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ity to scroll backwards and see the past 12 hours dusk birds asleep first light thousands and thousands of cranes lift off at dawn the peak of the gathering stretches from march 17 until april 8 i can only apologize it didn t get this blog posted sooner here are my sketches and abbreviated notes i hope they inspire you to log on to audubon s webcam and see for yourself https explore org livecams national audubon society crane camera march 26 the cranes at rowe sanctuary have awakened to snow the air is filled with crane music march 27 i sit mesmerized this morning watching thousands of cranes cranes are awake restless some in the air who could sleep with all that yammer occasionally a pair bounce into a brief flurry of dancing i m limited by where the camera pans but i get the deafening roar the flowing platt river and the sandbars speckled with hundreds of cranes and then the camera shifts to the sky thousands and thousands of cranes are streaming by thousands it looks like smoke in the sky according to the iain nicolson audubon center at rowe sanctuary between 100 000 and 200 000 cranes come here mar 28 more snow last night and a little foggy this morning at 10 30 am cdt the sandbars are still covered with cranes i sit down to finish yesterday s sketch how to paint 1000s of birds crane music fills my ears it is solid background noise suddenly the calling takes on a new intensity hundreds of cranes are lifting off calling calling a flurry of overlapping cranes and then the sandbar is bare mar 30 i thought i got up early enough for lift off i didn t no snow birds gone rowe sanctuary website tells me sunrise is 7 23 am cdt no wonder i can t get up early enough but i discover a new feature on the webcam on a little red line at the bottom of the page i can scroll back as many as twelve hours i watch past hours as if i m watching in real time i can eat my breakfast and watch hundreds of light shapes hunkered in the dark glowing embers are the eyes of the few cranes who are awake even now a few birds call i jump ahead to the sky showing a bare suggestion of morning light and then scroll ahead to an hour before sunrise the noise level increases from occasional to a pleasant background chatter i can see silhouettes of cottonwoods in the background and speckles of cranes massed on the sandbars and in shallow water the sky is full of muted greys and lavenders gradually brightening 7 20 am cdt the noise level intensifies thousands and thousands pick up and swirl over me some swing around and drop farther out on the river others meld into strings in the sky flying off to their feeding grounds 9 am cdt i fast forward the air is still full of calling flock after flock in the sky but the sandbars are empty my heart is full posted by elva paulson at 5 01 pm 1 comment labels elva paulson sandhill crane rowe sanctuary saturday november 5 2022 paulson s patented patience powder pppp i didn t coin the phrase paulson s patented patience powder our good friend joseph conrad coined it several years ago joe is a retired physical chemistry professor we met in yellowstone someone suggested that couple with oregon plates on their van could help him identify a plant we clicked and over several years spent quite a bit of time with joe after hanging out with us and seeing how long we sit and patiently watch joe coined the term pppp paulson s patented patience powder he figured we sprinkle ourselves with pppp on a regular basis joe used to sleep in and often snuggled in his van reading things like the iliad in yellowstone no more when he gets to yellowstone he can t wait to get out in the park pull out his pppp over the years several people including joe have thanked us for opening their eyes to the value of just waiting and watching after a disappointing summer of either too hot or too smoky we finally are getting some rain clean air and a few sunny days time to go out and dose ourselves with pppp we head out to a little reservoir near us it is kept full all summer for recreation but on or about oct 15 the sutherlin water master draws it down to mostly a mud flat with a small stream meandering through when we get heavy rains the reservoir fills instead of flooding the little town of sutherlin downriver from the reservoir then the water master lets the water out gradually and waits for the next heavy rain we look forward to drawdown because for a month or so fish are concentrated and bring in shorebirds great blue herons egrets and even a few migrating white pelicans the last two years haven t had nearly as many fish because our local fish hatchery burned in the 2020 wildfire ending the stocking of fish but the reservoir is still somewhat of a magnet we park on the dam where we can get close to the water and liberally dose ourselves with pppp it is so nice sitting here trees are turning gold a few fluffs of white clouds float over distant hills water almost a mirror not a lot of ducks but we do have a