Raptors of the High Desert Museum

October 9, 2025 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 20 Comments

Raptors of the High Desert Museum

By Melanie Reynolds

At the end of August my family drove down to Oregon to visit a very dear friend of ours before school started. We drove through Portland, had lunch in Gresham, wound our way through the beautiful forests in the shadow of Mount Hood and eventually dropped down into the modest canyon lands of the high desert outside Madras. All in all, a six-hour drive for us from our home in Washington state.

Please meet some of my newest friends’ worth fighting for:

A huge shout out to the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon for their fantastic raptor show and conservation work! These gorgeous birds are survivors, for one reason or another, they are not able to be fully rehabilitated and released back into the wild. As such, they now live here as ambassadors of their species. https://highdesertmuseum.org/

The two biggest threats to Raptors are:

Rodenticides that do more than just poison the rats and mice, it poisons up the food chain.
Over-developing large swaths of forests, fields, and prairies.

Swainson’s Hawk

While I loved all the Raptors. I immediately felt bonded with this Swainson’s Hawk who seemed reluctant to leave the perch closest to me. They’re supposed to fly over our heads from perch to perch following the treats their handlers put out, but this one seemed content to hang out with me. They were feeling extra cute today. Is that not a happy raptor look?

Harris’s Hawk

This one definitely had their eye own the prize, living up to the American idiom “to watch something like a hawk.” (To watch with shrewdness, ready to strike.)

Turkey Vulture

The largest raptor we got to meet. While many people may not like their role as nature’s cleanup crew, it is a vital role, nonetheless.

Gyrfalcon

This falcon was not able to fly the circuit above our heads, but it still got the chance to come out and say “Hi” while one of the handlers answered questions. The Gyrfalcon is the largest falcon in the world.

Peregrine Falcon

The most well-known type of falcon, I believe. Every time I hear the name I can’t help thinking of the children’s horror book series: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I liked it! I should give the 2016 movie a try, but I digress. The Peregrine is a beautiful raptor to have the opportunity to see up close.

Barn Owl

Another striking raptor. This one seems on the small side to me. I remember driving out with my dad late one night when a barn owl the size of a toddler dropped down right in front of the truck’s headlights! Jeepers!

The best for last? The owl was the only one I was able to catch a picture of “in flight.” I love it!

Thank you for stopping by! What raptors do you have in your area?

For the Birds

April 6, 2025 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 8 Comments

_{Birdhouse on tree By Melanie Reynolds}

Hello Nature-Led Friends!

It’s Springtime and I’m springing into action trying to get our homestead, affectionately known as the Fernmire, ready for the warm seasons. Why do we call it Fernmire? Because we have lots of ferns and it can become quite the mire through the rainy season, roughly October through May. I also just really like the name; it goes with my whole “Bog Lady Witch” aesthetic that I’ve been dreaming up in my brain. Strictly for my own entertainment purposes. My rituals are very mundane (like making coffee in the morning) and my curses are basic (like calling bad drivers “a dirty biscuit eater” because it’s better to be annoyed and amused than all about road rage.)

Humans aren’t the only ones who get annoyed about near misses. The birds are going crazy right now! They harken the early morning dawn at 6am now. The Juncos, in particular, are bad ~~drivers~~ flyers and the chickadees aren’t having it! I nearly got hit by a Junco the other day! Did it mistake me for a moving tree? It narrowly missed my face, which would have been unpleasant for both of us! There are of course some rivalries going on as the birds vie for mates making them bolder and maybe not so smart in the throes of passion.

This is the time of year when we see an increase in birds hitting the windows. I’d always hoped if we kept our windows dirty enough the birds wouldn’t hit them, but there’s always a few that seem to hit the windows in the dining room despite the dirty windows. So, this was the year I put forth the effort to clean the windows and put window clings on them that should hopefully stop unnecessary death. There is enough drama going on with the Avian Flu right now, affecting birds and mammals alike. While I don’t want to get into it, I’ve heard several heartbreaking first-hand accounts from Wildlife Enthusiasts/Birders and Wildlife Rehabbers alike of Great Blue Herons, Raccoons and Foxes dying or being humanely euthanized due to complications from HPAI H5N1.

_{Anti-strike Window Clings Photo By Melanie Reynolds}

This is the year we were also on time for making a plethora of new birdhouses! You can make four birdhouses from one piece of cedar wood fence plank; the fifth one was made out of spare wood we had as the initial prototype. If you would also like to make birdhouses this is the website we used for instructions and cut sheet. It’s hosted by the Cornell School of Ornithology, which also hosts the wonderful website All About Birds.

https://nestwatch.org/learn/all-about-birdhouses/right-bird-right-house/?range=pacific

I hope you are well and have the chance to get outside! If you’re doing anything special to support your wild neighbors this year let me know in the comments below!

_{Flowering Begonia 2025 By Melanie Reynolds}

Additional Links:

For more information about Avian Flu impacts visit the page of the Native American Fish & Wildlife Society below:

Avian Influenza

Listening to the inaudible

March 17, 2024March 18, 2024 ~ Patricia Lezama ~ 3 Comments

Uu Uu Uu

The owl sings in my language.

What was once inaudible or barely perceived, now echoes in the refuge of my waters.

It comes from afar, to bring to this present the sounds that harmonize memories.

From the low tone, red, ancestral and seismic U, I appreciate my flat feet, anchored to the earth.

The u vibrates in the connections between the outside and the inside, from the mountains of my native Colombia, in the estate of my origins, to the autumn of this intimate and latent awakening.

The u creates bridges in my tubes, the u makes a radiant, orange, and expansive light flowing to the plains of my womb. Paths that become clear, illuminating the dew of my vase, honoring the fertility that so often gave birth in silence.

I breathe an anticipatory song. You call me, make me remember myself.

I dance, laugh, play. Fusion. I listen to the meaning of the letters and vowels in my names and surnames. I am.

Here is my lineage sustained in the natural resonance of the wind, which from the top of a lush green with yellow flowers, proclaims my childhood free and wild.

I wish to see you, I follow your U’s. You, who see in the intrinsic shadows of the mist, find me, and I discover you in intuition. You sing what I need to hear.

Now my singing is accompanied by intention, and in frequency with emotions, so that the currents flow, stripping away the stagnation in forgetting me.

I have been deaf to the external noise and to those who shout imposing their discourse; silent to the hustle of the big city, with its avenues distracted by the volume of sleepless appliances.

Even more so, you remain there, suspended between two worlds, that of those who give and those who listen.

You and my voice, an honest bond in day and night chords, expanding. I am no longer prey.

You gift me tunes and claws, and I, alone, and in freedom, and healing, I hoot.