Colorado Nature Narratives

With only three days left of 2011, I decided to look back through my Nature Narrative postings. The articles and photos depict many treasures of nature that were discovered throughout the year. I hope you will enjoy this sampler from 2011′s Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, and I wish you a Happy New Year filled with nature’s treasures.

Winter

On this frigid February 1st, the outdoor thermometer reads -9 degrees F. The backyard pond is frozen except for a three-foot circle of open water surrounding our circular pond heater. Overnight, a mix of light snow and sleet sprinkled the icy pond, creating a surface like frosted glass.

The smooth snow covering the front and backyard remains untracked all day. The usually active mammals – rabbits, squirrels, fox, deer and occasional bobcats – are nowhere to be seen. The only wildlife visible on this below zero day are birds, their feathers fluffed to trap extra air for insulation.

Five American Robins fly to the pond in late morning, gathering around the small circle of water. After dipping their beaks into the water, they tilt their heads back to swallow. Soon, they are joined by two Cedar Waxwings, elegant winter visitors to our neighborhood. I note their sleek, gray feathers and back-swept crest. The Waxwings look like they are wearing a black mask and a cape hemmed in red, black and yellow threads.

This brief glimpse of winter’s Cedar Waxwings reminds me of Henry David Thoreau’s quote, “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.”

Spring

Late this afternoon I took a short walk through our neighborhood park. Except for the sound of the brisk March wind, it was very quiet. As I headed south into the stiff breeze, I zipped up my hooded jacket and cinched the hood tighter. I noted very little bird activity. Perhaps they had sought shelter from the wind, just as I had for most of the day.

When I turned northward, with the wind at my back, I pushed back my hood just in time to catch sight of a majestic bird that seemed to revel in the wind. A Red-tailed Hawk was soaring about 200 yards above me. With its wingtips outstretched, it faced directly into the rushing wind, buoyed by the moving air with no need to flap its wings. The motionless hawk seemed suspended from the blue sky by an invisible thread. Then, with a slight turn, it became an untethered kite and flew out of sight.

Summer

At 5:00am, I was treated to my first unexpected view of the pre-dawn world. I opened the curtains of my west-facing window, and there was the constellation of Orion setting over Pikes Peak. The three bright stars of Orion’s belt glittered just above Pikes Peak like a crown of diamonds. The bright, very full moon gave no hint of what was to come.

However, by 5:45am, a hazy shadow began to shroud the upper left curve of the moon. My husband and I were now at our viewing location at the entrance to Garden of the Gods Park. We watched in silence as the Earth’s shadow began to cloak the top half of the moon. The December dawn sky presented other treasures. Sirius, the brightest star in our sky, was setting behind the pale saddle of Gray Rock, and the bright stars of Gemini sparkled high overhead.

Eclipsing moon setting before dawn, Garden of the Gods

Just as the top half of the moon was beginning to take on a faint red glow, matching the reddish hues of the towering sandstone rocks of Garden of the Gods, the moon slipped below the mountains of the Rampart Range. In the stillness of dawn, we could hear a great-horned owl hooting in the distance.

Photo Credit: Thanks to my husband Les Goss for capturing this moment.

A celestial event in the early morning hours of December 10 will add a new dimension to one of the most beautiful views in the world – Pikes Peak framed by the red rock spires of Garden of the Gods. On that morning, an eclipsed moon will set behind Pikes Peak. According to SKY AND TELESCOPE magazine, the Earth’s shadow will begin to eclipse the moon at 5:45 a.m. (Mountain Standard Time), and by 7:05 a.m., the moon will be in total eclipse.

Image via Wikipedia

Over the years, I have seen the Garden of the Gods’ magnificent red rocks and Pikes Peak cloaked by the snows of winter and the thunderclouds of summer, and illuminated by the bright light of dawn and the last rays of sunset. But I have never seen a shadowed moon set behind the famous view of the red rocks and Pikes Peak.

The weather forecast for December 10 is clear, yet I don’t know exactly what time the moon will disappear behind the western mountains, or how soon the light of the rising sun will fade the colors of the eclipsed moon. But I will be up early and watching, as there is always something new to discover.

Note: to read about the last total eclipse in Colorado on December 20 – 21, 2010, please visit my blogs dated December 15, 2010 and December 21, 2010 entitled “Anticipating the Total Lunar Eclipse on December 21, 2010″ and “It’s Midnight and the Moon is Slipping into Earth’s Shadow.”

Photo Credits: Partial Lunar Eclipse via Wikipedia;  Garden of the Gods with Pikes Peak by Nature Narratives author Melissa Walker

It simply appeared, yet was already over six feet long by the time I first noticed it. It had already overtaken the side of the compost and looped through the overturned wheelbarrow. A pumpkin vine. The volunteer vine was growing in an out-of-sight corner of our yard, on the north side of the house between the garage and the fence.

