0 Spring Comes to the Burn

On May 16, M. and I re-visited the burned ridge behind our house for the first time since November. It burned last October 23, part of an extremely fast-moving fire that destroyed 15 homes and various outbuildings in the space of about thirty minutes, reaching a total extent of 2,500 acres

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Here is the area that we re-visited as it looked at 6:40 p.m., October 23, 2013.

Fisher, our Chesapeake Bay retriever, came too. On the ground behind him you can see scattered clumps of shredded bark, mixed with grass seed and dropped from a helicopter on April 13-14, 2013.

Fisher, not bothered by dirt and ash.

This particular area is public land (Bureau of Land Management), although most of what burned was private.

Attaching a sling-load of mulch and grass seed to a helicopter—April 2013 (Pueblo Chieftain).

Concerned about the possibility of ash and dirt washing down into streams, the BLM paid for re-seeding of its portion, which is mostly along a higher ridge.

Mulch had fallen into the little spring. Fisher decided to clear it out.

The first thing that we always do is visit a little seasonal spring that we call Camera Trap Spring. It is the place where a sow black bear attacked a camera, where Fisher narrowly avoided a rattlesnake last year, and where I have gotten pictures of a variety of wildlife.

Then we went to see if the seeding had had good results.

Grass coming up through the mulch.

This was one of the better-looking patches. And I should add that mulch was used only on the steeper slopes. Other areas received a grass-seed mix with no mulch. Since the seeding a month ago, snow and rain equivalent to 2–3 inches of precipitation has fallen, luckily without serious erosion.Whether this counts as acceptable results in re-seeding, I do not know, although I am attempting to check on that. Some other areas do not look as good.

Dandelion and deer droppings (to left of central rock, top of clear spot).

Here, for instance, is a dandelion and some other plants growing, plus evidence of deer passing through the burn. Some of the new grass had been nibbled too. There were no tracks at the spring, however—if there had been, Fisher probably obliterated them!

Golden banner with 500 ml bottle.

This looks like golden banner (Thermopsis divaricarpa), a member of the pea family. Self-seeded, I assume.

And of course the burnt Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), which could probably survive atom bombs, is sprouting from its roots. As the CSU Extension office says, "Fire readily kills the above-ground portions of oak brush. However, intense sprouting follows almost immediately and usually causes the stands to become even denser."

Birds seen: some crows, two woodpeckers (probably hairies—did not have a good look), and to our surprise, two Western tanagers (migrants).

Detail: Spring Comes to the Burn

0 All My Flycatchers, Season 10: The "Plop Plop" of Falling Birds

Synopses of past seasons of All My Flycatchers.

This year's brood of flycatchers, on top of the front porch light.

Is four fledglings too many?

Right now, there is a large pillow — actually an L. L. Bean dog bed — laid under the porch light on the veranda.

Baby Cordilleran flycatchers keep falling out of the nest on top of the porch light, which they built in late May while we were away in Taos, ignoring my purpose-built special flycatcher nesting ledge on the back of the house.

This is an ongoing drama every year: will Lucinda (all females are named Lucinda) successfully incubate her eggs and raise some babies? Some times things go very wrong.

Often four eggs are laid, but only three hatch. Or four chicks are hatched, but one is found dead and dessicated in the nest.

This year, we still have four starting to grow adult feathers. But the nest, built according to whatever evolutionary pattern — and better sized for three — is not big enough. They are starting to fall out.

I was working at my desk Sunday afternoon when I heard M. scream at Fisher, the Chesapeake Bay retriever. "Bad dog!" etc.

But here he is, the product of umpteen generations of bird-dog breeding, catching the breeze just inside the front door, when a bird falls from the sky in front of him. Of course he went for it.

The chick seemed OK, I thought, just a little damp from saliva. So I put it back in the nest. M. put a baby gate in the doorway and moved one of Fisher's outdoor dog beds under the nest.

Thirty minutes later I looked out and there was a chick lying on the dog bed. Back into the nest with it.

Then we ate supper on the veranda, as usual, noting Lucinda's constant trips to the nest to feed the kids with whatever insects she was catching. (Her mate helps too.)

I started to carry the plates inside and, Whoa! "Grab Fisher!" I said. Luckily, he was still sniffing under the dining table for crumbs.

There were two fledglings on the dog bed. Back into the nest they went.

How long is this going to keep up? Do we have to keep Fisher off the veranda, where he is accustomed to lounging during the day between walks and meals?

They can't grow up fast enough for me. Or for Lucinda.

