Category Archives: Uncategorized

Road Trip – A River of Grass

That name’s not mine, but it surely describes the Everglades and Big Cypress. A million acres of flat-as-a-pancake land, so flat that 20 miles from the ocean we saw a sign that said 3′ elevation. The vast amount of water that falls here each summer flows about 100 feet per day towards the Gulf, and subtle channels in this 100-mile wide “river” create very interesting “islands” of grass, cypress and pines. You can’t really walk out into it because it’s wet, so kayaks and canoes are the way to see it. We’ve messed it up pretty well, but there is plenty to see that’s still the way it should be.

We’ve seen many wood storks (one shown here) that are interesting critters. They sweep their bills back and forth in muddy water searching for fish. When they ‘feel’ one, their bill snaps shut at 25 millionth of a second, the fastest reflex of any bird or animal. And I thought I ate fast!

Nancy’s gotten some wonderful photography of this place that’ll find it’s way to her website, but for now we’re in New Orleans and I’ll have a post of  this crazy-fun place soon. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Road Trip – A Fantastic, Intriguing Place

Well, that was fun. 3200 miles in 6 ½ days and 12 states. Everything from a spring blizzard on the Continental Divide to thunderstorms along the Missouri. We then camped in De Soto Beach Park near Tampa, Gulf side of Florida. This place was voted the number one beach in the US a few years ago, but we enjoyed the backside of our campsite, a mangrove tidal swamp with wildlife everywhere. Mangroves are crazy plants, with little muddy breathing fingers waving at the sky and roots attached to the trunks half way up the trunk.

 We then headed south to Big Cypress (great closeups of alligators) and Everglades (great closeups of no-see’ms). Didn’t get to see a crocodile or panther, but saw two anhingas, a bunch of swallow-tailed kites and almost countless skimmers out in the Gulf at Flamingo. South Florida still has a good charm about her if you know where to look, and even though the hurricane crunched Chocoloskee, it’s still very funky and fun. I recommend it for a view of ‘old’ Florida. Google Earth has some wonderful photos if you’re interested in that isolated patch of land. The entire town is built on an Indian shell mound. The 100-yr old Smallwood Store is still there and functioning. So far it’s all been good, with our new trailer just as fun as we thought it would be. We’re getting 17.5mpg with the air conditioning on, and in the afternoons, the air better be on!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Road Trip – Pronghorns All Over the Place

Second edition of the Road Trip. Going through Wyoming and South Dakota, we were amazed at the numbers of pronghorns. Hundreds! We were most happy to see so many, more than either of us have ever seen. White pelicans too, along with bald eagles, lots of magpies (of course), and a nice bunch of prairie dogs where they probably shouldn’t be.

We’re in western Missouri now, following the Missouri River south and watching a big Gulf storm pass through. The forests are just full of redbud and looking great. This painting in the car isn’t all that easy. The roads are just too bumpy. But I’ll continue. Oh, Canada geese just flew right by the open window, inviting Harry our Cat to join them. He’d do it, I’m sure, if only his toes would cooperate.

Larry

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

Road Trip

Road Trip

Monday began a really good road trip for us. We’re driving from Port Townsend (just about the most northwestern place you can be in the Lower 48), and heading for the Tampa, the Everglades and Keys, the most southeasterly place in America. Any way you cut it, that’s more than 7,000 miles from our door – back to our door. Don’t ask how much gas that is, we haven’t figured it out ourselves. This trip is for some business, and we’re also picking up a new Scamp travel trailer near Tampa. Yah, we know what you’re thinking, but we look at it as a great adventure, and we’d like to share it.

So, I thought it might be fun to throw a few little paintings, so here’s the first day. After heading for Seattle and taking the Bainbridge Ferry, we headed ‘up the hill’. I love going over the Cascades, and Snoqualmie Pass was still in winter. Just a couple of miles from the top, this view always thrills me, and it did this time too. On the far side of the valley, you can see the other, downhill, lanes heading for Seattle. It’s a huge view, with peaks all around. I did this little sketch later jigglying along in the car

Tuesday we ran smack into a blizzard. Coming over the Continental Divide in Montana we “enjoyed” five hours of snow driving. Past that, we’re now in Billing for the night, and heading for Sheridan Wyoming. When I have another painting, I’ll send it along.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

Crows Going, Going…

Each evening I see them, about 25 to 30  – northwestern crows, all heading someplace for the night. As the sun sets behind the Olympic Mountains, this bunch comes out of Chimacum Creek estuary, goes right over our meadow and moves on to someplace only known to the crows. As they go by, they’re constantly exchanging hoarse caws and croaks. I imagine it to be something like “What did you do today?” or “Boy that cockle was sure good, and I got it and not you, caw, caw, caw!” Or possibly “Who decided we had to head this direction every evening? Who’s in charge of this murder of crows anyway?”

