Hazelnut Leaves

Dotted across the arboretum, golden hazelnut leaves are still illuminating the fall season.

As I went in for a closer look, I immediately noticed squiggly, brown lines drawn on the leaves. A small insect has been whimsically tunneling its way through the leaves. The result is a beautiful tangle of scar tissue that stands out against the yellowing leaves.

There are vast numbers of lifeforms in nature that have the task of breaking down and recycling nutrients back into the web of life. Thank you to all the small creatures of the world for your role in helping to sustain life and making the world a beautiful, diverse place.

Black Phoebe Returns

The black phoebe has a black breast that softly fades into a white belly. The rear of the crown ends in a slight peak, and it has a slender, pointy bill.

To further help identify the black phoebe, you will see it continuously bobbing its tail up and down. Also, the one out at the arboretum regularly vocalizes. Peterson describes their voice as, “Thin, strident fi-bee, fi-bee, rising then dropping; also a sharp slurred chip.”

Their diet is almost entirely insects, and interestingly, they will occasionally catch small fish at the surface of the water. Phoebes are usually found near water like the bank of the Willamette River or the lily pond out at the arboretum where they will find a rich source of insects.

It forages from a small perch where it will quickly swoop out, snap an insect out of the air and quickly return to its spot. Its perch is usually no more than about seven feet off the ground or over the water. That said, I routinely see it sitting on top of the barn or the adjacent silo catching insects.

As you can imagine, parts of many insects are indigestible. Phoebes eat most of their insects whole and leave the chewing up to the gizzard. Naturally, there are sturdy pieces that aren’t easy to break down. These pieces build up in the gizzard where they are formed into pellets to be regurgitated. Phoebes can cough up small pellets just like owls!

Over the last 3 or 4 years, I have seen a black phoebe spending the fall and winter months at the arboretum. I wonder if it is the same individual. The map in Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America shows that the Willamette Valley is the northern part of their range. A note on the map states that their range is expanding northward.

Mammoth Maple Leaves

It is hard not to marvel at the size of the bigleaf maple leaves. I often see children collecting these leaves around the arboretum. In one hand they are fanning and waving the leaf through the air while clutching a bunch of leaves in the other hand. For me, the leaves are humongous. To a child, they must be marvelously, monumentally mammoth!

So for the record and if anyone asked, I brought one home and measured it. As a side note, I broke the stem off the leaf of the first couple I collected. I also found it irresistible to wave them around through the air as I walked along the trail.

The width of the leaf was 16". The height of the leaf measured from the top to where it connects to the stalk was 11”. The leaf stalk was 12.5”.

Oregon Grape Leaf Scars

As I walked around the arboretum, I noticed that many of the Oregon grape leaves were covered with blemishes. The green leaves were like landscapes, and from my aerial view, the tan blotches appeared as burned areas. The shapes were random with red, inflamed edges. The leaves looked scorched as if a caustic liquid was splattered across their surface.

I turned a leaf over to look at the underside. Illuminated by the sunlight shining through, the paper-thin spots were changed into small, stained glass windows. This sparked an interesting shift in my perception, what I originally saw as an imperfection became a mark of beauty.

The earth is a vastly diverse and mysterious place. There are unimaginable numbers of microscopic life forms constantly creating, destroying, and transforming our world.

The Artistic Eye

I was walking down the lily pond trail, and I was struck by the patterns on a dead branch. The arrangement of shapes reminded me of the paintings of abstract expressionist Clyfford Still (1904-1980).

Art has helped me to see the world in new and interesting ways. It has aided in being able to let go of wanting to name and categorize everything. I can more fully enjoy the infinite shapes, colors, textures, and patterns in nature.

Click here to see an example of one of Still’s paintings at The Met Museum in New York.

Click here to see another example of his work on Wikiart.

Bigleaf Maple Leaves

As I head up the Zigzag Trail, I find myself shuffling through a colorful mosaic of bigleaf maple leaves. The sunlight filtering through the forest illuminates greens and golds in the canopy and myriad hues of earth tones in the decaying leaves on the ground. In addition to it being visually arresting, the sweet aroma emanating from this blanket of decomposing leaves is fairly intoxicating.

Beholding this, I decided to rest on a nearby bench to absorb the magical season of fall. As I sat there looking at all the leaves on the ground, I noticed many of the leaves had green spots that looked like a droplet of watercolor pigment had fallen on their wet, papery surface. Inside these blotches were black, raised dots which are the spore-bearing tissue of a tar spot fungus. The fungi will overwinter on the fallen leaves. With the splashing rain and wind of spring, the spores are carried back up into the tree where the life cycle begins again on new, sprouting leaves.

Interestingly, as the fungus forms on the leaves during the spring and summer, it is brown and yellow around the black dots as if it is sucking the life out of the leaf. In the fall, it seems to reverse course by creating an island of green around itself, perhaps to keep the leaf alive a little longer as it completes its life cycle.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. Hope to see you out there.

