Downy Woodpecker Feeding Babies

Mount Pisgah is a peaceful place that also experiences a fair amount of noise pollution. The rushing sounds of the interstate nearby can easily be heard. There are farms just across the river with tractors and other equipment buzzing. There is vehicle traffic in and out of the park with the bustling of people and their devices.

Yesterday I was sitting up on the hillside, so I could hear many different sounds of nature and civilization. To the south, I could hear a continuous sound mixed in with the hum. After listening to it for a while I decided it was in the park and went to investigate further. I was intrigued by how continuous the sound was. It was fairly faint and I wasn’t sure if it was nearby. Maybe it was obstructed by the hillside or trees or maybe facing away from me. I came around to the other side of the hill and the sound got a little stronger. I was fascinated by how constant it was. I decided to sit down and listen. After about 10 minutes, I caught out of the corner of my eye a bird flying up to a tree for a moment and then it flew away. What!? That continuous sound is begging birds! The tree cavity was facing away from me, and once I positioned myself around the other side I could just get a glimpse of the entrance and hear the birds clearer.

I listened and watched for a bit. I was amazed at how nonstop the begging of the baby birds was and the parents were coming and going constantly. It must be so exhausting to keep up with feeding them. It was a good reminder of how much energy birds expend to raise a family. Plus they have to be constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure a predator isn’t nearby. They must be frazzled by the end of the day.

Incense Cedar Gall

Amidst the confusion this year of trying to figure out the female flower of an incense cedar tree, I discovered what initially appeared to be a cone developing is actually a gall. I was tipped off that this growth was different because I came across an incense cedar with developing cones. I immediately realized that they were not the same.

I was walking around with a friend at the arboretum and we decided to cut one of these growths open and see what it was like inside. When we cut it in half, it was fleshy and green inside, and there wasn’t an insect or larva inside. Thinking that there had to be something inside, we cut one of the halves in half to further investigate. We found a tiny, metallic green wasp cradled inside! I mean this insect was tiny. I took a heap of photos to try and show it to you. They mostly turned out fuzzy because the insect was so small. I couldn’t zoom in close and get a photo with decent resolution. The one below is the best one of them.

I am fascinated by the world of galls, how they form, the variation of their colors and shapes, and the diversity of wasps. It is such a mysterious world to me. It seems like a whole other level of awareness to tune into these tiny creatures and observe their life cycle. It reminds me that there is a vast universe of life unfolding right before me of which I am mostly unaware.

I posted about a small, orange caterpillar I found at the tip of one of the branches in January (Incense Cedar Branch Tip Mystery) that I thought was one of the female flowers. Maybe these two phenomena are connected.

Spotted Sandpiper

It’s morning.
I am sitting by the river on a small gravel bar.
Sunlight brushes across the tops of the cottonwoods.
A light, upstream breeze is blowing in from the ocean.
The air smells sweet and freshly laundered.
In front of me, a thicket of willows
lightly sweeps back and forth
in eddies of wind.
The willows grow from an anchor of stones—
a cobbled bed, smoothed
over centuries
by elemental friction.
A shallow sheet of water covers
this abraded bed.
A gentle current channels
its way through small, quiet pools.
It is a refuge.
It’s abundant with creatures visiting
to drink water, bathe, forage, and nest.
One of my favorites is the spotted sandpiper.
During breeding, the white canvas
of its winter breast
becomes dotted with a patchwork
of inky, brown spots
giving it its name.
It has a curious behavior
of bobbing its tail up and down.
I imagine it on a playground
with kids delightfully teetering on its body.
It loves to hop about the rocks
and wade through the water.
It will make visits over to me
if I am still.
Sometimes it will travel along the river.
It flies low over the water
and mixes short, rapid wingbeats
in with small glides.
I lose sight of it sometimes,
but I can hear the clear, simple
high-pitched notes it sings
as it wanders and explores.
I look forward to it returning every year
and spending time here.
I never tire of watching it
and being in the presence of
its peacefulness and elegance.

Cedar Waxwings Eating Twinberries

I was walking around the south meadow and remembered to go check on one of my favorite plants, the twinberry. It received significant damage from the ice storm, and I was concerned how well it might recover. It leafed out beautifully at the beginning of spring, and I felt reassured as it flourished with plenty of yellow blossoms. I knew the berries were probably ripening, so I cautiously approached the area hoping to see some birds eating them. Before the shrub came into view, I could hear the high-pitched whistling of cedar waxwings. When I slowly rounded the corner, I found about a dozen waxwings and one robin devouring the berries. Many of the berries were accessible by perching on a nearby branch, but some were just out of reach. I enjoyed watching them launch upwards, hover underneath a berry, and pluck it. I came in just the nick of time because it wasn’t long before most of them were gone.

