LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – April home sales in Lake County in April showed gains in terms of volume and price, according to a new report.

The Lake County Association of Realtors, or LCAOR, reported that the median sales price and the number of sales in April exceeded the March sales numbers.

The April median sales price was $235,000, which is the highest monthly median sales price since November 2016 when LCAOR reported a median of $255,000.

The 81 sales reported in April was the highest number of monthly sales since August of 2016 when 100 sales were recorded.

The April median sales price was 11.9 percent higher than the March 2017 median price of $210,000, and the 81 sales in April was 14.1 percent higher than the 71 sales in March.

On a year-over-year basis, April 2017 sales were 28.6 percent higher than the 63 sales in April 2016, the report showed. The April median price was 3.3 percent higher than the April 2016 median of $227,500.

“After a relatively slow start to 2017 activity is on the upswing,” said LCAOR President Bobby Dutcher. “Preliminary numbers in May are looking strong and we expect a lot of activity in June when LCAOR will be holding our countywide Open House Extravaganza.”

The extravaganza will take place on June 10. Dutcher encouraged prospective buyers will want to check www.lcaor.com to see what houses will be featured on that day.

LCAOR said financing mixes remained relatively the same from March to April, with conventional and FHA loans being used in 53 percent of the transactions and cash only financing being used on 26 percent of the deals.

Inventory levels remained below normal at 4.7 months of inventory. The normal level is considered to be 6.0 months of inventory, LCAOR said.

The California Association of Realtors, or CAR, reported that statewide sales in April totaled 406,300, down 2.4 percent from March and down 1.6 percent from April 2016.

However, California’s median home price in April was $536,750, up 3.7 percent from March and up 5.4 percent from April 2016. The April median was the highest statewide median since August of 2007.

Mortgage rates have fallen since early this year. The 30-year, fixed-mortgage interest rate averaged 4.05 percent in April, down from 4.20 percent in March but up from 3.69 percent in April 2016, according to Freddie Mac, CAR said.

The five-year, adjustable-rate mortgage interest rates dipped in April to an average of 3.15 percent, from 3.21 percent in March but was up from 2.90 percent in April 2016, according to the CAR report.

LAKE COUNTY NUMBERS AT A GLANCE

April 2017

Median price: $235,000

Median days to sell: 57

Units sold: 81

March 2017

Median price: $210,000

Median days to sell: 57

Units sold: 71

April 2016

Median price: $227,500

Median days to sell: 60

Units sold: 63

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

“What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.” – David Attenborough

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Wilderness is one of the most prominent features of Lake County, and that's why we have an open invitation to view birds in all of their various habitats year round.

A walk in an oak woodland awakens one’s senses with the rat-a-tat sounds of woodpeckers in action, or you may discern an unforgettable hawk's cry.

Strolling a stony stream's bank you may sight industrious flycatchers and swifts. Listen for their distinct calls interspersed with the sonorous sounds of the stream as it bounds over rocks, or as the creek's clear and bright waters chortle purposefully along.

As Vincent Van Gogh said, “One can never study nature too much and too hard.”

We live in the Pacific Flyway – the north-to-south migratory path that draws birds – and birders to our fair county.

With more than 300 species of birds viewed on Clear Lake alone, and, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, over 51 million birdwatchers in America, there is a lot of potential pleasure to experience here.

During your pursuit of passage into the valleys of Lake County you will encounter jewel-like hummingbirds, turkey vultures surfing the thermals, bluebirds, blue jays and a myriad of other avian species.

Clear Lake is a supreme source of bird watching. That fact was underscored recently, with a fantastic excursion on Ed Legan's pontoon boat ride up Cache Creek during Lake County's own Redbud Audubon Heron Days.

My husband and I boarded the boat along with other bird lovers at Shaw's Campground – a perfect place to launch your kayak, by the way – and toured up Cache Creek's oxbows along Anderson Marsh State Historic Park and Slater Island.

Our local Audubon Society, called Redbud Audubon, has been hosting Heron Days for 22 years. As stated on the group’s Web site, “If you have attended this event in past years, you know what a wonderful celebration of nature this event offers. The boat tours are a rare opportunity to see nature up close on beautiful Clear Lake.”

The National Audubon Society, a nonprofit, is thoroughly devoted to conservation, utilizing three components to bring forth its mission: education, science and grassroots support.

Named for John James Audubon, the famed ornithologist who wrote and illustrated “Birds of America,” there are about 500 local Audubon chapters in the United States who involve the public in the important Christmas Bird Count annually, along with Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Great Backyard Bird Count. Now you can find online avian data bases such as Audubon's eBird for observation and education.

Our cruise on the creek netted an impressive amount and variety of bird life. We were even privy to the sight of an otter who was as surprised to see us as we were, when we spotted it!

