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Podcast! The World Needs More Birders S2:E4

with Dick Cannings, biologist, educator, author, member of the Canada House of Commons

Listen to The World Needs More Birders
Anna Nature Detective, illustration by Diana Weddle

Are you interested in learning more about birds? Are you interested in contributing your bird observations to science? Are you looking for resources to help you learn to identify birds by sight and sound? Are you looking for answers to the question, “What’s so special about birds, anyway?” If you answered yes to any of these questions, this episode is for you! Dick Cannings, author, educator, biologist, member of the Canadian House of Commons has fostered his lifelong fascination with birds and has crafted his career to teach and show people why it is important to protect the natural world. He has a lot to share about his experiences, why citizen science is so crucial in collecting information about our world, and how anyone can contribute to these efforts!

Season 2 of the Highland Wonders Podcast is supported by Humanities Washington and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dick Cannings:

More about Dick Cannings, his books, and instructions about how to build an owl nest box: dickcannings.com/

Birding Organizations and Learning Resources:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

Audubon Society: https://www.audubon.org/

North Central WA Audubon Society: https://ncwaudubon.org/

Birds Canada: https://www.birdscanada.org/

Citizen Science Projects:

The Great Backyard Bird Count: https://www.birdcount.org/

Project Feeder Watch: https://feederwatch.org/

Christmas Bird Count: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count

Breeding Bird Atlas of Washington*: http://naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/maps/ 

North American Breeding Bird Survey: https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/

Short Eared Owl Survey: https://avianknowledgenorthwest.net/projects/

Nestwatch: https://nestwatch.org/

Migration Monitoring: https://www.birdscanada.org/bird-science/canadian-migration-monitoring-network-cmmn/

Project FeederWatch: https://feederwatch.org/

 *also contains maps for amphibians, mammals, reptiles

Birding Apps and Websites (ID by sight and sound, record your sightings):

Merlin Bird ID: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

E-Bird: ebird.org/

Dendroica: https://www.natureinstruct.org/dendroica/ 

Podcast! Islands in the Ice: Nunataks S2:E3

Listen to Islands In the Ice

Nunatak: an Inuit word meaning a mountain peak jutting up through a glacier. A nunatak might not be a hospitable place to spend a few thousand years, but exposed rocky mountaintops are sometimes all that a few hardy species need to survive. In this episode, George Thornton, local educator, naturalist and botanist, shares his knowledge and experiences studying the unique plant communities found atop the highest peaks in the Okanogan. By connecting big ideas of climate, geology, and ecosystem dynamics, George makes sense of how some of the tiny alpine and tundra plants can be found here today, and why they might be in peril.

Season 2 of the Highland Wonders Podcast is supported by Humanities Washington and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Alpine Meadow with rocky peaks in the background, Pasayten Wilderness

Anna, Nature Detective

Season 2, Episode 3: Islands in the Ice

Anna is a daring and precocious nature detective. She loves to sing, and dance, and make up songs and dances about the things that she observes. Anna LOVES animals, a

nd she is the kid who can catch the cat that no one else can. When Anna explores she likes to look at things close up, touch them, peer at them through her Nature Detective hand lens. Sometimes, things that can’t run away suit Anna’s detective style best, but fortunately Anna is also very careful not to hurt anything.

“Red, Orange and Yellow! Green, Blue and Indigo! Viiiiooooolllleeetttt” Anna makes up the tune to her Rainbow Song as she traipses along a trail through a wildflower strewn meadow. It has been a long hike to reach this field of beautiful flowers. Fortunately her mom brought along a whole pack of power pellets…jelly beans of every color, to match the rainbow of flowers stretching out in front of them.

“Hey mom, let’s try to find a flower for every color of the rainbow, and take their pictures!”

“What a great idea!” Anna’s mom says, “When you are all grown up, these pictures will remind us of this amazing day!” Anna’s mom appreciates that Anna would rather take pictures than pick flowers. They learned recently that flowers are an important part of making seeds, and seeds are how plants reproduce and survive. If everyone picked wildflowers, we might not have any left to enjoy, but pictures are good forever and don’t hurt a thing.