Afterward, they moved over to a thicket of osoberries next to me and started gobbling them up. I am always amazed at the appetite songbirds have. They are so small and seem to be eating an incredible amount of food. Later on, I watched cedar waxwings sweeping back and forth across the river eating copious amounts Mayflies. It takes a lot of energy to live out there! Thankfully the arboretum has a healthy ecosystem with plenty of food to support them. I planted a couple of twinberries last year. I am looking forward to them becoming established and providing more habitat and food.

Hair-Stalk-Gall Wasp

Lately, I have been keeping an eye out for galls, and this is a good time of year to find them. Many gall wasps use the Oregon white oak as their host, so if you want to go hunting for galls, this is a great place to start. Many things in nature are small, especially insects like gall wasps. And honestly, I can’t identify any of the gall wasps themselves, mostly because they are so small and I haven’t spent much time trying to find them. That said, I am getting more into it and starting by finding the weird and wonderful galls created to house and protect these tiny insects as they begin their lives.

Recently, I found this tiny gall growing from an oak leaf and matched it with the hair-stalk-gall wasp found in Ronald Russo’s book Plant Galls of the Western United States. This gall grows along the margins of leaves and forms a smooth, pointed gall that grows from a thin stalk. In spring, the color of the gall starts from yellow to orange and turns beige by summer.

In his book, Russo writes, “These smooth galls are fully developed by April, with males and females emerging between April and June. Galls remain on host leaves until fall, even though the occupants have left. This would appear to be the bisexual generation of an as yet undescribed unisexual, summer-fall generation with its own distinct gall. Common.” Gall wasps are tricky. It appears that its summer-fall generation has not been observed or recorded. It’s fascinating that the second part of the yearly lifecycle of a common gall I can find at the arboretum, is still a mystery. There is so much to discover in our backyards!

Note: I want to go back and take better photos, which I hopefully can do this week, and update these.

Resource
Russo, Ronald A. Plant Galls of the Western United States. Princeton University Press, 2021.

Explore

Nature doesn’t reveal her secrets easily, at least that is my experience most of the time. And often, when I think I have started to figure something out, another mystery presents itself. There is a back-and-forth between noticing, observing, researching, absorbing, appreciating, revisiting, connecting, timing, and imagining. There is always more to discover. One thing is always leading to another and another, infinitely leading me down a path of wonder if I am open to it and willing to follow it. And my wonder often seems to germinate, transpire, and reveal, the more I am willing to let go of time and expectations. Hope to see you out there.

Juvenile Robin

I watched three baby chipmunks chasing each other around and curiously investigating the lush, spring landscape. One of the chipmunks scurried onto a small branch over the creek and stopped next to a sleeping juvenile robin. The robin was so still and well-camouflaged that I hadn’t noticed it. I’m always surprised by how well they blend in, especially if they are quiet and motionless. I have seen two nests of robins that had three fledglings each that have recently left the nest. From each nest, I have only seen one juvenile robin being fed. I don’t know what happened to the others, but they are not around begging and being fed.

In the photo below, one of the fledglings is being fed. Notice that the adult robin’s eye is slightly cloudy. I recently wrote about the nictitating eyelid, and you can see the adult using it to protect its eye during feeding.

Oriole Collecting Nest Material

The Bullock’s orioles have arrived at the arboretum. They are medium-distant migrants, most of them wintering in western Mexico. A few individuals may be resident in coastal southern California. On the range map, it looked like the Santa Barbara area down to San Diego.

They are starting to build their nests and often look for man-made materials such as rope fibers, baling twine, fishing lines, etc. I have seen nests next to rivers where at least fifty percent of the nest is constructed of these materials. During the setup for the wildflower festival, I saw them removing fibers from the ropes used to tie down the tent canopies. Two of the nests I have seen built this year have orange twine from the hay bales woven in.

The Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests wonderfully describes the nests of orioles as: “Nests are pensile (hanging and attached only at the rim) or semipensile (with additional attachment at the sidewalls) and can be loosely separated into two categories: those that are classically pendulous and socklike, typically longer than wide with a narrow top, and those that are like a shallow, open gourd, the opening of which is often fairly wide and more broadly secured, in part due to the span of the fork or branches to which the rim is fastened. Nests of Bullock’s, Baltimore, and Altamira Orioles fall into the first category: Altamira nests are the longest of any species in N. America.”

The nests I see at the arboretum are constructed mostly of grasses and lichens with other bits of string, ribbons, twine, etc. utilized. The nests are lined with soft materials such as feathers or the cottony filament that disperses the seeds of cottonwoods and willows.

Happy birding! See you out there!

Resources
Bullock’s Oriole Range Map, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bullocks_Oriole/maps-range. Accessed 21 May 2024.