Golden-crowned Kinglet

The golden-crowned kinglet returns to the arboretum every year to spend the fall and winter months. I notice them traveling around in mixed flocks with chickadees, nuthatches, bushtits, ruby-crowned kinglets, and brown creepers.

The males have a yellow-orange crown patch and the females only have a yellow stripe. During the breeding season, the male will flare his orange patch when chasing off male intruders in his territory.

In my experience, the male’s orange patch appears fairly subtle. Occasionally I see one slightly flare it as he seems to be chasing another male. Since it isn’t breeding season, maybe he is just practicing for when the real moment arrives. This “territorial” urge seems to pass fairly quickly, and they soon return to merrily flitting through the canopy, foraging together and whistling their sweet little calls.

This bird quickly zips and zings around in all directions through the landscape. Thus, it isn’t the easiest bird to follow, observe or attempt to capture in a photo. I am grateful to have it here as a seasonal resident, and I’ll keep watching and learning.

Oregon Junco Camouflage

With all the newly fallen leaves, the earth-tone colorations of the Oregon junco blend in well with the surroundings. Even as they hop, skip, and jump around in the leaves foraging for food, it is easy to flush them off the ground if you aren’t moving slowly and paying attention. They are also well camouflaged as they explore the branches in the tree canopy.

They stay in constant contact with each other as they move through the landscape. Their communication sounds are subdued, so you must keep a fairly sharp ear out. Peterson describes their vocalization call as “a light smack.” They also have “clicking or twittering notes.”

Robin Eating Madrone Berries

Yesterday I could hear robins making clucking noises in the upper part of the parking lot, and I went to investigate. They were chasing each other around the tree tops and calling to each other. I’m not sure what all the excitement was about, but I did see robins occasionally visiting the madrone tree to eat a berry. I was expecting them to start gobbling them up like they did with the dogwood berries, but they didn’t. They seemed to be testing them out to see if they were ripe enough for their taste. After about 15 minutes the robins moved on, but I have a feeling they will be back.

I am only hearing and seeing robins up in the trees around the arboretum. I haven’t noticed them foraging on the ground for a few weeks. With all of the recent rains, I am sure there are lots of yummy worms to be found underneath the newly fallen leaves. Most animals vary their diet. As the seasons change, food sources become more or less available or unobtainable. I’m sure the robins know what is best to eat to have a well-rounded, nutritious diet.

Barred Owl

The other evening I watched a barred owl zigzagging down the creek trail corridor hunting for food. It would sit on a perch about 10-20 feet off the ground and scan the area with its eyes and ears. When it zeroed in on its potential prey, it silently drifted out over the meadow and pounced.

Barred owls prey on a variety of animals. On the National Audubon Society website they list their diet as: “Mostly small mammals. Eats many mice and other small rodents, also squirrels (including flying squirrels), rabbits, opossums, shrews, other small mammals. Also eats various birds, frogs, salamanders, snakes, lizards, some insects. May take aquatic creatures such as crayfish, crabs, fish.”

The barred owl is an elegant, magical creature with a distinctive hooting rhythm that is interpreted as, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” Click here to listen on the All About Birds website by The Cornell Lab.

Their original range was the mature forests of the eastern North America. During the past century they expanded westward across Canada and down into the Northwest and California of the U.S.

The expansion of its range has brought it into contact with the spotted owl of the West, because they share a habitat of older growth forests. As a result barred owls have been displacing or occasionally hybridizing with spotted owls. This interaction, along with loss of habitat, increased the decline of the spotted owl’s population. I won’t expand on this story here, but I recommend researching more about it.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. Hope to see you out there.

The Creek is Flowing

Welcome back little creek.

The creek has been flowing up the canyon since last week, and it has finally reached the small spillway as you cross the bridge into the White Oak Pavilion.

It is nice to listen to its song as I enter the arboretum and see all of the newly fallen leaves floating in it.

Rain Catcher

Spiders are amazing.

Pacific Ninebark Pithy Stems

Along the lily pond trail, the caretakers of the arboretum have trimmed back branches that grow into the pathway. I noticed that pretty much all the cut branches of the Pacific ninebark have small round holes in the center of the branch. I found a broken branch that showed a pithy center that I am sure is easy and delightful to bore out. As I looked further, I noticed that there were also holes in the cut branches of the snowberry bush and the Indian-plum.

I was reminded about something that I learned from the Xerces society. It is important to leave old flower stalks in your garden landscape. Many insects and spiders will seek refuge in the stalk’s hollow stem. They will also lay their eggs in the stems for protection through winter and hatch out in spring.

I also noticed that along some of the branches there were holes that I imagine were created by woodpeckers extracting whatever tasty morsels were inside.

Tree Crickets Mating

Over the last few days, I have observed the mating of tree crickets.

The male has translucent teardrop-shaped fore wings. The female has narrow fore wings that wrap closely around the back of her body.