Detail: All My Flycatchers, Season 10: The "Plop Plop" of Falling Birds

0 Fisher's New Job

Walking the dogs yesterday morning, I picked a mushroom not far from the house, a bolete,  but not one that I knew

I left it on the kitchen counter while I fed them, then got busy with other stuff.

After M. was working at the same counter, I asked her if she had seen it.

No, she had not. It was nowhere to be found.

The obvious suspect was lying on a rug by the front door: Fisher — Raider of Kitchen Counters, Eater of Everything.

Going from memory, I checked the mushroom book, and it looked like I had had Boletus chrysenteron, which is edible. (From Fisher's viewpoint, if it fits in his mouth, it is edible.)

Mushroom taster, that can be his new job.

Detail: Fisher's New Job

0 Things that Humans Do and Dogs Don't Like

M. sent me this link with a comment, "So why does Fisher seem to like it when you bonk him on the head?"

Simple. Fisher Is Not Like Other Dogs. Or as the neighbor says, "He was made on a Monday."

Your doggage may vary.

Detail: Things that Humans Do and Dogs Don't Like

0 In the Dust Bowl of 2014

There is nothing to see in eastern Colorado. It's all flat and treeless.

 Almost a month ago — January 18th — I took County Road 11 south from Manzanola, Colo., toward part of the Comanche National Grassland. I had driven nine or ten miles when something struck me — I had seen only one small herd of cattle, maybe six head, no more. The rest had all gone to the sale barn, apparently.

I was right about where the red arrow is pointing in the graphic from the United States Drought Monitor, and what was in theory a quail-hunting trip was, admit it or not, turning more into disaster tourism.

Outdoor writer Chad Love blogs from a location downwind of that location, and he has posted some photos that, once converted from color into black-and-white, evoke the Dirty Thirties.

I didn't photograph those six cows, nor the herd I saw somewhere on Colorado  Hwy. 10 grazing in the slanting sunset light in a pasture that was about half dirt, even though it would have been nice and National Geographic-y. Like something from East Africa.

Windmill on the national grasslands. Not pumping.

Fisher the dog and I took a walk around this windmill. There was no water in the tank, no bird tracks of any sort in the dust.

We drove on to another spot closer to the Purgatory River where there was a little water, but all we saw was a single mule deer slipping away. Very quiet. Very dry. Just a general sense of absence.

Chasing scaled quail involves a lot of a windshield time—and to be honest, I have done better in more agricultural areas, but this trip was degenerating into disaster tourism.

So I admitted that I was doing that, ate a late lunch of crackers and coffee, and drove around.

We drove past the Huerfano River Wind Farm outside Walsenburg—as usual for wind farms, not all the blades were turning—and Fisher got a piss break at Huerfano Butte.

And there is the mystery of those deserted commercial buildings on the gravel road in totally misnamed Apache City.

It was good to be back into the mountains and seeing snow.

Detail: In the Dust Bowl of 2014

0 An Incident on the Prairie

Griggs County, North Dakota

West of the Sheyenne River things are different. The sloughs and ponds that are everywhere in my friend Galen's county are fewer here. The country has more of an upland feel — it's snowier too, he says — and there are more "No Hunting" signs.

That is not necessarily a problem. North Dakota allows hunting on unposted private land, and even posted land can be negotiated.

In fact,  at one point we pulled overwhere a guy tacking up a "no hunting" sign and talked with him, and it was as Galen had suspected — he wanted to keep out deer hunters for some reason,  but he had no problem at all with us walking his pastures for sharp-tailed grouse.

But before that encounter, we found a little valley that was open, parked, released the dogs and started walking. I took the high route along some hills like those in the background of the photo. The grouse often hang out on the leeward slopes — and they were there— but so were little copses of wind-stunted trees — some looked like crab apples (!?).

Two or three times grouse flushed on the other side of the trees, making their er-er-er, and I was unable to see them until they gained some altitude, by which time they were rapidly going out of range.

I watched one circle downwind way out over the little valley until it was just a dot against the grass. It sat down somewhere near the little cabin in the photo.

Walking on, I munched rose hips for locavore Vitamin C (It is not only Alberta that is "wild rose country") and marveled at the spread of wormwood onto the prairie. I struggle to grow a little in the herb garden here, and there it is scattered all over the place.

We were were just on the prairie, Mother Earth below, Blue Sky God above — and us, like the fleeing grouse, just dots. Mobility is crucial.