McFarland, Casey, et al. Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

Orange Honeysuckle

Small trumpets blare, announcing the warmth and luminosity of summer. Its harmonious tangle of vines weaves through the dappled light of the understory, splashing rays of tangerine. Its sweet scent and brightness attract its pollinators. The berries ripen red and form a cluster nestled by the terminal leaves. Daniel Mathews aptly writes, “the uppermost pair of opposite leaves modified into a single fused leaf—often shaped like a very full pair of lips—with the stem passing through the middle.” I often see chickadees eating the berries.

The vines can climb up small trees and shrubs that develop thickets of vegetation that provide a hideaway for a bird’s nest, such as a hummingbird (Blogpost 05/02/2022).

Oak Apple Gall

Looking at August Jackson’s pamphlet Oak Gall Wasps of Mount Pisgah I find the California gall wasp (Andricus quercuscalifornicus). He describes it as “Very large, tan, ball-shaped galls on young twigs. Often remaining on twigs for a few years.” I have heard these referred to as oak apple galls and some of them certainly look like the color and shape of an apple as they begin to form. They are easy to find out at the arboretum.

I have been reading a book called The Nature of Oaks by Douglas W. Tallamy, and I just read this part of the book that talks about gall wasps. I decided to quote part of what he wrote in the book to make sure that the information was correctly passed on to you. I found this so unbelievably fascinating. Check it out.

“Most cynipid species, particularly those associated with oaks, have a complicated life history known as alternation of generations. The first generation is comprised entirely of parthenogenetic females—that is, females that can lay fertile eggs without mating with a male. That’s a handy trait to have because there are no males in this first generation. The adults and galls produced by the first generation have a morphology specific to each species. The second generation, in contrast, produces adults and galls that are entirely different from those of the first generation, and instead of just females, it yields both males and females that need to mate in the usual way to produce viable eggs. For the longest time, cynipid taxonomists thought the two generations were two different species, and you can hardly blame them; the cynipids in each generation looked entirely different from each other, as did their galls. I’m still not sure how, without the aid of the DNA analysis, taxonomists ever figured out that the wasps that looked one way in April and another way in June—and which produced vastly different galls—both belonged to the same species.

The diversity in gall size and shape is astonishing. I suppose it shouldn’t be, though; gall morphology is unique to each species, and most of the nearly 800 North American cynipids make two kinds of galls. That’s a lot of gall variation!”

Resource
Tallamy, Douglas W. The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees. Timber Press, 2021, page 61.

Lists and Guides of Mount Pisgah Arboretum.

Nictitating Membrane

Birds have an upper and lower eyelid to protect their eye. They also have a thin, translucent covering called a nictitating membrane that functions as a sort of third eyelid. It sweeps across horizontally from the front of the eye next to the bill towards the back. This membrane helps to clean, moisten, and protect the eye. You can see this downy woodpecker using it to shield its eyes from possible flying debris while striking the branch as it searches for food. I have also seen a bird use this membrane to cover its eyes while feeding its young or scratching its head.

This membrane also helps keep a bird’s eye safe while underwater. I have an old binder of seminars called Bird Biology by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that says, “In certain aquatic birds such as loons, cormorants, diving ducks, and alcids [auks, murres, and puffins] the nictitating membrane has a special central, window-like area that acts like a contact lens over the cornea.” It’s like they have built in goggles. The world of birds is fascinating!

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.

Fimbriate Gall Wasps

Oregon White Oaks are a host for many gall wasps. The fimbriate gall wasp forms a fuzzy, red structure that looks like a flower is trying to emerge out of the leaf—it kind of reminds me of a hairy rose hip. A dictionary defines fimbriate as “Botany, Zoology. having a border of hairs or filiform processes.” I think its name could be more descriptive to include words like flaming, blazing, flaring, crimson, furry, etc. August Jackson put together a guide called Oak Gall Wasps of Mount Pisgah. About fimbriate galls, he writes, “small galls in spring on midrib of leaf bases, producing spines. Starting red then fading to brown.” The guide is available on the arboretum’s website. Find it here.

The development of galls hasn’t been completely figured out. Galls are created when the wasp lays its egg in the developing plant tissue of the tree which can be on the leaves or branches. The egg interferes with normal plant growth and creates a gall that protects the egg and provides food for the developing larva. Each gall wasp creates a unique structure that is beautiful and interesting to explore.

I think I’ll call this one the Crimson Comet Gall.

Stay Inspired

The incalculable diversity that continuously evolves in the life of a forest is unimaginable. As the life of this tree’s story unfolds from a sprout to a decaying snag, a vast amount of creatures, big and small, will have interacted with its being. At this moment, a Western Screech Owl finds a place to keep warm, dry, and safe. It finds a sanctuary to listen to the flowing river as it rests.

We have to leave parts of nature unimpeded and free to express her spirit so that future generations will sit in awe of her beauty and be inspired to be loving stewards of the earth and each other.

