Tag: wildlife
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Woodpecker Week
It was Woodpecker Week these last few days! The Front Range has three different common types of woodpecker, and at least one of each kind came tapping around our neighborhood. First up: The bird every homeowner loves to hate — Northern Flickers. This male demonstrates why. This is the red-shafted variety of Northern Flicker. Both…
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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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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…
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Update on the Northern Flicker Nest …
Several weeks ago, I posted some of my favorite nature photographs in honor Nature Photography Week https://amylawscigeek.com/2024/06/10/nature-photography-week-day-2/, including one of a Red-shafted Northern Flicker poking it’s head out of a hole in an crabapple tree. In that post, I said that the tree was often considered for a nest by Flickers, but never used, because…
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Cold wet weather forces birds to feeder
The last week has been cold and wet here along the Front Range. A bedraggled, while still handsome, male lazuli bunting landed on our feeder for a few moments. Male Bullocks Oriel dropped in, then almost immediately flew on. I usually see these birds in the foothills just west of my house, so he probably…
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Baby Owls have Fledged!
It’s official — all three of the baby owls that I’ve been watching have fledged. The owlets have left the nest! We found the babies and one of the adults in a tree across from their nest. I know it looks like one or two of them are hanging from the branches, but that’s just…
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Baby Owls Fledging … Sort Of.
I went back over to the green belt to check on the baby owls today. They are doing well, but two of them are a little reluctant to leave the nest. Mama and a big bundle of feathers, to the right, were spotted first. Mama kept prying up bark. My husband asked if it could…
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Wonder Returns
When I started my blog, lo these many years ago, it was, in part, to celebrate that unexpected wonder around us. But it’s been a hard few years for all of us, and I just wasn’t feeling so wonderful. Yesterday I went out birding with Anne, one of the folks I met on my recent…
Amy Law, Science Geek 