Northwestern crows are a different species than the normal American crow. Slightly smaller and completely focused on the saltwater shorelines of the Pacific Northwest, we often see these birds doing what they’ve learned to do to make their living. At low tide, northwestern crows rummage around beach rocks until they find an unsuspecting clam. Dislodging it, a bird will fly straight up about thirty feet and let it drop onto the rocks below. It may take more than one try, but once the shell has broken or even just cracked, the crow has dinner. It’s evidently a learned trait that young crows are taught, because we’ll see adults showing the kids how to go about it. Dinner on the half-shell.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on paper board, 5″ x 7 1/2″ and is $85 unframed.
This wood frame and a double mat makes it a total of $125 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print. Other mats and frames are also available.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
While I painted this in my studio back home, we’re currently in Hawaii on Oahu’s North Shore – and watching some amazing waves. Thanks, Jeff! Your kama’ina home is lovely. I’ll try to send some photos of these in a few days. It takes some kind of crazy person with a death wish to go out there and ride those monsters – and I sure wish it were me!

Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

“Vanna White” – 20 Years Remembered

Painted just last year, my two best friends, “Vanna White” and Nancy in an interpretive painting for Olympic National Park. For decades to come, visitors will see but not fully understand what this painting represents to us.

I’m greaving  today over a separation from my second best friend, “Vanna White”. For 20 years and a third of a million miles, as a research vehicle I’ve driven this VW Westfalia Camper to just about every park in the Western United States. We’ve camped in her in places you wouldn’t think a 2-wheeled car could go,  talked to her like a person, and some people thought I would be buried in her – a ready-made coffin! 

One favorite story is the burned-up water pump-event north of Bakersfield. We got her stopped before the engine blew up, and were hauled into town by a good-hearted Chicano tow operator. Saturday night, all shops were closed (and there’s almost no civilized camping in Bakerfield), so he took us over to a friend’s house for the night, where we slept in the driveway in a neighborhood filled with Spanish-speaking kids and dogs. Early morning, our new friend found a pump somewhere and had it in by nightfall –  and event that included tasty food being brought over by the neighbors. I remember lots of fried chicken and lots of kids, all very interested in who we were and what we did. Vanna was like that – drawing a crowd no matter where we landed.

Now, while my Dad would buy a new car every three years no matter what, we camped more times than I can count in Vanna during the past 7,300 days, from Mexican beaches to Banff in the Canadian Rockies. I wrote park guides in her, painted watercolors on picnic tables and woke up with snow on the roof.  Burning through 17,000 gallons of gas, most parts were replaced as we went along. Cosmetic surgery and new paint (by me – after all, I am an artist and own a spray rig), but also a new engine, transmission, three clutches, four or five water pumps, three stereos and more carpets than I can remember. And, like another Vanna White we all have known for decades, she just never seemed to age!

2006: Here’s Vanna next to a 90′ mural we were working on in 29 Palms California. We painted two murals here, a decade apart, and Vanna was there both times.

And so, after driving her a distance of from here to the Moon and half way back, we recently decided to find her a new home. It didn’t take long!  Just a couple of days on Craigs List and yesterday Vanna went off to Portland with a delightful younger couple who, we’re sure, will have the time of their lives continuing on with this same boundless spirit of adventure. AND, I’ve been told of a local support group I can go to of former Westfalia owners.

And why did we do this heart-wrenching thing? Well, we now have a little Scamp trailer waiting for us in the Tampa area. That’ll be a 6,600 mile trip to bring her home – and a good start on the next 340,000-mile adventure!