And so the search for a rainbow of flowers begins. 

There is the red paintbrush, “click, click” goes the camera. 

Indigo lupine and yellow arnica, “click, click” goes the camera. 

“Ok, Anna, what colors are we missing?”

Anna murmurs her rainbow song, and checks off colors on her fingers. “Orange! Green! Blue! Viiiiioooooollllleeetttt!”  Anna sings.

Anna and her mom continue down the trail, and come to a place where a creek crosses the trail. There are different flowers here, where it is wet. They find a long, stalky green flower – they’ll have to look it up later. “Click click” goes the camera. They find a big, bright orange, speckled flower – a tiger lily. And a purple flower with lots of petals. Anna’s mom suspects that the purple one might be an aster. 

“All we need now is blue!” Anna and her mom are stumped. They had already decided that the lupine is indigo, but they haven’t seen any truely blue flowers yet. 

The two make their way to a place where jumbles of rocks lead up to a ridge. Anna starts to climb – her favorite activity. She climbs the first set of rocks, and as she crests the top she spies something amazing – a blue, almost green-blue, tiny flower. She never would have seen it if she hadn’t climbed the rocks or been so close to the ground – now that she looks more carefully, there are quite a few of these tiny blue-green flowers. 

“Mom! Come up here! You have to! There are blue flowers!” Anna’s mom is skeptical, but she is also a good sport, so she carefully climbs up next to Anna, “Wow! What an amazing find! I haven’t ever seen a flower like this, Anna!”

After arriving back at home, Anna and her mom investigate. It turns out that the flower is called a glaucous gentian, a tundra plant, that is thought to be very rare in the Okanogan, and only found on the highest peaks! They are excited to learn more about how and why this pretty turquoise flower comes to be here, and wouldn’t you know,  there is a podcast episode all about it. They settle in to listen to Islands in the Ice, with George Thornton!Learn all about Islands in the Ice as well as other natural history topics on Okanogan Highlands Alliance’s Highland Wonders Podcast. You can find episodes and more nature detective stories at okanoganhighlands.org/education/highland-wonders/ or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts.

Glaucous Gentian, rare (and turquoise!) plant found on nunataks in the Okanogan.

Podcast! Wild Mushrooms of the Okanogan S2:E1

with Helen Lau, botanist with the US Forest Service

Listen to Wild Mushrooms
Anna, Nature Detective. Illustration by: Diana Weddle

Okanogan Highlands Alliance (OHA) is thrilled to announce the start of season 2 of the Highland Wonders Podcast: an opportunity to learn about the natural history of the Okanogan from the comfort of your home, car or skis! Over the course of this winter, monthly episodes will focus on the life that makes the Okanogan such a unique and beautiful place, starting with the Wild Mushrooms of the Okanogan! You can find episodes here, or wherever you normally get your podcasts.

Each episode will be accompanied by a nature detective story, where a younger audience can follow along as Anna, Nature Detective, uses her imagination and explores the podcast’s subject.

The stories and podcasts will be posted to the OHA website (okanoganhighlands.org) and on the following podcast apps: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts and RadioPublic. Please read, listen (rate the podcast on your favorite app) and enjoy!

Anna, Nature Detective

Season 2, Episode 1: Wild Mushrooms of the Okanogan

Last year, Jack the Nature Detective took us along on his adventures in the Okanogan Highlands, as he explored with his family and learned all about local wildlife, from grouse to bats to owls to bighorn sheep to common loons. This year, Jack is off to kindergarten, and in a solemn ceremony that took place at the end of August, Jack presented his cousin, Anna, with her very own Nature Detective tools and an official badge. Let’s get to know Anna!

Anna is a different kind of Nature Detective than Jack. Where Jack is cautious and careful, Anna is daring and precocious, where Jack is quiet and observant, Anna spends half her time singing and the other half chatting. Where Jack is particular about calling things by their proper name, Anna makes up her own names for her discoveries. She LOVES animals, and she is the kid who can catch the cat that no one else can. She loves exploring things close up, touching them, peering at them through her Nature Detective hand lens. Sometimes, things that can’t run away suit Anna’s detective style best, and so, this month, Anna finds herself exploring the mushroom world!