For a couple of years, we tried to grow a pumpkin, carefully choosing the sunny side of the yard, but to no avail. This volunteer pumpkin took advantage of extra moisture near the compost, and quickly grew toward the direct sunlight on the east side of the house. Soon it spilled out into the aspen grove. The racing vine was an organic regatta with velvety sails for leaves.

By early October, one of the pollinated yellow flowers produced a perfectly round, green pumpkin about the size of a basketball. A different volunteer vine (that was almost identical to the pumpkin vine) produced decorative gourds that looked like miniature hot-air balloons.

Backyard Harvest

With the threat of 20-degree weather in mid-October, I harvested the green pumpkin and globe-shaped gourds. The gourds have decorated our kitchen for the last six weeks. The green pumpkin slowly ripened into a warm orange color, and now decorates our doorstep for Thanksgiving.

Photo: Ripening Pumpkin after first frost

Photos by Author, Melissa Walker

You can learn a lot about birds just by watching them for a few minutes, and you might be surprised by what you see. One sunny winter morning when I was observing chickadees and juncos at Bear Creek Nature Center’s feeders, I also noticed three tiny mice eating seeds that had fallen to the ground. Then suddenly, a scrub jay swooped down and ate one of the mice! I was astounded! I had only seen the jays eat seeds and insects, and had no idea that they would eat a mouse.

Scrub Jay with Acorn (Image via Wikipedia)

During fall, I have also watched scrub jays cache, or hide, seeds. When acorns develop on the scrub oak trees, the scrub jays go to work preparing for winter. A jay gathers an acorn, then flies to a particular location to cache it. Using its sturdy beak, the jay pushes the acorn into the ground, effectively storing it for future use, and inadvertently planting a tree.

Like ravens and magpies, jays are members of the crow family and have similar traits. All have raucous calls, tend to live in small family flocks and are considered among the most intelligent of birds. Scrub jays are easy to identify by their colors—blue head, tail and wings; light throat and breast; and gray back. Unlike crested Steller’s jays and blue jays, scrub jays have sleek heads.

The well-named scrub jays are most often found in scrub oak thickets in the foothills and are year-round avian residents of Colorado. It is only during the breeding season that the word “secretive” would describe this bird. For the rest of the year, the jay’s noisy call and flash of blue feathers herald its location.

(Photo via Wikipedia)

This is one of those autumns when the beauty of the aspen trees is unforgettable. The aspen look like ribbons of gold hemming the steep mountain slopes, tracing the streams that meander down to the valleys. Or, like shining quilts blanketing the hillsides. My favorite description of autumn aspen is by naturalist Ann Zwinger who writes:

Fall comes at its own pace in this grove. Protected by surrounding ridges, these trees may not turn until the first week in October. All in a few days they become fired with blazing light, a torch holding back the winter frosts.

On a Thursday they are still green; on a Sunday, they are golden. The leaves range from citron to copper, saffron to gilt, glowing with light.

Aspen Grove, Autumn 2011

They shower down with each gust of coming winter, buttering the still-blooming lupine, catching the purple asters and the last black-eyed Susans. The mahogany-red rose bushes snag them. The juniper waylays them in needled branches, holding them upright in a card file of autumn….

Purple Asters

The sweet musty smell of fall is…a fragrance of aspen dust and honey and sunshine. The silence is soft and warm and full, between intermittent rustlings of gold tissue-paper, wrapping up the glow of summer.

By Ann Zwinger, from Chapter 5 of her book Beyond the Aspen Grove

Fallen Aspen Leaf

Photos by Melissa J. Walker

Late summer—still and quiet. Such a change from midsummer when the natural world took advantage of the longest days of the year. Just a few weeks ago, robins constantly patrolled the grass looking for food for their hungry nestlings, and spotted towhees seemed to sing all day long. Now, all the nestlings have grown up, and the birds no longer wake us up before dawn with their bubbly songs. Though warm weather still lingers, the change in bird behavior signals that summer days are fleeting and fall is already beginning.

Yellow and purple are the colors of late summer and early autumn. Traces of yellow are emerging in the deep green leaves of summer. Dotting the hillsides of the foothills are two late-blooming wildflowers—bright yellow Golden Aster and purple Blazing Star. Although they look quite different, they are actually in the same Composite flower family, commonly called the Sunflower family.

Blazing Star

A close look at the Blazing Star reveals that several tiny purple flowers are crowded together like a tight bouquet and bound by pale green sepals. These compacted “composite” flower heads attract many pollinating bees and other insects. The seeds will soon set before colder temperatures bring autumn’s first frost.