Vanna on her last adventure with us. California’s Anza Borrego Desert State Park, December 2009.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

Flying Baked Potatoes

Winter-Murrelet
Flying Baked Potatoes
How a little seabird helped save some big trees

(Published in 48-North Magazine last month. It’s a pretty good read, I think, but it’s long enough that I posted the entire thing on the web blog.) I also think I’ve worked out all the bugs on this new software, but if it’s not working for you, please bear with me.

Here’s the story!
“Things are bad – really BAD around here!” he said, “And it’s all because of that stupid owl and the purple murel-thing that shut down the logging.” “You know, that STUPID purple. …bird!” Docks are interesting places, aren’t they? There I was, just heading for our boat and now I was thrust straight into some big environmental debate. Didn’t even know this guy very well, but after I heard his blathering, I took a deep breath and realized I probably needed to stop and do some ‘splainin’ – as Desi used to say. For some reason, I continue to think that a little honest and friendly education might just result in social change at the ballot box, so: “It’s a marbled murrelet,” I answered, “I saw one just the other day out in the bay, fishing with some cormorants. Probably a juvenile from the Olympics or North Cascades. Got a minute? I’ll tell you about them.”

Flying-Murrelet

Marbled murrelets! For 30 years I’ve heard them lovingly described by biologists as a flying baked potato with a beak. But not just ANY flying baked potato, for this little chubby ocean bird was once America’s biggest ornithological mystery. While we were putting men on the moon and gloating about how smart we were, no one knew where these local birds even nested. Science ‘discovered’ the murrelet in 1789, but it took another 185 years for us to find a single nest! (Thank goodness murrelets knew where their nests were, or they’d be even worse off than they are.) And while we knew that Alaskan marbled murrelets nested on mossy rocky cliffs, no murreletnest had ever been found between San Francisco and Southwestern British Columbia at the south end of their range. The birds were often seen oddly out of place flying around the big trees in coastal old-growth forests and loggers referred to them as “fog doves,” but why were they there if they live on the ocean?

Then, in 1974, in the Santa Cruz area of California, a tree climber almost stepped on a chick in the canopy of an old-growth redwood, and the mystery was solved. Instead of nesting on mossy rocks, to increase their range southward the birds had adapted their nesting habits to the huge horizontal upper limbs of the giant coastal old-growth, often hundreds of feet in the air, and sometimes upwards of 45 miles from salt water. They hunt for small fish like herring by day in the ocean and return to their nesting duties in the evening. And, what caused this dock guy to think murrelets were Armageddon is that without old-growth trees, murrelets wouldn’t be able to nest on the West Coast of the Lower 48. It’s not just big trees they need, but big horizontal branches thick with moss and lichens, and trees don’t become like this until they’re centuries old. Because of this, and all the logging we’ve done in the past 200 years, the marbled murrelet is now listed as federally threatened and state endangered in Washington (12,000 birds), Oregon (7500) and California (4500). Some scientists believe that it’s not whether murrelets will become extinct, but when, because old forests are now few and far between, and what’s left have badly fragmented murrelet populations. Sometime later this century, when the only birds remaining are small population pockets in our national parks, this strange and unusual sea bird will simply not be viable as a species any more. And if that happens, I hope I’m not here to witness it.

I have some interesting connections with this bird, the one loggers loved to hate and conservationists used as a poster child to halt logging the last few percent of coastal old-growth forests. During the logging turmoil 25 years ago, I spent some time helping research these birds down in California’s coastal redwoods where the world’s tallest trees hug a foggy shoreline. Only 2.5% of the old-growth redwoods remain, and, as an artist I helped draw attention to the murrelets as a way to raise public awareness to the speedy demise of both trees and birds. It was the good, bad and the ugly. Ugly, because, as an artist, I was black-listed by timber organizations. Good, because business was good because of it. And not so bad when I spent one dark and foggy morning at 4:30 am up Redwood National Park’s Lost Man Creek valley, intently listening and watching for murrelets flying from nests to ocean. I remember that listening to murreletcalls in the redwoods reminded me of sailing. Often, when you’re cruising along with little wind to drivethe boat, you can hear that definitive oceanic call of keer, keer, keer. I’ll bet you’ve heard it too. Those are the bird songs of the ocean, not of the forest. I wasn’t a scientist, but an artist just doing his job of observing and responding, but when the National Park purchased one of my murrelet paintings to present to Bush One’s visiting Interior Secretary, I thought I had possibly made a remarkable coup in nature conservation. Now here was art opening the eyes of the powerful. Not so, one park official dryly whispered. This guy was just a patronage placement, a Midwestern pig farmer that didn’t care anything about birds unless they were stewed, fried and on a plate. Where is that painting now – I’d like to know.