When Fisher the Chessie and I came up to a fence enclosing a pasture with cattle in it, we stopped and walked down toward the truck. We all drove to a spot about half a mile away, putting most of the little valley upwind.

Again we loaded our shotguns, called the dogs, and started a big loop out across the valley floor. Occasionally the wind brought the chug-chug of a tractor where one of the ranch hands, half a mile away, was pulling a manure spreader.

Fisher was off on Galen's side, so I whistled, and he came running, big happy grin, and as he passed through the tall grass, a whitetail doe popped up just behind him — he never sensed her.

I laughed at that and turned to go forward as he passed me, and then a grouse (that same grouse?) flew up on my left, er-er-er-er.

I spun counterclockwise, fired the first barrel wildly as the grouse caught the wind, and as my finger slipped to the second trigger, knew I was right on it, and it fell thump. This is my body, which is given for you.

Off in the distance, the manure spreader drew brown contours on the hillside.

Detail: An Incident on the Prairie

0 Burned Area Revegetation, Six Months Later

May 2013

Last May I used this photo of Fisher playing in a little seasonal spring to illustrate a post about the Bureau of Land Management's aerial seeding of a burned area near home.

The black ground is burned by the fire. The wood chips are mulch dropped by helicopter along with a mixture of grass seed.

September 2013

Here is Fisher again at the same spring (Camera Trap Spring). The mullein (upper left) would have arrived on its own, as did some of the other plants, but it looks like the grass mixture took hold, thanks to the late-summer rains.

We were spared the massive rains that hit northern Colorado, so there has not been an erosion problem, and now with any luck, there won't be.

Not shown: the Gambel oak is ankle to knee-high up there already. It needs no encouragement.

Detail: Burned Area Revegetation, Six Months Later

0 A Blanket of Stupidity Has Descended on Our County, Part 2

Read Part 1, When is a "rattlesnake" not a rattlesnake?

Click to enlarge.

On the 19th I combined a scout camera photo of a young bear with a bear-in-the-trash incident (same bear?) to make a blog post that tried to hit the "cute zone."

I should probably just leave "cute" alone. As for the bear, he is dead.

About 7:20 yesterday morning (the 22nd) as I was dressing to take Fisher for his walk, I heard a gun shot. I wanted to believe that it was something else.

We took our walk, came home, and Fisher, out on the veranda, alerted to something. I looked where he was looking, and there up in a big pine tree was a bear with blood on his side.

I called the sheriff's dispatcher and asked for a wildlife person. In about five minutes, one of the area district wildlife managers (what Colorado calls a game warden) called back. Twenty minutes later he was here, slipping his rifle from the scabbard behind the truck seat.

The warden moves for a clear shot at the wounded bear.

After he shot, he holds up his hand: "Look, I'm shaking. I just hate to have to destroy of those magnificent creatures." And he is talking about how he loves bears above all and even has a tattoo of bears under his shirt.

What had happened was this:

We have new neighbors, the kind who having moved from a town to a five-acre lot in the woods, think that they are now deep in the Alaskan bush and must defend themselves against all dangers.

They are well-armed and have four-wheel-drive vehicles, but they did not know where their well water came from until I told them.

Right away, the guy pissed off us and some other neighbors by target-shooting his fave AR-platform .308 rifle from his front yard and also sending .22 bullets zinging across a Forest Service road where someone else was walking (or so told us — and him).

Yesterday morning, he saw a bear in his dumpster, let his dog out, the bear swatted at the dog, and he shot it.

But "Mr. Tactical" did not kill it. He let it walk away, wounded. It came onto our property, climbed a tree, and suffered for over an hour until I saw it and called for the game warden.

Then his wife comes over to where the bear is lying, all "ohmygod there's a three-month-old baby in the house and the bear was around the house and I have baby chicks inside and we love animals because we have a dog and a canary!" Et cetera.

And then M. referred to her husband as a "murderer," and things threatened to become very un-neighborly indeed.

The warden stayed calm and reminded her (and Mr. Tactical when he finally showed up, standing back at a distance) that they could have called for an evaluation of the situation, maybe even a live-trap to remove the bear.

Shooting the bear just for poking into the garbage is flat illegal. But he did not cite them, because he was just over the line into another DWM's territory, and any law-enforcement action will be up to her. Naturally we are hoping that she gets his attention with a hefty fine.

At least these people are only renting, so maybe they will move on.

By ten o'clock, the incident was over — but the day was not. There was more to come.

Detail: A Blanket of Stupidity Has Descended on Our County, Part 2

0 One Frosty Morning

The forces of fog advance toward the house.

