Oregon Field Guide

Hummingbird Flight, Malheur Refuge Carp, Return to Mount St. Helens

Hummingbirds aren’t just fun to watch, they're also on the cutting edge of science. The Oregon Field Guide team heads to the University Portland campus to see how scientists are studying hummingbird flight. Their research is being used in both sports medicine, and robotics. In the future tiny robotic vehicles using characteristics from hummingbird flight could be used for surveillance or in search and rescue operations. As the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge turns 100 years old it faces a serious crisis. An invasion by hundreds of thousands of carp threatens this linchpin in the Pacific Flyway. Trumpeter Swan, Whitefaced Ibis and Egret's are just a few of the many birds you can see at the Malheur refuge. Sadly you will not see many birds at Malheur lake as it has been overrun by introduced carp, but efforts are underway to help prevent further habitat loss. After three years of continuous eruption, Mount St. Helens has gone quiet but has not stopped changing. A new glacier has formed in the mouth of the crater and continues to expand. Scientists from the US Geological Survey have deployed a variety of equipment, allowing them to constantly monitor this dynamic environment. Take a rare trip into the crater to see what scientists continue to learn from the Northwest’s most active volcano.