flock of canada geese a few herons egrets and half a dozen coot inspect the mud flats we even have three white pelicans resting near the water edge on the other side of the reservoir a mature bald eagle perches high in the cluster of snags nearby an immature great blue heron catches a fish a stab into the water a quick gulp and down the hatch two fishermen arrive the heron catches two more fish the fishermen don t a kingfisher comes and hovers over the water below us but only for a moment his luck isn t any good either the pelicans have left the mud shoreline and are bathing whop whop it surprises me i can hear their heavy wings beating the water from so far away a little more pppp is in order the fishermen give up but our young heron is still hungry he grabs a fourth fish a rather large bullhead which poses a problem he turns and carries his fish to where the water is only about an inch deep drops the fish and stabs three times he picks his fish up but it is full of wiggle this heron now holds his fish still for a moment wiggle drat he drops it again and the fish does it s best to escape in the mud and very shallow water easy to catch the heron stabs again and again the fish is starting to lose its wiggle whoosh down comes the mature bald eagle and literally scares the crap out of the heron look carefully and you can see the lone string of white poop and the bullhead is in midair in one neat swoop the eagle snags the muddy bullhead and flies back to the far off snag where he had been perched note the eagle s muddy feet slightly ruffled the great blue heron lands nearby soon he is trying for another dinner and so ends a good day posted by elva paulson at 4 09 pm 5 comments labels bald eagle elva paulson great blue heron sunday november 14 2021 slow motion comments on a slug i m having lunch with a slug my slug maybe i should say my pet slug oh dear i ve really gone bonkers dare i really admit i m having lunch with a slug in case you are wondering he is not on my plate merely in a jar next to me where i can watch a dark dirty lump which has been doing nothing at all for at least 45 minutes this craziness started nearly a month ago while digging in my future rock garden i unearthed a strange pale firm lump this slimy pod is about the size and shape of a brazil nut it is so strange i brought it into the house to show dale we both pondered on what it might be my biggest clue was the slime which made dirt stick like glue so i rinsed him off and took a picture and went to the oregon department of fish and wildlife website to see if it might be some type of gastropod yes a slug the website lists 29 slugs about half of which are non native and most of which are hard to tell apart if my little slug would just stretch out like a proper slug i would have recognized it as a slug right away but this one can go into a tight scaredy cat mode he does have one clearly identifying feature what looks to be a small shell tight to its body down near the rear end you can see it in my photo this little shell gives the slug its name earshell slug testacella haliotidea this is one of the uninvited nonnative slugs i read they are seldom seen because they usually are underground and that this slug is a carnivore i thought all slugs eat organic matter but a worm is the preferred dinner for him since i popped my slug in the jar nearly a month ago i ve fed him four worms i can t find the worms so i assume he has dined well and i can only find him if i gently stir the two inches of soil i ve given him today i stirred around and put him on top of the soil a dirty brazil nut shaped lump i m hoping as i sit here watching him that he will finally stretch out and look like a proper slug i put a new worm in there too hoping for some real action but the worm quickly dug itself into the soil and disappeared watching is sooooo slow slower than watching ice cream melt slower than a five year old waiting for christmas slower than the last ember going black in a camp fire i had him next to my computer for a while then in the kitchen while i made sandwiches and now next to me while i eat i figure he ll finally relax and dig himself back into the darkness of his soil i m halfway through my sandwich when i start to wonder if i m seeing movement or is it my imagination i m feel as though nothing is happening and yet it happens i finally start to see tiny peeks of his pale body under that sticky layer of dirt he is relaxing just a tad more watching maybe he is no longer on his side has he ever so gradually righted himself hard to tell because of all the dirt i thought my patience would be well rewarded that i would be able to give a blow by blow description of the slug stretching out and digging in but all i see feels like my eyes are playing tricks on me he never stretches out my black lump ever so gradually eases into the soil seemingly without ever disturbing the soil it takes several minutes finally he is gone and i m chuckling at myself for all the time i spent watching