wetlands

Yellow-headed Blackbird

April 30, 2013
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I love the scientific name of the Yellow-headed Blackbird: Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus. There’s just something about the sound and feel of it. And I like the repetition. The word means “yellow head.” A no-nonsense name, for sure. In addition to their…

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Wintering Waterfowl in the Willamette Valley

January 12, 2013
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Winter seems like a quiet, dormant time in the natural areas of the Pacific Northwest. In many ways it is– in winter, the songbirds, frogs, and insects that make such a racket in summer are either hibernating, in another country for the season, or keeping a vow of silence. The deciduous trees are leafless and skeletal, and a blanket of gray clouds covers everything. But the months of December, January, and February are actually boisterous times in and around the valley wetlands of western Washington…

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Black Cottonwood

August 4, 2012
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It’s summer in the Pacific Northwest. In June and July, in places where a river flows nearby, the afternoon breezes are often filled with drifting particles that look like cotton balls. These are the seeds of Black Cottonwood trees (Populus trichocarpa; or Populus balsamifera, subspecies trichocarpa), which grow along…

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A Foggy Day at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

January 17, 2012
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Dense fog filled the lowlands on the day of my most recent visit to Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. The scenery was ghostly, cold, and calm. The refuge encompasses a complex of wetlands, grasslands, and oak forests along the eastern banks of the Columbia River in Washington. I drove the 4.2 mile auto tour of the ‘S Unit’ for the first time. I rolled along slowly in my car, in the middle of a procession of cars…

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The Red-legged Frog (Rana aurora)

October 4, 2011
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Frogs are sort of my thing. When I was a kid, I had a menagerie of pet frogs. I read about them and drew pictures of them. I had a motley collection of frog figurines from all over the world. I studied frogs in graduate school and I have a tattoo of a frog on my arm. Considering all of this, it’s kind of strange that I haven’t written a single blog post about frogs. I got to…

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Wildflower: White Bog-orchid

September 13, 2011
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White Bog-orchid (Platanthera dilatata) has small flowers that are not as showy as those our native Fairyslipper Orchids (Calypso bulbosa), but they are quite beautiful in their own way. The numerous flowers of a bog-orchid plant grow along an erect stem that can be up…

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The Sundew

August 27, 2011
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Carnivorous plants are weird and wonderful organisms that capture our attention as easily as they capture insects. These plants invert the normal rules of nature about who gets to eat who. (But of course, anything goes in nature, and everything is ‘normal’). The bodies of insects and other invertebrates, once digested, provide nutrients to carnivorous plants that are scarce in the nutrient-poor soil where…

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