Nest-Sitting-Murrelet

Murrelets have a definite ‘look’ to them on the water and so they’re easy to identify. About the size of an American robin, they’re smaller than gulls and cormorants, but here’s the key. They always hold their short bills slightly upward at a different angle than any other seabird, like the graceful angle of a schooner’s bowsprit. Fast fliers with rapid wing beats both in the air and underwater, they spend most of their lives in coastal waters where they court, feed, loaf, molt and preen. These long-lived birds only visit old-growth forests when they do nesting duties, where nests aren’t built but rather squished into place in the moss. Only one egg usually once a year is laid. Incubation lasts about a month with both parents incubating the egg in alternating 24-hour shifts, and chicks fledge in another month. Summer adults have sooty-brown upperparts and are lighter brown below, colors that make them highly camouflaged against the giant trees they’re nesting on. In winter, adults and young become brownish-gray with white wing patches that more closely match ocean colors of wind on waves.

So, let’s say you’re a very young murrelet only a month old. You were born in the top of a two hundred foot tall Douglas-fir up the Dosewallips River in the Olympics. Your parents had chosen THE nest tree just around a sharp river bend near Little Mystery Peak, where they had located a big mossy branch maybe fifteen stories off the ground. The definition of ‘nest’ is pretty casual here; because it’s just a thick bunch of moss your parents had smooshed into a shallow cavity. When you were born, your egg was pale speckled green, the exact same color of the limb’s moss in spring, not like the dried-out brown stuff of late summer or the lush soft green of winter. It wasn’t much of a nest, and so your parents rarely left you unattended so wandering-babes wouldn’t stagger off into thin air. Small fish your parents brought up to eight times a day ended up creating quite a crusty edge to the platform that helped keep you from falling off. And there were other dangers too. Steller’s jays, crows and ravens didn’t often come here before, but thanks to the nearby road that now brings campers and their food, these birds now threaten young murrelets sitting exposed on mossy branches – so you instinctively stayed low. After a month, wings had grown flight feathers and you sensed you were ready to explore. It felt like you could fly like your parents – but how to learn? And where would you go? Then, one evening just after dusk, and with one death-defying jump into space, flight had to be learned in a half second or a much squashed murrelet would have resulted. Somehow it all came together to happen properly, and you were on your way.

It seems a fairly lame way to survive as a species, but you did it anyway – you just walked off that branch and as you went going down at 32 feet per second, you figured it out fast – and in 30 minutes and 20 miles you made your first awkward sea landing in the Hood Canal. I say 30 minutes, because murrelets normally fly at about 50 mph. They havebeen clocked on radar at over 100, so in theory you could make that 20 miles in five minutes, but a first-flight-flier probably wouldn’t do this. In fact, you’d be lucky to do it at all.

As you learned to fly through the giant forest in growing darkness, alone and without your parents as guides, you somehow steered properly towards an ocean you had never seen. In doing this, you were unaided by anything you’d ever witnessed before, and you began a new life you didn’t know existed, began to catch fish untaught by parents you’ll likely never see again, and eventually you’ll nest in a treetop miles from your watery home. Remarkable!

So, when sailing in Puget Sound, the Straits of Juan de Fuca or outer coast all the way down to Santa Cruz, keep your eyes peeled for a small and chubby seabird, head held up like a schooner’s bowsprit and possibly with a small herring in its bill. If its summer, chances are good that it will soon be flying over some of the tallest trees on Earth to hand that little herring over to a chick on a mossy branch hundreds of feet in the air.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently up to.

Warming Up With Tampa Bay Manatees

No painting this week – we made a quick trip down to Tampa over the last few days. Actually, I’m pretty lucky to be writing this, as our return yesterday involved a 2.5 hr tarmac hold at Dallas, de-icing and watching a record blizzard drop a foot of snow there. Ours was one of the lucky few planes to get off the ground, and it was pure joy to get back to 50 degrees in Seattle and Port Townsend.