Oregon White Oak Male Flowers

The male flowers aren’t as subtle as the female flowers but they do blend into the spring green that is sprouting throughout the landscape. The male flowers are a yellowish green and hang on a thin catkin. The catkin emerges from the tree fairly compact. As it elongates the clusters of stamens spread out, open to release their pollen, and look wispy and light as they blow in the wind.

The male and female flowers are on separate inflorescences on the same tree. Oak trees are wind-pollinated.

Oregon White Oak Female Flowers

Walking into Mt. Pisgah Arboretum you are greeted by the iconic Oregon White Oak and it is the logo of the arboretum. This beautiful, mighty tree is vital to creating a diverse ecosystem and produces nutritious acorns which are a food source for many animals. When the acorns are ripe, jays can be seen carrying them off in every direction to cache them for the winter.

We all know acorns, and I will often hear children refer to oak trees as acorn trees. That said, I imagine that most people are not as familiar with the female flower that gives rise to this nutritious nut. I am here to introduce you to this tiny flower that can easily be overlooked. They grow from the axils (where the leaf stalk meets the stem) of the new leaves. The Washington State Native Plant Society describes the flowers as: “The pistillate flowers grow singly or clustered. Each pistillate flower is surrounded by a scaly, cup-like involucre, contains an inferior ovary and 3 styles.”

Okay. I see the small acorn flower. What I can’t find described or mentioned is the red-tipped appendage that is growing up from the base next to the flower. It seems like it is part of the flower in some way, but I haven’t found any reference to it in any of my research, so far. There is only one, even if it is a pair or a cluster of three flowers. What is that structure and how does it fit in?

The last three photos below show small acorns forming. I took the photos of them last year on May 30.

I hope you are enjoying spring and are finding time to get out and explore.

Reference
Quercus Garryana Var. Garryana. https://www.wnps.org/native-plant-directory/232-quercus-garryana-var-garryana. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.

Bigleaf Maple Flowers

Bigleaf maples have small, yellow-green flowers with short stalks. The flowers grow in a cluster that hangs downward like a pendant as it develops. Interestingly, bigleaf maples have two mating types. As the flower clusters emerge and start blooming, the initial flowers that open on the first type of tree are female; on the second type, it is the males. As the cluster grows, the male flowers will begin to emerge on the female flower clusters, and the females will start to develop and open on the male flower clusters. Each tree contains both male and female flowers, making it monoecious.

These flowers are a great nectar and pollen source for insects. As I took these photos, the blossoms were buzzing with activity. Male and female flowers both produce nectar, so pollination occurs as the insects move between the two types.

Beekeepers who have honeybees love it when warm, sunny weather coincides with the blooming of bigleaf maple trees. A strong colony of bees can produce enough honey to harvest some in the spring. To my tastebuds, honey made from the nectar of bigleaf maple trees has a distinctive peach flavor. It’s yummy!

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.

Resource
Wagner, David H., A Lane County Almanac. Northwest Botanical Institute, 2021.

Knobby Cottonwood Stem

I have been looking at the cottonwood trees that fell over during the ice storm as I have written about recently. I had one more thing to share. The small branches at the tops of the trees had an interesting structure. They were knobby from what appears to be old scars created from where the previous years’ leaf stems were attached. With the new leaves sprouting out of the top, it reminded me of a palm tree. The stems also looked like they had been stacked likes rock cairns—beautiful formations.

Where the stems attached to the larger branch, there were thick, bowl-shaped nodes. Many of the larger branches were bumpy with scars where these smaller stems had broken off.

I love this tree!

Cottonwood Leaves Uncurling

It is spring, and the cottonwood leaves are awakening from the quiet repose of winter. The warmth of the sun kindles their dreams, bursting their flaming sheaths. The combustion releases a syrupy aroma that flows and eddies in air currents along the river. Its swirling fragrance is a calming dizziness. The leaves erupt into an untamed bouquet and ripple outwards like the water they so love. Their bodies will uncurl into ovate blades to scoop up the sun. They will dance and collide in the wind, circulating a song of water in the blue sky of summer. I am looking forward to luminous July days and sitting in the shade of the cottonwood tree. I will uncurl my toes in the water and watch the waxwings swing between the trees over the river.

Iris Opening

The iris plunges forth.
A watercolor brush
dipped in violet.
The pigment seeping
into its pulse,
ready to dab its radiance
onto the complexion of spring.

Cottonwood Branch Sprouting

I was back poking around the river again. I saw this small log lying on the ground and decided to turn it over to see if anything cool was hiding underneath. To my surprise, I saw a branch from one of the fallen cottonwood trees that had started to sprout roots. The log had been deposited there from the river swollen from recent rains. The moist, dark conditions under the log were perfect for sprouting new roots. I imagine that most water-loving trees and shrubs that grow along streams, ponds, marshes, etc., have evolved to sprout new roots from limbs easily.