A juvenile green heron was sighted, along with many Great Blue Herons nesting, soaring above the cottonwoods majestically, and tending to their juveniles. Also seen were Canada geese, cormorants and white egrets who compose a stark contrast to the surroundings with their dazzling, angelic white feathers.

We saw grebes galore – both Western and Clark's grebes. They were seen diving for green strands of lake vegetation, which they then offer to their mate as ideal nesting material, we saw grebes “rushing” or dancing across the water, but mainly we saw Grebes gathered in large colonies, nesting.

These floating houses must not be disturbed during nesting time in the spring, as they may be home to between one and seven eggs.

The Western Grebe can be differentiated from another species of grebe found on Clear Lake, Clark's Grebe, by the black cap that extends along and below the eye.

The Western Grebe also has a more pointy, longer beak than that of the Clark's. Western Grebes have a wingspan of about 32 inches, and grow 21-29 inches in length.

Grebes are found not only in lakes, but also ponds and marshes. Their habitat includes estuaries and sea coasts in the winter season. According to ornithologists, there are 22 species of grebes found in the world.

For further information visit Redbud Audubon’s Web site or its Facebook page.

Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.

This week we consider key occurrences in the turbulent years leading up to the American Civil War.

May 21, 1856

It can be disheartening to watch what appears to be the complete, fiery tailspin of American Democracy replayed on news channels each day.

Of the three branches of our government, none catches the most ire from everyday Americans than the legislative. Our distrust of our legislature has almost become a stereotype, Congress itself the punchline to some sad joke about the dysfunctional nature of politics.

As sad as the gridlock in D.C. appears to us now, we can at least rest assured that we haven’t reached rock bottom quite yet. Let’s take some time today to remember that on this day in 1856, if we did not actually reach it, we came dangerously close to that bottom.

The decades leading up to the American Civil War read today like one long wailing cry of warning. Hindsight, they say, is 20/20 and from our clear-eyed perspective it’s difficult not to see each mistake made by politicians and radicals on both sides of the argument as inexorable stumbles towards the bloody conflict. That’s not to say that the war “had” to happen, just that given what led up to it, it’s no wonder that it did.

Although later it would become the foundation for the war, the “casus belli” for the victorious Union looking back on the conflict, slavery at the time was just one of many sore points between southern and northern politicians.

Both sides had their champions who, for the most part, fought with rhetoric and op-eds in newspapers rather than with fists and feet. As the war approached, however, that began to change.

Standing on the floor of the U.S. Senate on May 19, 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner harangued the pro-slavery politicians in what was admittedly one of the most brutal tongue-lashings given on either side of the argument.

In what today we remember as his “Crime Against Kansas” speech, Sen. Sumner lambasted his opponents for their illegal attempts to extend slavery to the territory of Kansas by sending wagons-full of southern settlers to the territory (among many other things).

Targeting two senators in particular – Stephen Douglas (future opponent to Lincoln in the 1860 Presidential race) and Andrew Butler – Sen. Sumner laid into them mercilessly. Butler was absent from the Senate and so he was spared some embarrassment, but Douglas sat nearby and received the full brunt of the five-hour long assault. You can read the speech in its entirety here.

In an age not far removed from the notions of courteous honor and chivalry, Sumner’s public words of criticism outraged the pro-slavery politicians. So much so, that one of them acted.

On this day in 1856, a kinsman of Butler, one Congressman Preston S. Brooks, approached Sumner on the floor of the Senate.

It was just days after his lecture and Sumner was attaching postage to copies of his “Crime Against Kansas” speech that he was going to send people when Congressman Brooks approached.

Without warning, Brooks slammed the heavy cane he was carrying against Sen. Sumner’s head. What followed was a cowardly beating of the unarmed Sumner.

Although he attempted to defend himself, the initial blow to the head had dazed Sen. Sumner.

After the minute-long assault, the triumphant Brooks walked unmolested from the Senate floor while his victim was carted out by friends.

Brooks survived a censure from the Senate, willingly resigned his post from the House and was promptly reelected by his adoring fans shortly thereafter. He later died at the young age of 37.

Meanwhile, after a long recovery, Sen. Sumner returned to the floor and served another 18 years in national politics.

Some have since pointed to this incident as a major shift in the argument over slavery. It is true, once something has broken, it can never be wholly mended – a line gets crossed that cannot be recrossed, at least not at the same place.

The assault on Sen. Sumner was certainly a breakdown of American politics, but no one can honestly say that it was an isolated incident.

In September of 1859, two prominent public figures in California went further than Brooks and Sumner over the argument against slavery.

Behind a barn near Lake Merced just outside the city limits of San Francisco two California politicians fought to the death.

