Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

The white-breasted nuthatch is one of my favorite birds, and its curious, carefree spirit is an essential part of the oak savanna habitat of the arboretum. I always look forward to hearing its vocalizations and watching it hop and skip around on a tree.

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Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Today’s micro-creature has six legs, long antennae, and a segmented body… but it’s not classified as an insect (anymore). Springtails are one thing you can be sure to find throughout the winter months, and they’re fascinating. Even though they don’t belong to the insect club, because they have interior mouthparts and no wings, they’re worth a profile.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

A small stained glass window is resting on a leaf. The opalescent panels shimmer with the slightest breath of wind, reflecting the radiant halo of mother nature. It is a passageway, an opening to a locket. Inside are luminous keepsakes. The song of the Chickadee. An inchworm measuring your arm. A sweep of wind across a meadow. An unrestrained river.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

A warbling vireo. I love this bird’s soft gaze, and its tranquil, gray body. A sentient being cut from the cloth of a quiet mist drifting through the willows in the cool dawn air. Its song is a warbling stream gently smoothing the surfaces of stones. I reach down into the stream and pick one up. Its fluid rind is

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Tree squirrels are amazing acrobats. They fearlessly climb out onto the tips of branches to reach seeds or take fearless leaps between limbs. They chase each other up, down, and all around the trunk of trees with speed and agility. Their lives seem to involve a great amount of risk or chance.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

I have been watching this wonderful vine grow throughout the arboretum this year. I have followed it from the beginning as it sprouted its first vibrant, green leaves in spring to now, as the dried, brown seed pods split open to release their seeds.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

I have been seeing this beautiful creature on dead snags, stumps, the bases of oak trees, and the small wooden bridges throughout the arboretum. These places allow it to regulate its body temperature and blend into its surroundings as it hunts for prey.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

One of the most beautiful animals in North America lives among us here at the Arboretum—the coyote. The color of its fur is a varied palette of earth tones. Myriad hues of browns, grays, blacks, and whites are woven together to form a magical coat. It is a thatch work of clay, dry grass stalks, morning sun, bird songs, river

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Owls will often spend consecutive days around the same perch from where they will roost during the day and hunt at night Most owls are nocturnal, but Northern Pygmy-Owls mostly hunt by day. Under these roosts, you can often find evidence of an owl’s presence: owl pellets.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Standing at the top of the zigzag trail, I could hear hammering resounding through the forest. I walked down the path to find a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers on a dead tree. They were excavating small holes in the wood using their chisel-like bills as they searched for food.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

A familiar sound at the arboretum is the rustle of leaves from Spotted Towhees foraging. They hop backward with both feet to sweep away the leaf litter in search of food. Their diet consists of insects, spiders, seeds, acorns, and berries.

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Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

Nature Notes, a Blog by Bryan Ribelin

The other evening I watched a Barred Owl zigzagging down the Creek Trail corridor hunting for food. It would sit on a perch about 10-20 feet off the ground and scan the area with its eyes and ears. When it zeroed in on its potential prey, it silently drifted out over the meadow and pounced.

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Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

I love finding something that flummoxes me. So I was intrigued to spot this three- to four-millimeter long insect parading up and down grasses near the horse area at Mount Pisgah. At that small size, I couldn’t tell if it was a beetle or a bug, and at first I thought the enlarged front legs might be its antennae. 

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Insect Insights, A Bi-weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, A Bi-weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

March is a great time to observe the incredible insects inside ponds and pools. Even temporary puddles are host to some really cool characters. I found predaceous diving beetles (PDB’s) in a couple different places around Mount Pisgah recently, and they sport some flashy features like tail-breathing and larvae with 14 eyes!

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Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

The star of this week’s column is a diminutive wasp in the Gelis genus. Specifically, with thanks to Ross Hill at BugGuide.net, this is Gelis tenellus. These parasitic wasps don’t have a common name, which is a good sign that they’re not very well studied. However, in researching them, I learned enough to know that they’re worthy of more attention.

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Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, a Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Mayflies are in the insect order Ephemeroptera, which is Greek for “short-lived, winged” creature. While the common name is misleading, the scientific name is spot-on. They are ephemeral indeed. Imagine an animal that spends more than 99% of its life underwater, looking like a shell-less lobster, then matures to live above the water for just one or two days.

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Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Today’s column focuses on a true bug (in the Hemiptera order) that looks like a reptilian
insect or tiny dinosaur. The first time I saw this Phymata genus bug, on coyote brush in
Mt. Pisgah’s south fields, I only got a good look at its back. I figured it was some kind of
shield bug, but I didn’t get any good pictures of it from the side before it flew away.

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Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

The Diurnal Firefly is one of my favorite finds at Mount Pisgah recently. These black insects with red “bracket” markings on their thoraxes are beetles, not flies. And because the fireflies we have in Oregon don’t light up, you could say they are neither fiery nor a fly. Still, there’s plenty about them to spark some interest. Our Oregon beetles

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Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Note: These pictures were taken a few days before wildfires made it unsafe to visit Mt. Pisgah. Green lacewings are one of the rare insects that are doubly blessed. They’re beloved as predators of aphids and other pests, and they’re nice to look at. Lucky for us, they’re fairly common in Oregon. They also have some fascinating and unique traits. 

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Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Insect Insights, A Bi-Weekly Buford Blog by Karen Richards

Welcome to the second Insect Insights! This post is about a creature nearly everyone has heard, but most people likely haven’t seen.   Tree crickets don’t always live in trees, and probably don’t fit your mental image of a cricket. They’re in the same family as grasshoppers (Orthoptera) and in the Oecanthus genus, pronounced “ee CAN thus.” One species of

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