Increase your bioregional IQ during our first virtual speaker series event of 2021, "Winter Wonder." Pour yourself your favorite beverage and join us to dabble in the ecology of Southern Oregon with Animal Tracking in the Snow (presented by Kristi Mergenthaler) and Hawks of Winter (Dick Ashford). Enjoy special guest appearances highlighting art inspired by winter landscapes, including a myth for the darkest time of the year (Libby VanWyhe) and poems celebrating the season (Dr. Pepper Trail). The program will run for approximately 1 hour, with Q&A with the presenters to follow.
This virtual event is being offered free of charge online via Zoom. Please register for this event in order to receive login information and any updates. Then grab a hot cocoa or toddy and cozy up for a night of winter wonder.
About the presenters and topics:
Snowshoe hare tracks photo by Marilylle Soveran from Flickr Creative Commons.
Kristi Mergenthaler will share some tips about one of her favorite winter hobbies: winter tracking. Critters can be elusive and hard to spot – active at night or living mostly underground – so discovering how to read the tracks and signs of our animal neighbors can be illuminating and a delight. This presentation will provide an overview of tracking in the snow. Learn which critter is most likely to use your cross-country ski tracks as a walking route and about the most common tracks found in the local Siskiyou & Cascade Mountains. Kristi serves as SOLC's Stewardship Director.
Rough-legged Hawk dark morph photo by Dick Ashford.
Dick Ashford writes: "Hawks have charisma. It's a year-long, life-long thing, but we see them (and feel it) best during winter, when more hawks are present, and we get better looks. And then there are the 'morphs'. At the end of a hawkwatching outing, participants often say that the best part of the day was 'all the morphs'. What's a morph, anyhow? During our brief time together, we won't take a deep dive into the subject; we will, however, get our feet wet with some vocabulary and factoids, accompanied by beautiful images of (you guessed it) dark hawks." Dick spent his career in the techno-geek world of systems engineering. Upon retirement, he "needed a hobby". A White-tailed Kite showed him the way. He is an emeritus board member with the Klamath Bird Observatory, a former board member of the American Birding Association, and a continuing student of birds and birding.
Libby VanWyhe, the Nature Center Manager at Ashland's North Mountain Park, writes: "We'll deepen our relationship with nature through story telling! Humans use narratives to communicate hidden relationships between ourselves and the natural world. Traditional ecological knowledge demonstrates the power of stories to cultivate a sense of wonder and empathy for the non-human world."
Dr. Pepper Trail, an ornithologist and forensics scientist, will share some of his winter-related poetry inspired by local landscapes. Pepper Trail is a well-known southern Oregon naturalist and poet. His collection, "Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems" celebrates the beauty and diversity of our region, especially the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
