December In Review

 Bob's nature blog has been pretty silent, lately, and I admit to being in the doldrums.  For one, the rain this fall has been relentless, with rain almost everyday since September 18.  The total from that date to now is about 48.5 inches.  The depressing COVID news is also weighing on me as it dims hopes of travel.  I know I'm not alone in feeling like this, and do have much to be thankful for.  We have done a good job of getting out for almost daily hikes for a couple hours, rain, or not.  And when we do get weather breaks, it feels great to be out in the yard clearing fallen trees and debris, etc.  Unfortunately, Gail has been nursing a painful foot condition which limits her hiking, but not her biking, so as I hike with Daisy up the Forest Service roads, she rides along side.  Kudos to her, because those roads are steep!  I haven't found the motivation to do Christmas cards this year, but tell myself  I'll write more letters throughout the coming months.  I am still going to Colorado to be with Andria's family and Nick for a week.  It has been two years since I've been there! 

This fall, I have been active in SWIFTY, a local group of a few guys in Yachats that are dedicated to increasing populations of birds in decline in our area.  We build nest boxes for tree swallows, violet-green swallows, purple martins, cavity nesting ducks, and owls.  So far the group is monitoring around 150 constructed nest boxes in Yachats River Valley, and in the Yachats area.  They have used a couple photos of mine in articles submitted to the online newspaper Yachatsnews.com , which gives me a smile.  Recently, we did a fund raiser in which we made nesting box kits for a workshop.  About 15 people came, and assembled kits, and listened to our presentations.  I built 4 wood duck boxes for SWIFTY and spoke about the cavity nesting ducks in our area.  The workshop was held at the Jerry and Melanie Kimmel property, which is a treat just to be on.  Their home is on 112 acres with 5 creeks, several ponds, and frontage on the river.  Jerry's woodworking shop is as big as our house, and heated!  The fundraiser was Jerry's idea, and he donated all the materials.  The two driving forces of SWIFTY are Jim Welch, and Wally Orchard.  An interesting story about Wally, who is from South Africa, is that his daughter dated Elon Musk when they were teenagers.  He showed me their picture together.  Wally, incidentally, drives a Tesla.

We are now halfway through season 6 of Mad Men.  The martini party at the end of season 3 was our last cosplay celebration.  We are not meant to be Madison Avenue executives, apparently.  In fact, the characters have grown more and more repulsive as we go along, but we've come this far, so we'll try and finish the series by New Years.

So here goes a little photo recap of the past few weeks:

A sunny and mild day weeks ago along our stretch of the river.

Below, is the river this afternoon.  There is a flood warning right now for this part of the state.

A fisherman on the Alsea River.  We spent the day driving over the backroads east from here and making a big 60 mile circle down to Waldport.  We were hoping to spot salmon moving up the river.

Hermit thrushes seem to be the main bird we see in our yard now.  Most birds have moved over to the coast where it's milder, I think.

I did spot this salmon in our swimming hole area, and watched it for about 20 minutes.  It's under about 4 feet of water and a little hard to see.  It's a Chinook salmon, and bigger than it looks here.  Unfortunately, a couple weeks later, Daisy found a dead salmon and Gail had to pull a chunk of it out of her throat to keep her from swallowing it.  We called the vet and started her on a regimen of anti-parasite medicine and antibiotics to keep her from getting salmon poisoning again.  She seems to have averted serious illness.

Jim and I explored around the Kimmels' property a little after doing some work preparing nest box kits.

 

A sculpture on one of the Kimmels' ponds.

This is the duck box I made a couple years ago.  I made 4 more recently for SWIFTY that will be place along the Yachats River.  Jim explained to me that SWIFTY not only refers to that group of birds, but is also British slang for a quick drink.

Some of the action at our SWIFTY fundraiser.

Wally and Jim are the SWIFTY leaders.

This is the stream at a pretty, small park, up the road from us on Keller Creek.  You can see how logs were placed across the river to improve fish habitat.  This is a salmon spawning area.

Snow flurries interrupted the rain on this morning.

Damn packrats! I had just cleaned out this tool shed on the back of Gail's studio a few days earlier.  They protect their nest by making it as foul smelling as possible.  That is feces and urine in front of that cozy little nest.  This particular packrat (also known as a woodrat) seems to be highly intelligent.  For weeks I have set 2 regular rat traps that it springs without getting caught, and have set my Have-A-Heart trap which it refuses to go into.  How do they learn this stuff without getting caught?