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Elk with velvet green antlers at 7000 ‘, shooting star flower by the creek (with its petals/sepals bent back, the neat red zigzag at its mouth, stamens poking out and down, waiting for the buzzing of a bee to release the pollen) , pasque flowers, larkspur, views from 8200 ‘ of the snowclad mountains along the continental divide ( Evans, Squaretop, Greys, the Arapahoes, Navajo, Apache, Toll, Audubon, Sawtooth, St. Vrain, Meadow, Elk’s Tooth, Copeland, Meeker, Long’s, Chiquita, Ypsilon, Fairchild, Hagues, Mummy). Also, the Pourdre running high with crème and froth amongst the haystacks.

Posted on June 2, 2015

Here it shows how TPP will prevent regulations on  food safety, Wall Street, water pollution, and global warming. Here it shows how parts of the TPP and Fast Track allow foreign corporations to overturn laws that limit water pollution  caused by metal mining and fracking. The WTO lets Mexican tuna companies sue to stop the law about dolphin safe tuna labels and also to stop the law requiring country of origin labels on meat.  The TPP postpones cheaper generic drugs and prevents governments from regulating the prices of drugs.

Posted on June 2, 2015

A customer from Bainbridge Island, Washington, told me that 4 baby orcas were recently born near there.  This good news as the population of orcas thee had not been doing so well.

Wallflowers, penstemons, bluebells,  rose bushes,  cinquefoil, a coyote striding thru a prairie dog campus, a spotted towhee that was so tame, it didn’t fly away from the bush by the edge of the path as we walked below it and then above it.

Last Sunday fields of pasque flowers, a few larkspurs, and lots of sand lilies at 8000 feet in mixed ponderosa/ doug fir forest.  A downy woodpecker and lots of frog calls. from little pocket ponds in the rock.

I just saw 7 ducklings.  They shake their heads.  Their mom tilts her head, quacks , and herds them from behind.

Posted on May 22, 2015

In the last few days  swallows returned to nests  under the bridge on the bike path. A friend at Mammoth Mountain CA,  heard the long eerie call of  the common loon  and the drumming of a Williamson sapsucker on April 12th. A cousin in Chippewa Falls, WI heard a loon call 2 weeks ago, before it continued north. Plum, apple,  cherry, and lilacs all are blooming and spreading their sweet, full  aromas. Irises are abloom. Blackbirds  and meadow larks have been back for several weeks. But there was still good snow last week up by the continental divide for cross country skiing. Ospreys mate and nest by Longmont, Colorado.

My grandfather, who lived by a lake in Wisconsin,  wrote  the dates on the wall when the ice would form in the fall and when it would break up in the spring.  In Wisconsin, we would listen in the spring when the whippoorwill called  as it stopped  in the wetland on its way  north.   Here in Boulder, I get excited when the poorwills return to the foothills.  Also, the crossbills are neat as they pass thru.

Phenology is observing and recording the changes in nature. Birds and animals  migrate and mate, plants bloom There are groups you can share you observations with.

Yesterday, a great blue heron flew over me as I biked.  Then two hawks swooped over a runner ahead of me.  Recently, a hawk flew along with me, just above my head, on my bike for several seconds.  Then it alighted on a pole just in front of me.  While it sat there, another hawk flew to a treetop about 70 feet away and landed. This second hawk kept calling and whistling at the first hawk for about 5 minutes.  This reminded me of when a tern had stayed right above my head while I was paddling a kayak.  A friend said that while he was bicycling north  towards Lyons at 5 am,  a nighthawk flew along with him right above his head .  Once a friend and I found a goose tangled in  fishing line next to shore.  I got a knife, put my shirt over its head, and pulled it in to cut off the line. After that, I kept noticing geese everywhere.  On a kayak lesson, one goose kept us company as we went down the river, all day.  Maybe is was for food, as the class would stop at the same park at midday to eat. Maybe it is a coincidence.   But I felt there might be a connection. Maybe the birds are curious.  Jack Turner in his book, The Abstract Wild, says the white pelicans whistle and sing, a mile above the Grand Teton - for joy. Doug Peacock writes of (and shows in his documentary film) how a young grizzly bear plays with pieces of ice floating in a spring-time pool.  The bear pushes the ice blocks under the water, watches them pop up, then pushes them down again.  Kenneth White, in his poetry book, The Most Difficult Area, says that he found a  rare rosy gull on the beach in Scotland.  The only other time it had been seen in Great Britain was on the day of his birth.  He wrote that it seemed strange to think there was a connection, yet he would feel foolish if he didn’t believe there was a some connection.

Posted on April 24, 2015