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Bowing and jumping

Sandhill Cranes show their feelings

Springtime courtship dance

Shows off rosy throat

Withstands temps below freezing

High meadows jewel

 It was very very humbling being on the birding field trip today.  I think that we had about 45 different species, but most of them we never saw….only heard…..There were a number of amazing experts along that could identify all the birds just by their songs and calls….to me it was often impossible to distinguish one call from another….much less memorize it so that I would know it once I heard it again….


This photo is of one of the few birds that we actually saw….a Broad-tailed Hummingbird…..and it was many many meters away.  I carried a cheaper lighter-weight camera so the quality of the image is rather poor….I carry this camera to help assist in the identification of birds and sometimes do not carry my much heavier camera. Today, I knew that we would  be walking for about four hours so chose to take the lighter camera. The image quality is not very good compared to my other cameras, however.



Hope you had a good Saturday:

Now if we listen

we can hear plants rejoicing

Heavy March snowstorm

Today, our area was blessed with a good heavy March snowstorm. Late this afternoon, as the sun was setting, I went outside and listened and distinctly heard the muted sounds of plants rejoicing. And like the seeds beneath the snow, I found myself dreaming of Spring.

Windows frame my views

PF is feeling better

Snow-throw now. Smiling.

Out in wilderness

As I stand free and healthy

A war is raging.

For the world which seems
to lie before us like a land of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.
And we are here as on a darkling plain.
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night. – Mathew Arnold from “Dover Beach”

How can a man like myself, soaked with news, his senses muffled, shielded by the mechanics of his civilization and worn into despair by its brutalities, how can he know the real earth when he meets it? How can he be company for it? – John Hay In Defense of Nature

A new hike today

Much was above timberline

Exhilaration

Hiked……trudged…..and scrambled….. up Gibbs Peak in the La Plata Mountains near my home with my hiking buddy, Mary.
Gibbs Peak is 12,286 feet in elevation…..we encountered some snow and had wonderful views once we got above timberline…..

Northern Harrier

Owl-like face helps to hear prey

Feeding on a kill

Today’s White-winged Dove

New species for where we were

Do you bring us Peace?

Willow Ptarmigan

has feathery feet and legs

not a waterbird

Photographed near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada many years ago. It seemed strange to see it in the water. I don’t remember, but this could be salt water.

Parasitic plant

Found during a bird outing

A fragile orchid.

This is Spotted Coralroot…. Corallorhiza maculata variety maculata (not that great a photo….not taken with one of my ‘good” cameras)