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Wings on the River: How does smoke affect birds?
Gorge Life

Wings on the River: How does smoke affect birds?

  • By Flora Martin Gibson
  • Updated

In 2020, I watched swallows curling in low flight, as they do before a rainstorm. The air was stagnant, dry, smoke-brown; the sun a pale yellow disk. Wildfires were burning almost 21,000 acres in the United States, mostly in Oregon, Washington and California.

Wings on the River: Sandpiper season
News

Wings on the River: Sandpiper season

  • By Flora Gibson
  • Updated

When I was small, we went to the beach. Sand-blinded by wind, we staggered around beside the vast gray ocean, picking up bits of shell embedded in the sand. The biggest disappointment of my first meeting with the sea was a sad lack of sandpipers.