Category: Colorado Mileposts
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Eight Inches of Water in a Week
Eight inches of water in a week. That’s what we got up on Green Mountain, west of Denver. That’s about half of what we normally get in a YEAR. On the other hand, it is also about half of what we got during the Week of Water a year and a half ago. The good…
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Spring Has Sprung, the Flower Show has Started.
Two years of plentiful moisture and a gently-warming spring means that the wild flowers are exploding. Right now, in the foothills west of the Denver-Boulder area, wild American plums are producing a blizzard of fragrant white blossoms. In some places, it is like walking down a corridor lined with flowers. Plums, like apples, cherries and…
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Raptor Migration in Full Swing
The annual Raptor (aka Birds of Prey — eagles, hawks, falcons, owls and vultures) migration is in full swing. The birds of prey are migrating north to their summer nesting grounds. The raptors fly up the hog back for several reasons. First, it is an easy marker for them to follow — a constant ribbon…
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A Natural History of Trail Ridge Road Is Now Out
I am delighted to announce that my book, A Natural History of Trail Ridge Road: Rocky Mountain National Park’s Highway to the Sky, is now in bookstores. I’d love to see you at a book signing. Please check this blog frequently for times and places of signings, because they do change. 2:00 May 16, 2015…
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Spring is coming. Really.
If we can just hold on a little longer, spring is coming. How do I know? Robins, dark-eyed juncos and rufus-sided towhees are back at the feeders. Also, as I was walking into to library this morning, I heard a crow making a weird ringing “B’Dong! B’Dong! B’Dong! B’Dong!” call. It drew a crowd as…
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A Natural History of Trail Ridge Road: Rocky Mountain National Park’s Highway to the Sky
As you’ve followed this blog, you’ve learned that I love to write about nature, especially what I can see around me in my home state of Colorado. One of my all time favorite places in Colorado is Trail Ridge Road, in Rocky Mountain National Park. With ten miles above 11,000 feet, Trail Ridge Road is…
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Winter Fantasy Land
Colorado has been on the edge of the extreme cold that has gripped the eastern half of the country this winter. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2015/01/08/united-states-climate-2014-tale-two-regions/#more-9604 That means that we’ve had more of a Midwestern kind of a winter than the Midwest has, complete with ice storms. This morning, we woke up to a winter fantasy land, west of…
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Tundra Fall
I always think of the mountains as getting any storm before we do. Not so. Here is what the storm looked like from high on Mount Evans, where it was a beautiful, sunny day. I also thought that, since fall had arrived on the plains, there would be no more flowers in the High Country.…
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Eyelashes and Hummingbird Tongues
I learned some new things about hummingbirds this week. First, I learned that for years now, I have had two types of hummingbirds coming to my feeders. I knew that I had broad-tailed hummers — they are the most common hummingbirds in the Western US. With a flashy red throat “gorget” and a metallic ringing…
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Great Wildflower, Part 2
From our great spring crop of blooms, (http://coloradogeography.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/get-out/) this continues to be an outstanding season for wildflowers. Every time we begin to dry out, we get a rainstorm that waters the plants. And the flowers just keep comin’. According to the USDA Plants Profile webpage, http://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=MOFI&photoID=mofi_004_ahp.tif you can find pink bergamot all over North America.…
Amy Law, Science Geek 