There is this very particular feeling I get on fall days, when the cold wind is ripping the clouds apart after rain but the sun is still warm, like I too should spread my wings and swoop up into the sky and away.
Meteorologists used to puzzle when, on certain fall nights, radar indicated vast storms rising out of nowhere — storms that didn’t exist. If you got under one, climbed up on a roof, and looked, you wouldn’t see or hear anything except the clear autumn stars, and sometimes, the faint chirps of sparrows and warblers and thrushes from hundreds of feet up in the night sky.
Tunnel vision is awful easy to acquire. Just go out in the wild and look for something specific. All around you, the critters you AREN’T looking for will sit in plain sight, probably laughing.
Old stories, news and photos from the last century of local newspapers in the Columbia River Gorge. A hundred years ago, an owl roosted in the governor's chair and a famed local wrecked his car.
The local Vaux’s Swifts are tiny, soot-colored birds that live mostly in the air. They nest in trees and chimneys, sticking three-inch nests of twigs together with saliva. They don’t bother with territories and may build multiple nests in the same tree.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife media release
Free news: Last week in a Corvallis neighborhood, residents worked together to ensure a newborn fawn spotted on a grass strip between a sidewalk and road was left alone. By early evening, its mother returned for her fawn.
