Author: Amy Law
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American Dipper
There are several American Dippers wintering under bridges across the greenbelt west of Denver. They wade in the icy water to catch small crustaeceans. Sometimes they just put their heads in. And sometimes they go all the way under and walk along the bottom of the rushing creek.
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Red-Tailed Hawk in Backyard
I was on the phone with my son Sunday when the dogs went berserk. Looking into the backyard, I saw why — an enormous Red-tailed Hawk was sitting in the top of the Russian-olive tree in our back yard, lusting over the birds scattering from our feeder. With a hurried excuse to my son, I…
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Ducks!
I am a dryland girl. When I was growing up, there wasn’t enough open water around to entice any sort of waterfowl to land. So I never bothered to pay attention to ducks when I *did* see them. But now I’m going down the the Creek frequently — it lets me relax to see the…
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Mama Owl Back On Her Nest
For the first time in since before the Big Freeze, my husband and I walked along the greenbelt introduced to us last year by our friend Anne. I don’t think either of us really expected to see much — it’s January, for crying out loud! But we needed to see something besides the inside of…
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Before the Freeze
I went out to our local greenbelt last night to get one more walk in before the deep freeze hits tonight. There were about a half-dozen hooded mergansers floating on the water as the sun began to set. Above, an adult female is behind a juvenile male. My husband and I had to read Cornell’s…
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World of Spun Glass
After a heavy fog all day yesterday, we woke up this morning to a world seemingly made of spun glass. Overnight the temperature had slowly cooled everything outside to well below freezing. As the water-saturated air hit the freezing surfaces, it froze to them. Drop by microscopic drop, the water in the fog built up…
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Muskrat Love
I was walking along the wetland recently, looking for beaver, or better yet, mink, that a friend of mine had spotted. My efforts were pretty half-hearted — it was ten in the morning — long after any self-respecting beaver would be denned up. But I was having a difficult day, and needed a distraction. And…
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Banded Garden Spider
Trigger Alert: We’re talking about spiders in this post. Pictures, too. But it is a very gentle spider. The spider in question is a banded garden spider in our raspberry patch. It showed up in late July (unfortunately, my camera card with those photos on it became corrupted), and my husband and I have been…
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2024 Pika Patrol, Part 2
After our pika hike south of Berthoud Pass last month, my husband and I did our second pika site for the Denver Zoo’s Pika Project last week, climbing up Halfmoon Creek on the southwest side of Mount Massive. We went up to the site a day early because rain, and at the higher altitudes, snow…
Amy Law, Science Geek 