Category: Colorado Mileposts
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A Little Housekeeping…
My husband and I were in the back yard recently, and saw our resident black-capped chickadee family checking out a gourd bird house we put out for them. First, they enlarged the opening a touch. Then mama chickadee checked out the inside. She brought some bedding in to see how it worked with the decor.…
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Hawk Nest Monitoring Begins
As many of you know, I volunteer for the Jefferson County Open Space along the Front Range of Colorado. Last year, I worked on a new-to-me program, hawk nest monitoring. The nest I watched last year seems to have been abandoned, so I moved to a new spot this year, watching Red-Tailed Hawks. So far…
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Great Horned Owls Laying Eggs
I got up to let the dogs out around 4:00 this morning. While I was standing at the door waiting for them to finish, I heard Great Horned Owls hooting back and forth. Great Horned Owls are laying their eggs now so their young will have hatched by the time prey like rabbits and mice…
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This Winter’s Weather Patterns
I’ve been obsessing for the last couple of posts about how dry we’ve been this winter. This image from the NOAA GOES satellite says it all: The blue is storm clouds — Winter Storm Quinn, to be exact, that dumped feet of snow on the Sierra Nevada. It hit the Colorado border and turned north…
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Spring Knocking at the Door
They may be having bomb cyclones in the East.winter storm riley. They may be getting feet of snow in the West. Winter Storm Quinn Pounding the West But in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, for better or for worse, Spring is knocking at the door. How do I know that Spring is on…
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Snowpack Levels Low
Many people don’t realize that the western part of the United States is generally arid to semi-arid. The Pacific Northwest gets biblical amounts of rain, of course, because of the coastal mountain ranges wring the water out of the wet air. Every range of mountains east of the coast catches the ever drier air, and…
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Cedar Waxwings
Out for a walk with the dogs today, I saw robin-sized grey birds with subtle yellow bellies flitting from branch to branch in a crabapple tree, eating the shriveled fruit. As I looked closer at them, I saw that they had crests! Birds of Pennsylvania Cedar waxwings! I’ve only ever seen these strikingly beautiful birds…
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Cold Weather Birds
We woke up to 12o F (-11o C) in central Colorado — we have yet to have a significant snowfall in the foothills west of Denver. It’s been a little odd to see so many different types of winter birds coming to the feeder without snow. But they are coming! House sparrows. House sparrows were…
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Thanksgiving Sunset
A little late, but here is a view of the sunset on Thanksgiving evening. Hope you had a beautiful Thanksgiving, and will have a wonderful Christmas.
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NASA Computer Simulation Shows 2017 Hurricane Tracks
This computer simulation from NASA shows just how interconnected the world is. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=12772&button=recent The computer simulation runs from August 1 through November 1, 2017. It follows hurricanes that tracked over the Atlantic Ocean this fall, letting you see how dust from the Sahara ends up in Miami, and smoke from the wildfires in California and…
Amy Law, Science Geek 