Tag: nature
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Nuthatches pairing up
We’ve had a couple of red-breasted nuthatches coming to our bird baths up on Green Mountain this week. I’ve always enjoyed nuthatches because they remind me of darts that have been thrown really hard. After doing some research, I learned that you can tell males from females because males have black stripes on their heads,…
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AAA EnCompass Article Includes Trail Ridge Road
Last fall, I had the pleasure of chatting about Trail Ridge Road with writer Clay Latimer, as he gathered information on an article about six of Colorado’s most spectacular highways. The results are in his wonderful article “Colorado’s Highway History”(Colorado Highway History). Also, check out my new website — AmyLawAuthor — where to buy my…
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Suburban Chipmunk
I saw this little chipmunk on our back porch before the snow came. You can tell it’s a chipmunk instead of a ground squirrel because of the lines that start on its face and run all the way down its back. While ground squirrels have lines down their backs, they lines only start after the…
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Colorado Matters Over Trail Ridge Road
Nathan Heffel Fernando-Frescas and I went over Trail Ridge Road recently. Here is the interview that aired on September 28, 2015. As an extra, Colorado Public Radio asked me to do an extra piece on Visiting Rocky Mountain National Park Over Trail Ridge Road with Nathan Heffel Fernando-Frescas
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Calliope Hummingbirds
The last of the hummingbirdsare passing through my backyard this month. I happened to get a couple of great shots of some tiny, charming female calliopes buzzing around my rosemary plants. Because the rosemary is in a planter on deck railing, the photos are looking up slightly at the hummers. I love to watch hummingbirds…
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Over Trail Ridge Road with Nathan Heffel of Colorado Public Radio
Last week, I took Nathan Heffel of Colorado Public Radio over Trail Ridge Road. As we drove, Nathan interviewed me about my book, A Natural History of Trail Ridge Road: Rocky Mountain National Park’s Highway to the Sky. (A Natural History of Trail Ridge Road) Our trip started with a gobble when we saw wild…
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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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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.…
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Mathematical Patterns in Plants
One of the things that I really enjoy about nature is that it produces proofs that it obeys natural laws in the most unusual — and beautiful — ways. This spring and early summer I ran across three examples of math in plants. Scorpianweed, like most plants in the hydrophyllaceae family, has a flower stalk…
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Spotted Towhee
I love to wake up to the sound of birds singing. The “twup tewerp” of robins, the trills of house finches, the hyena-like call of Northern flickers. But in the past few years, I’ve started to hear a new sound in the mornings: “Cha cha cha che e e e ! Cha cha cha che…
Amy Law, Science Geek 