As I walk slowly through the wild edges of our open space park, I am contemplating these changes and transitions. Then, a flickering shadow shades my eyes and patterns my sleeve. For a moment, I am in the shadow of a butterfly. For only a moment.

Swallowtail Butterfly. Photo by Winston Walker

Photo Credits: Blazing Star photo by author. 2nd photo: in appreciation to my brother Winston Walker for the Swallowtail Butterfly photo he took yesterday, not yet knowing the topic of my article.

On August 8, 2011, Lenore Fleck and I went for a short hike on the Lower Columbine Trail in North Cheyenne Cañon Park. The first mile of the Columbine Trail follows Cheyenne Creek and provided cool hiking for us in the shade of ponderosa pines, white firs and willow trees. Within the first few minutes of our hike, we were amazed to see a gorgeous orange bird with black wings fluttering in a tree near us. Neither one of us had ever seen a bird like this before! Fortunately, we got a good look at this brand new bird (to us) as it fed a fledgling at close range. After consulting two bird books, we identified it as a male Scarlet Tanager, Orange Variant.

Scarlet Tanager, Orange Variant. Photo by Bill Maynard

I called expert Colorado Springs birder Bill Maynard who immediately dropped what he was doing and drove to the Park. Fortunately, Bill arrived in time to observe the male Scarlet Tanager, Orange Variant, still tending the juvenile bird. Bill took some great photographs to document the unusual bird and reported it to Colorado’s Rare Bird Alert.

Photo by Bill Maynard

Typically, Scarlet Tanagers nest in the eastern United States and are considered rare sightings if they are seen west of central Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. To see this rare Tanager with its even more rare “Orange Variant” color was quite a birding event. Local birders and I exchanged emails during the next 24 hours, and several of us had the good fortune of seeing the colorful Tanager the following morning. I looked for it again today, August 13, but couldn’t find it.

My thanks to Bill Maynard for his permission to post his great photographs of the Scarlet Tanager, Orange Variant, and to reprint his descriptive email:

“I looked at my photographs and the Scarlet Tanager grabbed what looks like a yellow jacket or other yellow and black abdomened wasp, worked the stinger end between its mandibles, probably disabling the stinger, and fed it to the juvenile.  Pretty cool.”     – Bill Maynard

Tanager preparing wasp to feed to fledgling bird. Photo by Bill Maynard

Scarlet Tanager, Orange Variant, feeding fledgling. Photo by Bill Maynard.

Few people can hike through our mountain forests without being scolded by a pine squirrel. Also called a chickaree, this little gray squirrel is very noisy and territorial.

The chickaree gnaws through the cones of ponderosa, spruce and fir trees to reach its preferred food—conifer seeds. Similar to the way you and I eat corn-on-the-cob, the squirrel holds the pinecone between its front paws. Then, it turns the cone as it chews off the woody bracts all the way down to the pinecone’s core. Between the bracts, it finds the nutritious seeds.

Chickaree eating a cone. (Photo by Bret Tennis)

Usually the squirrel has a favorite feeding tree where it eats and then drops leftover pinecone pieces. The shredded cones at the base of its feeding tree may accumulate into huge piles, called middens, that are sometimes several feet across and over two feet deep. Very large middens are evidence that several generations of chickarees have used the same feeding tree for decades.

Pine Squirrel Midden (Photo by Bret Tennis)

In summer and fall, the chickaree gathers pinecones and buries them in the midden to serve as its winter and early spring food supply. On cold winter days, the well-prepared squirrel retrieves and eats a few of its stored cones.

As you walk or picnic in the higher elevations of our Colorado Springs mountain parks and open spaces —Garden of the Gods, Red Rock Canyon, Section 16 or North Cheyenne Cañon—look for a chickaree’s midden at the base of an evergreen tree. And if you hear a chattering squirrel long before you can see it, no doubt it is a chickaree.

If you have ever seen small birds circling through an intersection while you were stopped at a traffic light, you have probably seen barn swallows. Even in the middle of busy city streets, the swallows go about their business of catching insects to eat. They fly with their tiny mouths wide open, scooping up insects in their flight path.

In city parks or natural meadows, barn swallows often fly just a foot or two above the ground, a good altitude for insect-catching. They also drink water “on the wing” by skimming water from a swimming pool in the middle of a condo complex or from a natural lake or stream.

During the summer when I’m stopped at a red light, I often watch these birds. The acrobatic barn swallows–with their deeply forked tails, rusty breasts and royal-blue backs–put on quite a show as they navigate through traffic chasing insects, while barely avoiding collisions with cars.

Image via Wikipedia