This morning the low rain clouds are snagged like so much cotton batting, fogging the towering snags and old growth on surrounding ridges. Here is a poem perfect for leaving the Andrews Forest, which they’ve included as an epigraph in THE FOREST LOG binder containing work by previous writers-in-residence:

Little Pines
by Ch’i-Chi

Poking up from the ground barely above my knees,
already there’s holiness in their coiled roots.
Though harsh frost has whitened the hundred grasses,
deep in the courtyard, one grove of green!
In the late night long-legged spiders stir;
crickets are calling from empty stairs.
A thousand years from now who will stroll among these trees,
fashioning poems on their ancient dragon shapes?

*
Translated by Burton Watson
From The Clouds Should Know Me by Now
Edited by Red Pine and Mike O’Connor (Wisdom Press, 1998)

A sketch of Lookout Creek, at Watershed 3:

I sat at the edge of the road, high above Lookout Creek, where the roadway/stream-slope are reinforced with rock, and the water is funneled through a culvert, under the road.  This is the Watershed 3 Gauging Station (measuring water/sediment etc. coming out of the WS3 drainage area).  WS3 was clear-cut in the 1960s, just prior to the 1964 flood.  This section suffered a lot of damage again in the flood of 1996.  Note that the brown/ocher mosses on the “gentle banks” surrounding the water are actually growing on cement, used to “reinforce” the soil around this erosion-prone location.  The horsetails are growing from moist soil at the edge of the cement.

Note:  someone on Flickr just asked about the plant in the right-hand photo.  My amateur understanding was that it was “horsetail” (aka snakegrass in the Midwest). I’ve always liked it because it is considered a “living fossil” —- really ancient, and frequently depicted in illustrations of dinosaurs.  I though that was terrific, when I was a kid:  seeing a recognizable plant drawn next to a fantabulous dinosaur.

Looking it up, I believe the local name is “Braun’s Scouring-Rush” (Equisetum laevigatum). This is an annual member of the horsetail family found in Oregon, partial to disturbed ground and ditches, and notable for the prominent “spore-producing cone” on the tip. Here’s the link for more information about this ancient plant:

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/pnw/pnw105/#anchor209164

Today I had the truly great joy of encountering Spotted Owls in the wild!

The Northern Spotted Owl is currently listed as threatened in the United States under the Endangered Species Act. According to Fred Swanson, the Andrews Forest was formerly home to perhaps 7 or 8 mating pairs of Spotted Owls, but their numbers are dwindling, despite substantial efforts to conserve their old growth nesting habitat. Currently, there may be 3 or 4 mating pairs within Andrews. As if their difficulties with forest demise weren’t bad enough (old growth replaced by younger forests managed for timber), their territory is now being invaded by an increasing population of Barred Owls. The Barred are larger, more reproductively successful, and more omnivorous. The Spotted Owl eats only a few things; the Barred Owl eats many things.

If you’d like to hear the sound of the Spotted Owl, here is a site that includes a sound file of their call (both hooting and whistling). The recording has it backwards, perhaps:  I heard them doing their ‘location whistling’ for quite a while before there was any ‘hooting.’

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Spotted_Owl/id

There is also a discussion of ethics and the “Spotted Owl controversy” on Santa Clara University’s website, for those who are foggy on some of the details, history, and implications:

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v4n1/homepage.html

I went out this morning with the “owl crew” — researchers who are gathering data on the Northern Spotted Owl in Andrews and the surrounding Willamette National Forest.  After a rutted drive, we hiked a short distance up-slope into rugged old growth terrain to a known site, where we met both a female and male, hanging out near their nest.  Amazing experience!

Delightful owls!! They seem small in my photos, perhaps, but only because they are in such large trees.

The researchers follow a protocol that includes offering a few live mice to owls (this helps bring them in closer for band checks).  Once they have prey in hand, they often reveal the location of the nesting tree. The female owl knew this drill (actually she even knew the sound of the tupperware mouse container opening,  I think).  She was not shy, and hooked her mice in record time. Her partner, however, was reluctant to approach us. The researchers were excited to meet him (“the boyfriend”) and said that it was probably only his second encounter with people. His first encounter was being man-handled during banding, so the boyfriend remained carefully aloof.

An owl researcher just deposited this fresh mouse on the great fallen tree beside my camera. The log was very large — maybe chest-high — and the mouse just sat there for a moment, getting its bearings. Seconds later the owl arrived. One minute the mouse was sitting on the log, wondering which way to go, and the next minute the spotted owl had grabbed it and was back up on the branch. The owl DROPPED silently on the mouse, just a foot in front of me, in one great outspreading of wings, then the snatch, and then a soft ‘whooh, whooh’ wing-sound as she flew back to her perch.