“Hey mom, what are these slimy things?” Anna hollers from the back yard.

“Ohhhh noooo, not again!” her mom remembers back to the week before when Anna brought two heaping handfuls of deer droppings into the kitchen. She runs outside to find Anna poking at a perfect circle of mushrooms growing in the backyard. “Oh, how pretty!” Anna’s mom says “I think that’s called a fairy ring.”

Anna gasps, “a fairy ring? Made by fairies? Let’s check it out!” She pulls out her hand lens and looks at the top of one mushroom. It’s smooth, brown and slippery. She looks at the stem, tan and shaggy. Then she looks at the underside of the mushroom top. “Wow! What are those stripey things?” Anna and her mom look carefully at the mushroom, and then Anna draws what she sees in her notebook. Later on, they look in a book and find that the top of the mushroom is called the cap, the stem is called the stem, and the stripes underneath the cap are called gills.

“So… mushrooms have gills… like fish. And a cap, like an umbrella. And I don’t know why, but they grow in a circle like a fairy would make. I’ll call this a Fairy Gillyhat!” Anna says. Anna and her mom go and wash their hands, because, as their book told them, some mushrooms can be poisonous. From that day on, Anna finds mushrooms all over the place – growing on tree trunks, in the grass, on logs in the forest, everywhere! But why are they everywhere? And why are some poisonous, but some you can eat? What do mushrooms eat? Anna has lots of questions, and luckily for her, Helen Lau, of the US Forest Service has lots of answers in the latest episode of the Highland Wonders Podcast!

Learn all about Wild Mushrooms of the Okanogan (and catch any Season 1 episodes that you may have missed) at: okanoganhighlands.org/education/highland-wonders/ or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts.

Season 2 of the Highland Wonders Podcast is supported by Humanities Washington and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moose In Washington: Living on the Edge

…with Carrie Lowe of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife

Friday, September 24, 2021 at 7:15pm at the Tonasket Elementary School Parking Lot

Photo Credit: Carrie Lowe

Moose: they live alongside us, from the valley floor to the highlands, and despite their  enormous size, are only rarely seen. Join Carrie Lowe, wildlife biologist with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to learn about the life history, population trends and challenges facing moose in our area.

Carrie Lowe works with game and nongame species in Spokane, Lincoln, and Whitman Counties.  Prior to coming to Washington in 2013, Carrie spent time teaching at an outdoor science school in North Carolina, and worked on a variety of research projects, including loggerhead sea turtles in Georgia, mesocarnivores in the Sierra Nevada, black bears in Louisiana, grizzly bears in Montana, and bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Hope College in her hometown of Holland, MI and her M.S. in Wildlife & Fisheries Science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

 Join OHA in a unique, free community event – enjoy Carrie’s engaging in-person talk from a blanket, a camp chair or your vehicle, listen through your FM radio!

Questions? jen@okanoganhighlands.org

COVID Precautions will be in place: social distancing, individually wrapped desserts available by donation

2021 Annual Membership Meeting: June 24 4:30pm on Zoom

Join us via Zoom for OHA’s 2021 Annual Membership Meeting! Check in on recent and upcoming events and our work in mine monitoring, habitat restoration and education. Ask questions, share ideas, and visit with OHA’s board and staff.

We will also be conducting elections for three board positions – OHA’s seven board members are elected by the membership and serve for 2-year terms.

We hope to see you there!

For the meeting link, send an email request to: info@okanoganhighlands.org

Intelligent Trees: the Documentary, Drive In Film!

Join OHA in learning about how trees (yes, trees) communicate, and leave with a whole new perspective on forests!

This event is free (thanks to our sponsors, George Thornton and Lee Miller), but space is limited, so reserve your space by clicking here.

Come Early (6:45-7:15) to park and get set up. Sound will be broadcast through your FM radio.

Film starts at 7:30

If you would like to help OHA provide free educational events to our community by sponsoring one of our drive-ins or educational events, contact Jen and Sarah at: info@okanoganhighlands.org

Can’t wait to see you there!

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