 

But back to Tampa.
While there, we heard about the weird Florida weather and how it’s affecting the local manatees. These 1000lb ‘sea cows’ need shallow water that’s about 75-80 degrees F, and the Gulf right now is 58. So, what are the manatees doing? No, they can’t just go to Florida for the winter! The local coal-fired power plant has a 78 degree outfall into a nearby river and mangrove forest, and the manatees have all gone there to hang out. We counted about 150 of them, but locals said upwards of 300 have been spotted at once. The power plant has built a pretty good viewing platform that gets you to within about 20 feet of some of these soft giants, so you really get to study them. Also enjoying the warmth was a six foot shark and a bunch of rays ‘flying’ around between the bigger beasts. It was quite a show.
Manatees are very interesting critters. They normally spend upwards of half a day sleeping on the shallow bottoms of bays and rivers, only breathing once every 10-20 minutes. They don’t exhale to descend, but compress stored air, and in this way can stay down very long periods of time. They can eat upwards of 100 lbs of ‘greens’ a day. Manatees are not doing very well because of invasive species that are choking their out their watery homes – as well as being hit by boat propellers, so this was a real treat to see.

Thanks for reading this week. I’m back to painting, so I’ll tell you about that soon.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints and other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently doing.

Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our emails – or just ‘talk’ with us.

Singing Marsh Wren

I’m still working on the mural project for that Carson River, Nevada visitor center. A singing marsh wren is featured, so this is a warm-up painting. It’s sitting in some cattails, so I needed some research for those too. These (in the painting) are a late fall variety, where the seeds have dried and are being blown off by storm winds – but the strap-like leaves are still hanging in there. I like the way the wren’s fluffed-up chest and throat mimics the cattail fluff.

Singing Marsh Wren
 This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently.

Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us. Or, there’s a link below to unsubscribe or subscribe.

Surprise Canyon and Palm Bowl

The blog’s been silent! We’ve been away for a few weeks, hiking in the Southern California desert and visiting family and friends. No painting this week, but this was a hike so exceptional I wanted to share it.

East of San Diego, Anza Borrego State Park is California’s largest state park, so big all the other state parks could fit in it with room left over. Most visitors see the palms near the visitor center, but there are many other backcountry native palm groves that have few visitors except mountain lions and coyotes. Driving 50 miles south of the visitor center we found a vague sandy turnoff, parked the camper and began hiking up Surprise Canyon – and what a surprise it was. First one grove, then another, and finally the canyon opened up into an entire bowl full of them – 100’s of native California fan palms. We had never seen so many in one place.

It wasn’t the number of palms, but the cool and ethereal silence we felt here, and at the same time, the place was alive and vibrant. You could clearly see open areas where countless generations of Indians had made their homes under the trees. Dates were hanging everywhere, and several dozen western bluebirds and finches were flying from tree to tree, munching as fast as they could and chattering away. Date seed piles were everywhere too, showing that coyotes hang out here enjoying the same fruits, and sure enough, one big alpha male studied us from the ridgetop. Then, Nancy spotted a little nest on the ground, blown out of a palm by a recent storm we were sure. Judging by the size, it could have been made by a gnatcatcher or maybe a bushtit, but if you look carefully, you’ll see that every piece of the nest is actually a fishhook cactus spine. They’re all intertwined and tightly fitted, and each ‘hook’ is stiff as a needle. You’d need pliers to cut it. We can’t imagine how a tiny bird could have managed this construction feat. Just getting close enough to grab the spine is one issue, but how the bird broke off each spine, brought it here and wove the nest is beyond reality. I pictured a bloody and punctured bird when it was finished, and, of course I hoped it was a male. I thought it amazingly smart because what predator would attack an armored nest like this? Any ideas?


So why are these palms here at all? Native California fan palms are usually found where water is forced to the surface by an underground solid rock ledge. They need their feet wet but tops in the sun – and brutal sun this is. Young palms have wicked red spines along each frond stem, but older trees don’t. It’s thought that Pleistocene mastodons couldn’t reach any higher that about 18 feet, and so young palms adapted spines to ward off the huge browsers. With Climate Change, who knows what will happen to these last few groves of our only native desert palm. They could easily go the way of the mastodon.