[liff] The Scrub Jays Of McMinnville

3118.

There is a bit of property down in McMinnville that we are obliged to maintain, for reasons which are not germane to the following discussion. Suffice to say that we have to do a couple of very hard jobs down that way at least once a year. Money is expended, Gatorade is consumed. It's typically hot work, though this iteration, while it happened on the official first day of summer, happened during weather that was fine yet temperate – occasional clouds, some overcast holding off the heat of the day 'til the mid-afternoon. Best for landscaping a tough job.

Over the past several years, we've had bird visitation. Typically after the long grass gets cut down and before the creatures who exist on the dirt surface had a chance to get underground, the jays came.

California Scrub Jays, they call them. Here's a handsome fellow scouting the just-cut grass for nommage:

We've noticed that they happen each time. It's not a visit unless we see some jays, really. They're like friends, in a way. This time, we had a few moments to look and observe … and we saw some family behavior there that was quite delightful.

A couple of jays were visible at most times in the sweetgum maple that exists at the front of the property. At first we thought it was simply a mom and dad bird protecting the nest.

But it became evident when we saw the fluffy down on some bird butts that what we probably had was at least two adolescent fledgelings taking some first flights. There was at least one adult that seemed to be keeping tabs on the kids, who perched on the wires and yelled at us to get out of their yard.

I always wondered about birds and wires. They take to them so naturally. I always thought that birds like this had a cosmology, and just as some of us monkeys think that since the Universe made us possible that the Universe evolved for us, I figured birds knew that us humans existed so that wires would develop for their perching.

But we figure we have occupants on the place that take care of it for us, at least, in that birdy way. 

[photo] Have You Seen This Bee? BECAUSE SHE'S AWESOME!!!

3109.

Earlier today we were at Tony's Garden Supply. This is a wonderful nursery near SE 104th and Holgate Boulevard and is the kind of hometown garden center I remember growing up … locally owned, very very friendly and very very knowledgeable.

We got a Yummy Mix pepper plant, a petunia (the really pretty kind with the dark, dark blue, almost indigo stripes), a big pot to do some transplanting in, and got some advice on how to save The Wife™'s Italian flat-leaved parsley plants. Free protips; you can't do better!

But it's a riot of color, and plants wontonly dripping with pollen, and where there's pollen … we kind of hope these days, from what we've heard, it's kind of grim for them … there's bees. And I hated bees as a kid, because stingy-stingy-owie-owie, but I'm an adult and I have maybe a better understanding of bee boundaries. And I saw honey bees and bumble bees, and since I read maybe a little too much news I fret over the fact that there aren't so many bees now. But they were chillaxin', lazily-but-efficiently picking up pollen from the flowering plants at the front gate.

I'd been wanting to pict a bee for an awful long time. They are fascinating creatures. So I pointed and shot and hoped, and reviewed the photos, and look at this, will you!

Not only did I get a fabulously clear picture of afore-intimated apian, I so lucked that I caught the wings, momentarily, at rest. And, I'm a leg man … and check out them shanks, yo, just brimming with pollen.

I am proud of this picture. And that is one awesome bee.

[pdx] Come To The River: See the Missoula Floods Without Getting Wet Or Killed

3067.

Spend any time looking into Oregon prehistory, you'll find out about the Missoula Floods. They went a long way toward making the Willamette Valley the way it is.

Goes like this: between 13 and 15 kiloyears ago, when the last Ice Age was waning, a glacial dam across the Clark Fork created a great sprawling lake in the mountains of what is today western Montana called Lake Missoula. Sources I've read say it held at least 500 cubic miles worth of water. Glaciers being what they are during a period of melting about twice every century, that dam would give way, and the waters would gush across what is now eastern Washington, scour out the Columbia Gorge, and back up into the Willamette Valley, making great temporary lakes along the way (the filling of the Valley was called Lake Allison).

This happened dozens of times over that 2,000 year span. And, as a result, we have thick, rich, beautiful agricultural soil here in the Willamette, while Washington just gets the channeled scablands. In as much as Washington also gets the hot tech companies and professional baseball, I think it about evens.

Along the esplanade, alongside OMSI, is the above plaque. Embiggening it should give one enough of a view of the graphic to impress. The artist's conception is, of course, of the Missoula flood at its greatest height, if Portland had been there at the time.

The floods rose to a depth of more than 400 feet, it's estimated. How deep is that? Well, a picture is one thing, a bit of reality, another. The above plaque is set into a worderfully-designed kiosk-like object, as seen here:

Those two tubes, on on each side, are sights. The end is specially covered so that, sighting down them, you'll see just what would be left above the waves. And just what is that?

The upper 6 or so floors of the Wells Fargo Tower, and just a few condo units at the KOIN Center.

Oregon … things do look different here.