on radio and podcast: calendula, and winter birds

MY CALENDULA SEEDS arrived in the mail this week. These beneficial-insect-attracting, edible, brilliant flowers were the subject of this week’s public-radio show and podcast, “A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach,” during which I also spoke to bird and dragonfly expert Dennis Paulson, a Seattle-based scientist, about what birds are being seen in big numbers where this winter. You can listen in to the latest show right now, or read on.this week’s guestTHE Ph.D. zoologist Dennis Paulson is also a gardener, and directed the Slater Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound, where he still creates this blog that I enjoy for its accounts of notable species. He is also an adviser to the BirdNote public-radio show that I’ve been collaborating with to answer your birding questions. And yes, that’s a dragonfly on his nose (left); he wrote the book on them, and will be back in another show to reveal their mysteries.

Dennis’s recent blog post about pine siskins (top photo) in recent abundance–a favorite species here in my garden some lucky winters-of-plenty, too–detailed the relationship the birds have with red alder trees (Alnus rubra), and how their beaks are perfectly formed to fit into the tight spaces in the alder’s conelike structures and get at the little seeds.(I love such evidence of co-evoilutionary strategies between birds and plants.)

Also appearing in greater-than-“normal” numbers this year, at least in the Pacific Northwest: snowy owls. “Voles. look out,” says Dennis (whom I told I have voles to spare should they run short out West; happy to dispatch a truckload from my garden anytime).

my calendula fever

I’M GROWING CALENDULA again, I reported recently on the blog, and to start off the latest radio show, I

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