institute. Looking over our small fire on Lupine Meadows, I reflect on the way Pyne describes fire as a “creation of life” with a shared co-evolution. For the past 1.5 million years fire has been intertwined with humans and their histories. So maybe with our little Lupine fire we are just doing what comes natural to our DNA; clearing the land of last spring and summer’s remnants and starting anew with a desire to see new life and growth in the spring.

Posted in Blog, Field Work, Outreach, Restoration | Tagged Fire Management, Kalapuya, Lupine Meadows | Leave a Comment »

Why I live here …

October 31, 2011 by greenbelt

In our long wandering years we dreamed of returning not just to the US but to the Willamette Valley. Human salmon returning to the river that gave them life (I can’t say native river since I was born in a different watershed—along the banks of the Mississippi. . .). For years we told our kids stories about fixing up an old farmhouse in the valley, getting a dog, a chainsaw, and some chickens. Somehow it happened—we rebuilt a 19^th century schoolhouse (built by a freed slave—no mere metaphor) not far from Corvallis, got the chickens and the chainsaws, and with the help of another GLT member turned part of our field into a seasonal wetland. The geese are already wheeling overhead, and in a few weeks teal, mallard, and wood ducks will arrive. This valley draws us all. Not that it’s perfect. We could do with some fireflies, for example. And more lightning, at least in the wet months when we wouldn’t have to worry about wildfires. And maybe snapping turtles.

The valley draws us and we change it. Where I grew up, change was slow—a new house or two every decade. The same creeks, the same hickory trees I grew up with still draw kids and quail. I walked to school past cypress my great grandfather planted, and my brother hunts morels in the bottom land under white pine we planted as kids. But here things are different—the valley nourishes change: housing developments sprout at every turn, fields yield pavement and parking. And this too is good and necessary, no doubt about it. We shop at a store where cedars grew alongside a creek fifteen years ago. Dozens of families live in houses on the slopes across our wetland where oaks stood when we built our chicken shed. You can actually see the urban growth boundary—it’s where the houses stop. And perhaps this is good and proper. But we must move wisely. All lands are not equal –we run the show, but we are not the only stakeholders. Those other citizens—finny, feathery, too small to see and all lacking voices—depend on us. The bird species alone has doubled on our place since we returned our field to wetland. Land responds generously to water and silence, and both nourish us. As Carl Sandburg said of his own Illinois countryside, walking out into the margins of the farms and field near his home in Galesburg — “This is a proud place to come to, on a winter morning, early in winter.” Whether our valley remains a proud place to come to is up to us.

- Seymour House, Greenbelt Land Trust Board

Posted in Outreach | Tagged Carl Sandburg, Willamette Valley | Leave a Comment »

River musings …

October 17, 2011 by greenbelt

Saturday, September 17th

One Saturday in September, I slide my kayak into the waters of the Willamette River at Harrisburg. If you had a larger boat, you might want to find another launching spot because the river has created an extensive gravel bar between the cement boat ramp and the water. The river doesn’t promise permanence despite all our efforts to arrest its exuberance. After pushing into the river, I paddle with deep long strokes into the center of the river and pause to adjust my hat and look behind me at a procession of mostly canoes and a few kayaks.

The Greenbelt Land Trust was coordinating a morning float trip down the Willamette River from Harrisburg to Irish Bend with 25 early morning river lovers. I paddle hard down the river to get ahead of the column. A canoe pulls up next to me with Gordon Grant. Gordon is a hydrologist with the US Forest Service who studies the geology and dynamics of rivers and streams. He is why many of the paddlers woke at dawn, loaded their water craft on their vehicles, and headed to Harrisburg. Gordon immediately paddles next to a 10 feet incised bank on the east side of the river and looks intently at the different layers of gravel, clay, silt and topsoil. The river pushes his canoe away from bank so he motions for the paddlers to land their boats on a nearby gravel bar across the river.

Gordon gravitates to river banks. He reads their histories through their composition and convolutions. He is like my neighbor Dave who is an archeologist and loves freshly plowed fields because they pull artifacts and their stories to the surface. The river paddlers gaze at the cut bank as Gordon points out the pre-Missoula flood layers (graveled) and then describes the above, darker layers that are remnants of the giant waves of water that rolled into the Willamette Basin after the repeated collapse of the ice damns containing Lake Missoula in Montana. The Missoula floods created catastrophic waves greater than 100 feet that plowed into the mouth of the Willamette River and transformed the Willamette Valley into a series of enormous lakes. Ellen Morris Bishop in her beautiful book “In Search of Ancient Oregon” describes how the fertile soils that farmers plow in the Willamette Valley contain Montana top soils and clays from the Washington Palouse; ground that was scoured as the water swept through these regions and then deposited their remnants in the Willamette basin. Gordon gestures at the thick layer of soil at the top of the bank and says that these deep rich soils are what made the lands in the Willamette Valley the “Eden” that early settlers described and make it worthwhile for farmers to clear riverbank cotton woods, ashes and alders to plant their crops along the very edge of the river.

I return to my kayak and the river and paddle ahead of the group in part to get my bearings and also in part to enjoy the river by myself for a little while. Dozens of Barn swallows with their deeply fork tails swoop low and silent above the river and my kayak hawking insects. After skirting a snag near the shore, I watch a young bald eagle in mottled plumage rise off a nearby gravel bar.

Gordon catches up and paddles over to the west bank peering through blackberry runners to examine a different history; low lying floodplains that interact with yearly late winter and spring floods. We stop at another low bank and Gordon describes how the cold Cascade waters from the McKenzie River fill the Willamette in late spring and early summer as the snows melt. Migrating salmon love cold waters. The McKenzie is described as a “stronghold” for rapidly dwindling numbers of endangered upper Willamette spring Chinook. “Stronghold” in my old Merriam dictionary is defined as a place of security. The journey for adult Chinook to make it to this place of security is very long and includes much of the Willamette River. Juvenile Chinook, reversing the path of their parents, find cold water refugia in the few remaining alcoves and sloughs along the Willamette mainstem.

We are back in the river, now paddling into a slough that knifes into a cottonwood forest at Harkens Lake Landing. It is very quiet even with a dozen watercraft. The paddlers seem to instinctively know that this as a refugia, a place to rest and talk in low whispers. A belted kingfisher breaks the silence with its raspy rattling call as it flies to a nearby cottonwood. A short distance downriver, we land on the long gravel bar at Irish Bend, pull our boats out of the water and sit for lunch. The water trip is over. Driving home after loading my kayak into the back of my truck, I think that we have indeed changed the river with all our boulders, bulldozers, chemicals and clearings but a lot remains. It is still a special place with much to offer today and tomorrow.

- Michael Pope, Executive Director

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A change of pace …

October 12, 2011 by greenbelt

The blog is being re-invented! Starting this month, this site will be used to showcase bi-monthly musings on living with nature … brought to you by Greenbelt Land Trust Staff and Board.

With our website, Facebook, and eNewsletters … we have many ways to keep people up-to-date on our work. The blog offers us an opportunity to go beyond updates and event notices, to be able to share our own stories of conservation with each of you. We hope you enjoy!