Category: Colorado Mileposts
-
Backyard Deer
For the past several years, we have had small herds of deer living in our neighborhood on the west edge of the Denver Metro Area. They have been getting bolder, coming into our backyard at night. Several days ago, they even came to snitch food from the bird feeders before it was fully dark. My…
-
Birds have just moved a bit
Earlier this winter, I wrote a blog about how we had had seen a dramatic decline in the number of birds we see at our feeder. (http://coloradogeography.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/where-have-all-the-birds-gone/) When I emailed Hugh Kingery, of the Audubon Society of Greater Denver, he said that a lot of people had been mentioning the same lack of birds. People…
-
Mourning Doves bullied by newcomer Eurasian Collared Doves
There was a good article in the Denver Post this morning on how Eurasian Collared Doves have moved into every county in Colorado. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25219440/invasive-doves-colonize-colorado-and-overshadow-good-doves Although they make a nasal honking sound, Collared Doves are beautiful birds. The problem is that they seem to be competing with native Mourning Doves. (By the way, in Natural Resources/Ecology…
-
Snow-eaters melt the snow
Where did all the snow go? Last week at this time, the Front Range was entirely blanketed in several inches of the white stuff. Today, it’s almost gone. Where did it go? The Answer: Chinooks. Chinooks are warm dry winds. They get their name from a Pacific Northwest Indian word for “snow eater,” because when…
-
Chemistry of Love
Don’t you love that magical feeling you get being around your special someone? The brush of their hand against yours, the connection when you look into their eyes, the warm feelings of a mother nursing her child. When it happens, you feel secure and content. All these feelings are related to bonding between people.…
-
Angry bird’s feathers ruffled.
We had an angry young raven visit the backyard earlier this week. I don’t know what had annoyed it so much, but it was not happy. Actually, I suspect that the bird had just been put in its place by another raven that was perched in another tree a few houses down from ours. Crows…
-
Thanksgiving Dinner
There are two animals in this picture. Can you find them? The first is relatively obvious. The second may take some searching. There are two creatures in this tree. Can you find them both? I took this photo on Thanksgiving Day. I noticed the hawk in the tree as we were getting our own dinner…
-
Some loose, some win.
This is the time of year when the sun gets low in the horizon. The change in light must make our windows appear clear to birds visiting our feeders. One of the visitors has learned to take advantage of this problem. We have all sorts of birds come to our feeders — house sparrows, finches,…
-
Beautiful, mesmerizing, educational.
My mom sent me this website a couple of weeks ago. http://hint.fm/wind/index.html It shows the direction and speed of surface winds for the entire country. This screen shot doesn’t do it justice, because on the webpage, the wind lines flow. Beautiful. In addition to being mesmerizing and beautiful, the map is very educational. When you look…
-
Record-demolishing Storm
We have just survived what was probably a 1000 year event in central Colorado – a week of torrential rain that has left the Front Range in a shambles. This isn’t the first time that the Front Range has flooded. In the twentieth century alone, we had four monster floods: Pueblo, 1921; Denver, 1965; Big…
Amy Law, Science Geek 