OWL HOUSE, CHAPTER TWO

You may remember a photo of Mitch, last year, attaching such a house to one of the trees back behind the Heritage lawn? This time, we wished to have the house located where we could see it, and, more importantly, to allow the owls easy hunting for the voles. Mitch and Allen got busy with this pole, some cement, Larry’s tractor, and various tools, and mounted the box about 50 yards west of the garden, and in view from our living room. I was away at the time, so don’t have a photo of the action. Sorry.

We hope to attract a barn owl to this new home. Unfortunately, Cornell Labs won’t allow me to load a photo of this guy to show you, but here’s what they say about him: “American Barn Owls require large areas of open land over which to hunt. This can either be marsh, grasslands, or mixed agricultural fields. For nesting and roosting, they prefer quiet cavities, either in trees or man-made structures such as barns or silos. Pale overall with dark eyes, they have a mix of buff and gray on the head, back, and upperwings, and are white on the face, body, and underwings. When seen at night they can appear all white.” That sounds very cool! Here’s hoping one will find us.

We’ve been waiting to learn what Phoenix Habitats has to say about working with us, and yesterday we got a long report from them. It’s, well, huge. We’d reached out to them in the hope of finding expert help with addressing the stand of oak which divides our property between savannah and floodplain. Way back when, we’d been advised by NRCS that the trees needed management. Right. By whom? How? Obviously, we would need professional help, but then got busy elsewhere. Which brings us up to now.

Phoenix’s report began with drone survey photos of the property. “Tools,” they explain, “for understanding vegetation and hydrologic behaviors.” Never having seen the whole of our property, as from the air, the photos are surprising. The HAW (Hundred Acre Wood), imagined by me as a square, is more a rectangle with a right-angle triangle perched on the east half. Our house looks like its own small rectangle of green, with the sheds and garden included. The streams, as of April, are bare trickles of water, their banks outlined with vegetation. This view suggests that we need to discover exactly where our land intersects Muddy Creek. There must have been a survey when we brought the property? We’ll have a look.

The report goes on to document weather averages, by temperature, rainfall, available daylight. As expected, nothing surprising. It rains, here, in the Willamette Valley. I remember, back at grad school in North Carolina, telling people what it’s like in Oregon. “It’s always about 45 degrees. We’re on the 45th parallel,” I’d tell them. Not that far off.

Wind speed and direction. Slope Aspect. Slope Percent. This is getting pretty specific with regard to those oak trees back behind the house. Elevation contours, Elevation Hillshade. But these people know what they’re doing, and we’re very impressed with this deep knowledge of this place we call home.

More on Micro-Watersheds and Stream Channels, and then, at last, Vegetation Master Plan.

Here it’s clear that we haven’t understood precisely what we’ve requested. Yes, we’d been quite happy to engage them in addressing the whole property, as per our first quest, back in 2014 when we bought the property. We wanted to engage in habitat restoration in a kind of Nature Conservancy paradigm. Looks like this is what may be possible after all. Celebration. Yes! The help we need. But?

Oregon White Oak Savanna. Check. Wet Swale Flowering Shrubs? Upland Wildflower Prairie? Lower Wet Wildflower Meadow?

Wait. Flowering meadows? Well, sure, but what about the cows? What level of management will flowering meadows, cited in this Vegetation Master Plan require?

On to the Water Conservation Master Plan (draft). Silt Ponds. Check Dams. Stream Log Structures for aquatic habitat. Keyway Dams. Terracing.

This all sounds aspirational, amazing, and yes, huge. Would Phoenix do this work, or would we need to find contractors? Would we be able to find grants for this work? And anyway, what about Ryan’s cows? Where do they fit in? And what about those oak trees we were advised to manage? How many years would such a program require to effect?

We’re meeting with Ian Hunter, Principal Restoration Ecologist at Phoenix, next week, and will be able to have some idea of when, how, how much. I wish I could show you the photos! At the moment, my website is not my best friend, my blog fussy and unfriendly, and I need a sit down with a grandkid somewhere for help. Nope, don’t see any grandkids around, as they are all either in Altadena, Seattle, New York or London.