I have mostly found the tree crickets on blackberry canes. Where I have found them mating, the female has laid her eggs in the cane. I see that she chews through the outer part of the stem and makes a small hole. I read that she puts excrement in the hole, lays her eggs and then coats them with a secretion. I broke part of the stem open at one of these egg-laying locations. Inside there were three slender, tubular eggs.

The Himalayan blackberries have excessively spread throughout the arboretum. It is a small consolation to know that tree crickets are using the blackberry canes as a place to lay their eggs for future generations.

I also found them mating and laying eggs on a small Oregon ash sapling, as you can see in the last two photos below.

Tree Cricket Singing

The melodious songs of tree crickets can be heard gently ringing through the air at the arboretum. The notes are crisp and refreshing. Its soothing rhythm flows softly across the landscape like a gentle stream. Its reverberant sound calms the spirit. It’s magical.

Woolly Aphids

As I walked along the lily pond trail, rays of sunlight shined through the trees illuminating miniature, fuzzy orbs floating up into the sky. A woolly aphid has a fibrous, white covering. It resembles a fluffy cotton ball as it flies through the air. It is mating season, and today was the perfect day to find a mate in the warm, fall sun.

At one point, I found myself in a whirlwind of songbirds darting about foraging on the aphids. It was a mixed flock of chickadees, ruby-crowned kinglets, golden-crowned kinglets, bushtits, Bewick’s wrens, and brown creepers. They were foraging from slightly off the ground all the way up into the tree canopy.

A runner coming down the trail saw me taking photos and stopped to silently watch all of the birds. Sometimes they were only a few feet away as they flitted through the underbrush gleaning aphids off the foliage or catching them out of the air. After about five minutes, he smiled and waved as he continued on his run.

Bushtits

Bushtits are busily moving about the landscape in small foraging flocks. It is common to see around 20 in a group, and I have counted as many as 40 together. They are loosely strung along a small area looking for insects on the foliage and limbs of trees and shrubs. They have joyful spirits and acrobatically bounce around often clinging upside down from leaves and branches. Their ability to zip every which way finding tiny insects and spiders is dizzying and makes getting a photo challenging.

Peterson aptly sums up this bird’s movement as, “travels in straggling talkative flocks.” They are in constant contact with each other through quick call notes that Peterson describes as “insistent light tsits, pits, and clenks.” This chattiness makes them fairly easy to locate. In addition, you’ll often find them in mixed flocks in the fall and winter with other small, song birds like chickadees and kinglets. So be on the lookout and keep an ear out for them too.

Bushtits only weigh 4-6 grams and with all the acorns laying around, I wondered how the weight of an acorn compared to the weight of a bushtit. I gathered various sizes of acorns and weighed them. Starting from the smallest on the left and moving right, the weight of each acorn is 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 grams. Can you believe that!?

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. Hope to see you out there.

Peterson, Roger Tory. Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. 4th ed. New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Gobbling Up Dogwood Berries

Yesterday robins, spotted towhees and golden-crowned sparrows were gathered around the dogwood tree in the island of the drop off loop at the front of the arboretum eating the tree’s bright red berries.

The robins were eating the most. First, they would pluck a berry and adjust it in their beak, seemingly testing it for edibility. If it felt right they would toss it back and swallow it whole. If it didn’t feel right, they would drop it and get another one.

On the ground there were golden-crowned sparrows foraging. They would pick up the dropped berry and break off a small piece to eat.

The towhee would also break apart the berry and eat it in small pieces. It was also getting them out of the tree like the robin. It would either eat in the tree or it would fly off to the ground nearby to eat.

At the rate the berries have been consumed over the last couple of days, I imagine they are not going to last much longer.

Turkey Vulture

Turkey vultures are a regular site at the arboretum. They can be seen slowly soaring along the river corridor or catching updrafts and circling the hillsides as they search for recently dead animals.

Turkey vultures are skilled soarers. They have a long, broad wings that are raised slightly upwards forming an open V-shape. They have a distinctive flight pattern—they constantly teeter from side to side adjusting to air currents. Using their sense of sight and smell, they like to fly low over the landscape as they search for food.

Turkey vultures are beautiful, mysterious creatures. They will soon be drifting south, as they don’t spend the winter here. I always look forward to their return as spring approaches.

Asian Lady Beetles

I found the adult beetle, its spiny larva and the pupae on the leaves of an oak limb that hangs over the bridge that is just behind the bathroom.

Many of the larvae are attaching to the leaves and entering into an immobile pupal stage. After a few days the adult beetle will emerge.

This beetle was introduced into the United States from Asia in the early 1900’s to control aphid populations and other soft-bodied insects.

Look closely and you can tell them apart from native ladybugs. Most asian beetles have a small white marking behind the head on a part called the pronotum. It is in the middle next to the colored forewings. This forms a prominent black "M" or "W" shape on the front of their bodies.

In the fall, the asian lady beetle will find protected places to congregate and overwinter. They often find their way inside people’s homes and other buildings.