From Our President: 2020 Has Been a Year Like No Other!
Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2020
Due to the pandemic, we have learned enlightening essential practices to secure our families and ourselves from an infection affecting the human population of the earth. Precautions to ensure protection from disease have become daily rituals, changing our lives dramatically. This situation has also raised awareness of our basic needs for safe food supplies, safe water, and safe spaces for shelter. And it has also shown us the fragility of having safe and productive ways to make a living.
All of these are the same essentials we strive to protect for the birds and wildlife who share the earth with us. Usually humans feel they are above or apart from these necessities, since many of us are buffered from the precarious edge of survival. Unfortunately, this is not true for all people.
Recently we have seen the violent side of human nature on stark display. This is an aspect of our humanity that I cannot fathom. Humans are all related – we share the DNA, the human history, the earth. Each of us has the same biological and daily needs, and together we could recreate a safe earth for all. Why are compassion and empathy such elusive principles?
We need to find the resolve to be better at supplying essential needs for ourselves and each other. We need to stop and learn from our huge ongoing mistakes. Drop the prehistoric sub-brain ego responses, and use our hearts to feel the flow of compassion toward all living things. We can do better together in focusing on our mutual needs.
Can we learn from this stressful time and actually make our lives and communities healthier, more holistic and more productive for everyone? It is time for humans to lift themselves to fulfill their potential for caring, empathy, and compassion. Please, let us use our big brains to imagine this into our new reality and make choices that bring us forward to a better future together. This goal needs to become more than a dream and more than rhetoric. Humans have great capacity for adaptation.
Let’s make it work for the common good of all people and the earth. My deepest wish is that we reach a time of peace and wellness for us all.
As I write this piece in early April, our future activities for the next two months are completely up in the air. We know that in May we will not have a Bird Walk and that cancellation of the Program Meeting is a strong possibility. Theoretically, at this point, June will be planned as the time gets closer and we know our ability to gather safely for community activities.
With the pressures of politics and pandemics over the past few months, I feel the need to de-stress in nature as much as possible. Fortunately, this time of year, that is easy. Temperatures are warming, flowers are blooming, trees are leafing out, and songbirds are singing. In Oregon we have lovely habitat diversity, which gives us more opportunity to enjoy nature’s wonders than in many other areas.
“Where Have All MY Birds Gone?”
We just learned of the passing of Allen Prigge on December 30th. He was 97 years old. A longtime Eugene-area birder, he had been a member and supporter of Lane County Audubon since the beginning. Starting in 1973, Al managed and maintained more than 300 bluebird boxes in and around Eugene. Many local Western Bluebirds are descendants of birds that nested successfully in Al’s boxes. 
I want to express my gratitude for many levels of support Lane County Audubon Society (LCAS) receives from our members and volunteers. 
Lane County enjoyed wondrous weather this summer. We had blue skies, moderate temperatures, and small amounts of rain at intervals, keeping the deciduous plants lush and green through August. Now that fall has arrived, we will see the progression of fall colors in the leaves. Fall colors in Oregon are not as famous as those of the northeast, but the stately backdrop of evergreen trees creates a contrast for the yellows and oranges of our deciduous canopy of ash, alder, oak, willow, and big-leaf maple. The understory of vine maple and poison oak adds splashes of reds.
September is the month for Vaux’s Swift migration! These small birds will be gathering in large flocks to roost for the night at the Agate Hall chimney on the UO campus, along with other locations. We will have our “Bon Voyage to the Swifts” gathering on Friday, September 13th, this year. Please come out to join us in watching and marveling at these interesting little birds. Their migration dates begin with sightings as early as late August and continue on into October. You can look for them any evening throughout this time span. 
Migration depends on the wind and the weather, food availability for the insect-eating swifts, and whether drought or fires are occurring. We never can predict exactly when they will arrive or when they will all move on to the south.
I have a couple of goals for mid-to-late summer this year. One is to get up to the higher mountain elevations to see the montane wildflowers on display July through August. It has been a few years since I made this trek, and I realize it is something I don’t want to miss yet again. I have memories of hiking the trail at Iron Mountain when hillside rock gardens were ablaze with Indian paintbrush interspersed with bright yellow stonecrop. And in the high meadows, enjoying a lush array of blooming flowers that changes weekly as the progression of flax, penstemon, yarrow, saxifrage, lupine, larkspur, beargrass, and others creates a stunning palette of colors. Trails at Mount Hood, Jefferson Park, and the Three Sisters areas can be bountiful with flowers, but also mosquitos.
Bird migration is one of the true marvels of the natural world. Some 350 species of North American breeding birds make the arduous journey north to take advantage of burgeoning insect populations, budding plants, and an abundance of nesting locations. Often they follow the same route to their summer homes, year after year. Northern summers offer longer daylight hours and more insect food to help them nest, feed, and fledge their young in a short span of time–six to eight weeks! It is a very efficient process, even though they had to make the long trip north.