nothing posted by elva paulson at 10 08 am 1 comment labels earshell slug elva paulson saturday april 10 2021 tough bug april 6 mildred knaipe county park douglas county oregon the sun shines its breezy and a little cool as i wander from one old apple tree to another i hear individual orchestras humming and buzzing maple trees are also singing honey bees are out in full force and seem extra active to keep up with the coolness of the day down by the pond dale finds one lone damselfly and click beetle visiting an english daisy but mostly it is pretty quite down here too i see a little brown blob clinging to a section of dead floating sedge maybe a snail when i was a little girl i had great success raising snails and i have a hankering to try it again wet squishy earth immediately soaks my knees as i kneel grab a twig and pull the sedge towards me dale has a conniption fit thinking i m going to roll right into the pond i ve already put my camera and pack down so i m willing to live dangerously but it isn t a snail it s a tiny bedraggled beetle hanging on for dear life lucky for him this silly lady in tennis shoes came along and lucky for me my pack has a small plastic bowl in which to temporarily corral him it looks like a dung beetle but not quite like one i ve ever seen before it has horns and a humped back the little guy is smaller than the end of my little finger he settles into his temporary corral and sets to work cleaning and drying himself with my eyes i can t see much but i ve got a close up lens on my camera so i can enjoy watching his toilette while dale and i both photograph the ends of each arms has a delicate tarsus so tiny compared to the rest of his front leg he wipes and wipes once done with his head his middle legs reach up and wipe down the middle of his body and finally his hind legs wipe down his tail end beetles technically have two sets of wings the hard out covering is the elytra the first set of wings underneath lies folded a pair on thin transparent wings the magic underneath the elytra never ceases to amaze me i m hoping this little guy is cold enough and slow enough for me to actually see that second pair of wings but pop just like popcorn he pops those wings open and off he goes flying off to new places i m left wishing he had stayed longer although i had a good fifteen minutes this is a different kind of beetle but dale did catch this beetle just before launch see how the wings are unfolding once we got home it took a couple of days to figure out just what kind of beetle i found a bull headed dung beetle onthophagus taurus and once in a while i stumble upon some gems of information his horns can vary considerably some have horns that would make a watusi bull proud he is prepared to do battle with other dung beetles in tunnels of dung most important this little beetle has been written up in sciencemag org as nearly strongest animal on earth for its size he can pull 1141 times his own weight that is equivalent to a man lifting two fully loaded 18 wheeler trucks to come up with this amazing statistic someone tied a thread to a beetle s back pulled it through a pully and added a little bucket drops of water where added to the bucket to see just how much the beetle could pull the beetle must have been given a rough surface to cling to i think about this and i imagine the beetle dangling from his thread and the bucket of droplets sitting on the ground if that indignity isn t enough it was a tiny mite that has been found to be even stronger posted by elva paulson at 6 15 pm 2 comments labels bull headed dung beetle elva paulson saturday march 20 2021 early spring in yellowstone i keep a very relaxed nature journal by that i mean some pages are careful some are quick sketches often i make a mess and even more often i don t get my pages finished in a timely fashion the weather here has been dreary and yet spring is in the air what better way to enjoy it than by taking advantage of a couple wet days to finish these pages from april 2019 we arrived in gardiner and found our cabin was locked the hosts were attending a wedding out of town and forgot to leave our cabin open or give a key to the neighbors and i had just picked up about 200 of fresh groceries in bozeman much to our good fortune we are good friends with both next door cabin neighbors one filled his refrigerator with our groceries and the other got on the phone and found us a lovely spot five miles out of town that night it snowed and in the morning this magpie greeted us late the next day we got in our own cabin and the trip really began here are my journal pages from the first week winter still lingers in yellowstone in mid april sometimes a lot of winter i grew up in snowy wisconsin and look forward to a taste of winter when we arrive redtailed hawks are forming their territories and sunny exposed locations have often lost their snow spring came early in 2019 blacktail ponds had lots of open water often it is still frozen these pen and ink s...