The duel itself was instigated, at least on the surface, by insults hurled in the newspaper. David S. Terry, chief justice of the state Supreme Court and a fervent pro-slavery southerner, was no stranger to violence. Always a gentleman to speak his mind, it all started when Terry threw insults at the free-soil Democrats of the state, which were recorded by a journalist.

Terry then turned his venom to U.S. Senator from California David Broderick, a free-soil Democrat.

Terry insinuated that Broderick and his ilk took their orders from Frederick Douglas, the controversial escaped-slave-turned abolitionist. That proved too much for Broderick and he responded in kind, escalating the verbal repartee.

In response, Terry challenged Broderick to a duel. Broderick agreed. Unfortunately for him, that day in September did not go his way and the bullet he fired at Terry buried itself in the ground well short of its target. Terry landed a shot in Broderick’s lungs. Broderick died three days later.

The symbolism of the death of Broderick, an anti-slavery politician, at the hands of the pro-slavery Terry was not lost on those following politics in the state.

At Broderick’s funeral, Republican E.D. Baker, who eulogized the late senator, remarked: “What was his public crime? The answer is in his own words: ‘I die because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery.’….his death was a political necessity, poorly veiled beneath the guise of a private quarrel.”

The breakdown that led to the war was like the slow fissuring of an iceberg. Those days in 1856 and 1859 were just two of many small pops and snaps felt by America as the nation slowly split in two.

For modern citizens, these incidences should represent the low bar – the worst of government. Rock bottom in American politics sounds like the dull thud of club against skull and the crack of dueling pistols echoing off a lake. Violence begets violence, as the saying goes.

Today our politicians may spend an inordinate amount of time in front of cameras, taking snipes at each other but at least Paul Ryan and Chuck Schumer aren’t beating each other with canes. Small comfort, I know, but we have to take what we can get.

Antone Pierucci is the former curator of the Lake County Museum in Lake County, Calif., and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has just two dogs available for adoption as this week begins.

The dogs available this week include a little dachshund and a bigger pit bull.

Lake County Animal Care and Control is adopting out dogs this week with a $50 discount – waiving the county adoption fee portion and costs for microchipping. There will will be costs for spaying and neutering dogs.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

Female dachshund

This older female dachshund has a friendly grin and a short brindle and brown coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 9, ID No. 7521.

‘Ice’

“Ice” is a young male pit bull terrier.

He has a short black coat.

He’s in kennel No. 21, ID No. 7452.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Cemetery District will hold a Memorial Day service to honor veterans on Monday, May 29.

The ceremony will begin at 9 a.m. at the Mary Hardesty building, on the top of the hill on the cemetery grounds, at 16357 Butts Canyon Road. Parking will be provided.

In addition to the ceremony, a new veterans memorial site will be dedicated that day.

Commander Rich Feiro and Sgt. of the Guard Larry Mick from the Lake County Military Funeral Honors Team will begin the ceremonies and veteran Bill Vonn will do the church calling and playing of “Taps.”

Chaplin Woody Hughes will speak and the team will do the 21-gun salute. They will be ushered in by the Patriot Guard Riders.

District 1 Supervisor Moke Simon will be the guest speaker. Jim Comstock, the retired District 1 supervisor, will read the names of the veterans buried in the Middletown Cemetery, and Simon – who also is tribal chair of Middletown Rancheria – will read the names of tribal members who were veterans.

Middletown Cemetery District Vice Chairwoman Linda Diehl-Darms will act as mistress of ceremonies. The invocation and benediction will be given by Voris Brumfield, president of the Historical Society. David Neft will provide the sound and keyboard, accompanying vocalist Kathleen Escude.

The ceremonies will include colorful flowered wreaths, made by the floral design class from the Middletown High School, and presented in honor of veterans.  

The local 4-H is in charge of the flag ceremony. Girl Scout Troop 10676, with leader Jennifer Popovich, will help with wreath placement and programs, and will place the flags on the 203 Veteran’s graves. Brownies Troop 11314, led by Emily Kasmier, will assist.

The Lion’s Club also faithfully provides the chairs and helps with many set up items on this special day.

The community is invited to join in the festivities and enjoy refreshment afterward.

NASA’s annual survey of changes in Arctic ice cover greatly expanded its reach this year in a series of flights that wrapped up on May 12.

It was the most ambitious spring campaign in the region for NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to monitor ice changes at Earth’s poles, which also included a rapid-response flight over a new crack in Petermann Glacier, one of the largest and fastest-changing glaciers in Greenland.

“This has easily been our best year ever for surveying sea ice,” said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge’s project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Geographically, we covered a wider area than ever before, and the new instruments we deployed during this campaign have given us denser and more accurate measurements.”

