Having fresh snowfall is a bit like getting a local newspaper delivery: I learn about things going on in the neighborhood I wouldn’t otherwise know. Tracks on the fresh sheet of snow spread across the arena last month were like a headline, albeit one in a script I couldn’t read. But given that the track…
I thought about writing about these fall days: the glossy blue skies, the serene air, the landscape golden and splashed with umber and gilt. The temperature hovers in that curious cool-mild zone, so you go out wearing a jacket but you’re soon too warm and have to strip to shirtsleeves. You need keep the jacket…
“…Rural development encroaches on the traditional habitat of coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, bears, mosquitoes and other animals that can be dangerous and you need to know how to deal with them.” from “Code of the West,” created by John Clarke, former Larimer County (Colorado) Commissioner Moving to the country from the city…
On a February afternoon, I have company on the way back from a walk down the road. About two dozen dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) are foraging for seeds on the shoulder of the gravel road. They’re bouncy little gray birds, more round than slim, with a patch of russet feathers across their shoulders, as if…
Wild turkeys are always in motion. Their persistent mobility has been brought home to me (literally) this winter by a flock of about a dozen that frequented the district around our house. The big dark birds would show up every few weeks, whereupon I would hustle to fetch the camera. I had visions of capturing…
From a distance, not much has changed. Almost-mid-May from the house looks pretty much like just-past-mid-March. The difference, as it so often is, is in the details. The expanses of grass, passive and still eight weeks ago, are now host to fluttering, creeping, scurrying. The birds are back, the bugs are getting busy, and the…
Sure, you can raise your heart rate and a nice sweat on the elliptical machine in the basement. You’ll stare at the wall, though, and play mind games to keep yourself from watching digits on the timer count too slowly downward. Save that for the days when the wind sucks the air from your lungs…
One afternoon back in early June, a junco exploded from underfoot when I was in the garden. I didn’t think much of this, even though the same thing happened (in about the same location) a couple of days later. Dark-eyed juncos are common up here. Their habits keep them close to the ground where I’m…