We are in the middle of a big Spring storm that we have really needed. It’s been a very dry Winter, and we can use all the moisture we can get. We have about six inches of snow right now and it’s predicted to snow through the night. As usual, this kind of weather has …
Month: March 2009
Douglas B-18
Over the Holidays, I made a visit to our local aviation museum, Wings Over the Rockies. The museum is in suburban Denver and located in one of the remaining hangars from Lowry Air Force Base, which closed in 1994. The majority of the exhibits are military aircraft and date from the Cold War. I’ll cover …
Web Miscellany
The NY Times has an interesting piece on Texas rattlesnake roundups. Fascinating that they actually put it in the sports section. Get your Simon Bolivar action figures! Nederland, Colorado just hosted the 2009 edition of Frozen Dead Guy Days. I need to get up there next year to give you all a first-hand account. And …
Ferrgs
On Saturday, Jim and I encountered a ferruginous hawk busy with nest-building. The nest we saw being constructed is located amid sea of sagebrush atop a rock outcrop adjacent to a highway. Unfortunately, it is just inside the highway fenceline, and a road upgrade project will reach it in the coming days. The nest is …
The buck stops here
After a busy morning of computer work, the other day I went for a walk in the afternoon with livestock guard dogs Rena and Rant, and herding dog Abe. It was about 40 degrees and we went up on the Mesa, watching the two bald eagles sitting on our fenceposts behind the house. There are …
No hen could resist this
Grouse leks are traditional breeding grounds that are fairly large open areas surrounded by sagebrush. Generation after generation of grouse use these traditional sites. This morning, I went to what is usually a very large sage grouse lek to find only about 60 birds on the vast breeding ground. Last year there were a few …
Old Fashioned Good Time
A packed house for the HopKins Black Box Theater is about 70 people in folding chairs, the first row seated two feet from the stage and inescapably part of the show. I took a seat in the back, center isle, elevated by a plywood riser above a stagehand running sound from a school desk. The …
Bird karma
I’ll do a bigger post about this very soon, but I spent a little time this morning on a sage grouse breeding ground, which is called a “lek.” Since I live in the sagebrush sea, and love early morning photography, I have a choice of about a half-dozen leks that are located fairly close to …
Wyoming traffic jam
I had to make a run to the courthouse this morning, and met up with a traffic jam, prompting this entry. Let me provide a short etiquette lesson for cattle drive encounters. First and foremost, don’t get impatient and uptight when you see livestock being moved down a highway. Instead, get out the camera and …
Terrierman Goes Prime Time
Our pithy Patrick Burns, the irascible Terrierman and dogged policy wonk, appeared this week on the prime-time ABC news magazine Nightline. The story by Nick Watt titled, “Best of Breed? Pedigree Dogs Face Disease” picks up on the saga of Kennel Club and Cruft’s dog shows recently put on the defensive by a BBC expose …