Farm Bulletin: The Visitors

One chilly January morning a few years ago, we watched a young mink splashing about in the stream at the base of the canyon for an hour or two. In the winter, the young disperse and find their own digs, and this one was passing through on its way to a new territory. In recent years, we have noted several road killed minks, perhaps indicating an increase in their population. On the south border, our neighbor watched a young cougar bounding about in the grass seed field on an early autumn morning, another offspring of predators looking for new home range.

Pileated woodpecker.

On occasion, we have watched pileated woodpeckers working some of our snags, but they are soon chased away by the acorn woodpeckers, earlier visitors who chose to stay and are intolerant of any other woodworking birds. Their behavior changes when goshawks and Cooper's hawks pass through, using the residents of the oaks as a quick snack on the way to other places. The woodpeckers stay close to the trunks and communicate the location of the hawk in quiet, urgent calls. This September, a Cooper's hawk caught a flicker unawares, and we have photo of it with a lifeless flicker, beak agape, in its talons (top photo). The scene was as dramatic as any captured by Audubon but too gruesome for a full month, so it won't appear in this year's farm calendar.

Mink.

Some visitors pass through without us seeing them. The depressions made by hooves in soft soil tell us that a stag or bull elk passed through while we were sleeping. The bones and sinew of a deer's hind leg was found on the low ground, betraying another drama missed by us.

Our farm is part of a bridge, or maybe a set of stepping stones is more apt, between the Coast Range and the Tualatin Ridge dominated by Bald Peak. Ecologists call these areas "wildlife corridors." Our approach to farming, with its rough fields and perennial crops, has enhanced the quality of the connection, providing creatures cover in their transit. It doesn't hurt that we provide a lot of great nesting habitat as well, thus having a few flickers to spare for the hawks.

Northern goshawk.

Peter and Pam Hayes of Hyla Woods share our affection for the natural components of the landscape. We have batted about the idea of a collaborative effort to link the farm and forest lands of the area. Working with Faye Yoshihara from the Food Front Cooperative board, Peter and Pam have proposed a loose collaboration called "Tualatin Headwaters: Producers in Partnership." The idea is to put together a gift package of Hyla Forest maple cutting boards,  preserves from Ayers Creek and wine from Montinore Estate Vineyard. This will be the first step of a work in progress.

We have a lot to figure out, but we are drawn to the project because we understand some our visitors were raised in forests flanking Mount Richmond that are carefully managed by the Hayes family. Maybe the Cooper's hawk we saw here nested on Mount Richmond and passed through the Marchesi family's vineyard feasting on a few robins or starlings. Anyway, we are part of Portland's backyard, and the waters from our lands flow through the city, so it will be fun open up a discussion about the connection we have with each other and the city.

Bulletin from the Farm: Woodpeckers & the Queen of Plums

Another in a series of engaging essays from Anthony Boutard, the Bard of Ayers Creek. And if you're interested in receiving his missives directly, you can e-mail him at the farm and ask to be added to the list.

"The owners of Hyla Woods, Pam and Peter Hayes, visited us early this summer. Upon seeing the oak savannah that occupies the heart of the farm, Peter asked whether we had any acorn woodpeckers nesting here. Alas, no, and suddenly the savannah looked impoverished, somehow deficient. Years of digging up blackberries and hauling away garbage, and no acorn woodpeckers. What did we do wrong, was it our fault? A pair of spurned savannah owners, we went to www.wildbirdsthisweek.net and ordered a pair of these birds. Amazing what you can do online.

"Actually, a week later, we were greeted by a striking pair of acorn woodpeckers headlong into the business of courtship and oblivious to our presence. Negotiating sexual activity is a raucous business with woodpeckers. The whoopee ended after a week or so, and then we only caught occasional glimpses of the birds as they foraged furtively. The sporadic flash of black and white comforted us with the assurance they were lingering, maybe increasing. This week, the issue of their union departed the nest. A young bird with an adult pattern of plumage is now flying around the savannah with its two parents close at hand. Its slighter body and the reedy, begging call betrays its youth. The parents are still feeding it, but it is already trying out its bill. It does a little tap, tap, tap routine and then opens its bill, submitting for sustenance.

"The acorn woodpecker and some other members of the clan, along with the unrelated Corvids (jays, crows and nutcrackers), create caches for the winter months. With the Corvids, the building of caches is done secretively by individuals. They will often rob from one another, remembering weeks later where a competitor placed its cache. Recent studies have shown Corvids keep a very detailed mental map of their caches, and what they contain. In contrast, the acorn woodpecker forms social groups and colonies that cache cooperatively. The woodpeckers create granaries by pecking holes in dead trees or limbs and wedging the acorns into the hole. Larger granaries may exceed 60,000 acorns. They cooperatively defend these granaries against other acorn-eating birds and animals.

"We are pleased the woodpeckers managed to pry loose a nesting site from all of the other cavity dwellers that live here. We hope this is a nascent colony, and not just a brief sojourn."

And this under Plums:

"Ah, to ken a queen. The cherries have their Dukes and Napoleon, the pears have their Doyenne du Comice and Josephine, the apples have their Duchess of Oldenburg, and then there are the plums. They have the Queen, the Reine Claude or green gage. Bestowed with a sharp sweetness and a gentle acidity, with tannins floating around pleasingly and unobtrusively, everything about a Reine Claude is sublime perfection.

"We planted our first 'gages' in 1999. We found the fruits insipid and cloying. We persisted, fueled by a dim memory of gages we had savored in the past. We planted over a half dozen gages from different nurseries. We found two real green gages. Both Bavay Gage and Cambridge Gage are ancient seedlings of the original type. The scion wood was imported from England by Washington State University. They met our expectations. The 'green gage' that is circulating among many US nurseries is, according to David Karp, the Great Maligner of Chester Blackberries (GMCB)*, probably 'Oullins Gage.' GMCB is trying to import scion wood for Reine Claude Dorée, the green gage standard bearer."

* Note: In a New York Times article, Mr. Karp referred to Mr. Boutard's favorite blackberry as having "mediocre flavor."