IceBridge explored for the first time the Eurasian half of the Arctic Basin through two research flights departing from Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the northern Atlantic Ocean. The mission also took measurements of a recently formed crack on the ice shelf of Petermann Glacier.

This Arctic season, IceBridge completed all of its sea and land ice baseline flights –surveys that are repeated year after year to measure regions that have been evolving rapidly over the last decades. In total, the mission carried out 39 eight-hour flights in 10 weeks.

Of those, 13 focused on surveying sea ice, while the remaining 26 flights targeted land ice. Several flights included collaborations with international Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) missions teams to collect and compare measurements of snow and ice.

The largest one was with CryoVEx, a campaign dedicated to validating data gathered by ESA’s (the European Space Agency) CryoSat-2 satellite, but IceBridge also coordinated data collection with a group of European adventurers collecting snow depth data while doing a traverse toward the North Pole, with ESA’s Sentinel-3A satellite, and with a GPS survey near Summit Station, Greenland, designed to validate future measurements by the upcoming Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission, among other collaborations.

IceBridge's first research flight took place on March 9 onboard NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility’s P-3 Orion aircraft. As with every year, the first part of the campaign was dedicated to overflying the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover, plus several fast-changing land ice areas from two sites: Thule Air Base in northwest Greenland and Fairbanks, Alaska.

But this campaign, the IceBridge team added an extra base: Longyearbyen, Svalbard. From there, the mission was able to reach areas of the Eurasian side of the Arctic Ocean that had not been explored by IceBridge before.

While analyzing preliminary data, Kurtz said that he was intrigued to see that the layer of snow on sea ice in the Eurasian side of the Arctic is currently thinner than what snow depth climatology models based on older measurements predict.

“The new snow measurements will help better understand changes in the Arctic sea ice cover and help constrain satellite measurements to make sure they’re accurate,” Kurtz said.

IceBridge also expanded its scope westward with a flight to the western side of the Chukchi Sea, a sea situated between Alaska and Russia. It was the first time the mission ever crossed the International Date Line.

In mid-April, the IceBridge team was alerted to a crack on the floating ice shelf of Petermann Glacier. Stef Lhermitte, an associate professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, had just discovered the rift while going through satellite imagery.

Lhermitte wrote about his observations on Twitter and the NASA manager for the cryospheric sciences program learned about the tweets. Serendipitously, IceBridge was then planning on flying one last mission over Petermann.

“The day before the flight, we worked late into the evening to redesign our Petermann flight plan to overfly the new rift according to the coordinates Stef [Lhermitte] sent us,” said John Sonntag, IceBridge mission scientist. “This achievement was only possible because of the long-standing culture of international scientific openness and cooperation. IceBridge and other NASA missions, which make their data freely available to all comers worldwide, go a very long way to perpetuate and strengthen this culture.”

The new rift intrigues scientists because it is much further upstream from the glacier's front than other cracks, which could create a large iceberg when it finishes tearing through the ice and potentially make the ice shelf and the glacier it buttresses unstable. Whether this happens or not, the new measurements of the rift IceBridge collected will help researchers better understand the evolution of cracks.

“Getting fresh data on this newly developed rift is exciting. Because it’s so new, we’ll have a better handle on its evolution,” said Joe MacGregor, IceBridge deputy project scientist and glaciologist at Goddard. “I look forward to seeing what comes out of these measurements.”

The final part of the campaign was based in Kangerlussuaq, in west Greenland, and focused on land ice.

As with every Arctic campaign, IceBridge hosted a teacher from the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States’ PolarTREC program. This year, the participant was Adeena Teres, a science teacher at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Teres wrote a blog on her IceBridge experience and participated in live chats from the airplane with K-12 classes across the U.S. In total, the IceBridge team conducted 65 classroom chats from the P-3 and from the ground during this campaign that reached 1414 students in 14 U.S. states, plus Mexico and Canada.

This summer, IceBridge will carry out two additional campaigns to gauge how the melt season impacts Arctic sea and land ice. The first survey will take place in late July and will be based out of Thule, focusing on the multi-year sea ice cover north of Greenland and in the Canadian Archipelago.

The second one, starting in early September, will operate from Kangerlussuaq and replicate land ice missions that IceBridge completed this spring. Both campaigns will use smaller planes with a more limited set of instruments than the regular springtime flights.

The mission of Operation IceBridge is to collect data on changing polar land and sea ice and maintain continuity of measurements between ICESat missions. The original ICESat mission ended in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2018.

Operation IceBridge is currently funded until 2019. The planned overlap with ICESat-2 will help scientists validate the satellite’s measurements.

For more about Operation IceBridge, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge .

Maria-José Viñas works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.