If you look closely you will see the mouse is now in the female’s beak. The spotted owl is wondering whether to “cache” her fresh-caught mouse, eat it, or bring it high up into an adjacent old-growth Douglas fir, where her nest is located. In the end, I believe the decision was made to tuck this juicy mouse away in a hole in the tree, and save it for later….

Later, the male owl DID bring a mouse up to the nest, which required a number of “ladder” steps, flying counter-clockwise in trees surrounding the nest tree, getting a bit higher with each perch. The nest is located at the very top, in the rotted top-notch of a massive Douglas fir; the crown is thick with new tops that have been sent up, and the nest is probably sheltered at the center, hidden between them.

My heart was singing owl-songs all the way down the mountain.  Best of all:  as I was driving, an owl swooped over the road in dense, mossy trees, just ahead of me!  I stopped the truck, turned off the engine, and tried out my new-found owl vocabulary, hooting hopefully (and badly) into the trees, wondering if it was the watchful boyfriend bird, but nothing answered.

I wondered about this unusually perforated woodpile, located on the long porch of the building where I’m staying at Andrews Experimental Forest — until I met the phenology researcher who set them up. He explained that mason bees take advantage of existing holes drilled in trees to deposit their eggs in chambers, each walled from the next with a curtain of mud, and each provisioned with a supply of pollen. Look closely: you’ll see empty holes, partially-plastered holes, and finished holes that have been sealed shut with a protective daub of masonry. Some of the mudded holes were still visibly fresh, a darker tone of clay than the dried holes.

The mason bees were busy today (they love sunny days, according to the researcher).

Pietà: Old Growth Trail

Several of us saw the same thing in this formation…. a vaguely female form, cradling an infant. I believe it is the exposed “knee” or “knuckle” of a living root, as giant old-growth firs grew around all around, clinging to the side of a very steep slope.

Andrews Forest: Lookout Creek

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

I sketched while the sun set tonight, on a rocky outcrop overlooking Lookout Creek (near the mouth, where it enters the reservoir).

I hiked to the far top of an “alternate LTER” site today: a clear-cut slope on Forest Road 1501. Okay, hike is too dignified for what I did. Sweated and scrambled and stumbled would be more accurate. It was a much higher/steeper slope than it seemed at first, partially due to the great HEIGHT of the trees straight-edging the upper boundary of the clear-cut. From a distance, they seemed like regular trees but they were ***REALLY TALL*** so that screwed up my judging of distance. I hiked up the boundary line between the private-property cut, and a “thinning” of a National Forest parcel, and might as well have been hiking uphill in the jungle… thick bushes and thorny brambles… lots of bumble-bees out in the vetches, and I gave wide berth to all buzzing stumps. The slope was littered with slash and branches several feet deep in spots, some of which hid drainages creating hollow bridges of debris over the ditches. All this made walking more like climbing. The underlying ground was loose and crumbly in some areas where great tree roots had been torn loose, above, while in other areas, there was only a thin layer of plant growth and duff over steep rock, which was weeping, a slow spring. Berry canes zigged back and forth, rooting from the tips, creating barbed-wire arches.  The regrowth pines were mostly 10-18 feet, although they’d looked like small shrubs from below. The view from on top was amazing (and sad: views of other clear cuts on other ridges). I sketched and wrote for a while, sitting on a stump. Then I realized I was crawling with tiny dark deer-ticks, and so I crashed my way down-slope in the direction of a shower. Now a new group of students has arrived from Albion College in Michigan, where my late father-in-law Fred was a student. Right away they noticed my truck’s Michigan license plate, and my SAVE THE WILD UP bumper sticker. I believe I’ll be going out in the field with them tomorrow, as Fred Swanson returns to give them a tour! Small world

Scenes from a clear-cut:

Streamside

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

Detail from the Andrews Experimental Forest Long Term Ecological Reflection site. I love this stone’s speckled frog-skin.

Other views from the “Gravel Bar LTER” site:

Roadside riparian zone

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

High on FR 1508, as I drove up to see Wolf Rock, I noticed this charming miniature riparian zone: flowing water alongside the forest road — (snow) meltwater trickling down through a lush carpet of moss and spring flowers. Pixar or Disney couldn’t make anything more magical!