Hoarfrost on Gambel oak.

Yesterday felt like a clash of the weather titans. When I woke up, the air was foggy and the temperature about 20° F. I put on a warm jacket and took Fisher on the road climbing into the national forest. In little more than two hundred yards we had climbed out of the fog, and at the top of the first low ridge, it felt twenty degrees warmer.

All day, a warmer westerly breeze fought the fog advancing up from the plains. (Sort of like the California coast if you substitute the High Plains for the Pacific Ocean.) In the end the fog was triumphant, giving us something that we see only once or twice a year — hoarfrost.

Today the sun broke out, illuminating the frost.

The driveway.

Mixed pines and juniper.

If I had taken the last photo an hour later, I would have heard the Clock of the Cranes — a flock of sandhill cranes overhead, the first of the season here that I have heard.

They were at Monte Vista NWR a few days ago, where they will be "Celebrating Spring in the Valley of the Cranes" next weekend, March 7th–9th.

Detail: One Frosty Morning

0 Fawns by the Five-Pack

Fisher's Travel Crate is Appropriated by Fawns

Yesterday I posted the picture of a firefighter with a mule deer fawn during the Black Forest Fire; today I held it too. It's one of these five little mule deer. One of these was described to me as the "fawn that was on the news," and I think that it is the same one. Whatever.

One or two of these were rescued from the fire area directly. Three were already at the home of a rehabilitator who herself had to evacuate. Another transporter brought them from Colorado Springs to Penrose, where M. and I transferred them to our Jeep and brought them to Wet Mountain Wildlife.

I wonder if there will be more.

UPDATE: Here is KOAA Channel 5's news report about these particular deer, including "the famous fawn."

Detail: Fawns by the Five-Pack

0 Blog Stew: Only Partly Faked

¶ "Nature-faking" at the BBC. This is nothing new.

¶ Cornell Ornithology Lab has owl sounds for free download. Missing: spotted owl, flammulated owl, but a pretty good North American selection otherwise, since a lot of owling is done with the ears.

¶ The rising trend of fake service dogs. I have noticed this in the last two or three years. But service dogs are supposed to be calm, so there is no point in strapping a SERVICE DOG vest on Fisher.

¶ How mulching helped the High Park burn scar during last month's deluge.

Detail: Blog Stew: Only Partly Faked

0 Great Tumbleweed Migration

On the prairie west of Pueblo, the tumbleweeds are migrating.

Think nature-documentary film: "Onward they come, their destination unknown, driven by a force they cannot name. In twos, sixes, and twenties, large and small, the tumbleweeds march inexorably eastward across the savannah."

The wind was blowing the dogs' ears inside out, and a cloud of dust in the distance looked an awful lot like a grass fire, but was not.

(M.'s thought: "At least we have both dogs with us." My thought: "It's too far from my department's territory—unlikely that we would be called out.")

Fisher the maniacal Chesapeake galloped into the wind, propelled by jets of craziness from his butt — or whatever motivates him.

When he squatted to poop, tumbleweeds piled up against his legs.

Detail: Great Tumbleweed Migration

0 The Teddy Bears' Picnic

Beneath the trees where nobody sees 

They'll hide and seek as long as they please 

 'Cause that's the way the Teddy Bears have their picnic.

When do the bears emerge from hibernation? And when do they start appearing around the house? A neighbor picked up some on their scout camera, about three miles away, earlier this month. This young (subadult) bear had its picture taken on the 16th, about ten minutes' walk from the house.

Two large bear turds are circled.

Then this morning, while M. and I were eating breakfast outdoors, Lt. Fisher of the Garbage and Carrion Location and Disposal section located and was trying to dispose of a ripped-up sack of garbage on the other side of the wooded ravine in front of the house.

And there was another similar sack and similar bear turds only yards away. Yes, the bears had been having a picnic.

Internal evidence pointed to the garbage coming from the neighbor across the road. She said she had put out her trash on Tuesday, but that the garbage driver "hadn't taken it."

Or maybe she had told her son, the aspiring "dark arts painter," to roll the wheelie bin out to the road, but he never did it. So the bears found it. Whatever. Let's just listen to Der Bingle sing the song.

Detail: The Teddy Bears' Picnic

0 Monsoon on the Conejos (3) Pagosa Springs & Assorted Mushroom Thoughts

Boletus edulis in the Wet Mountains

Saturday the 10th was our last full day of the camping trip. I put away the fly rods and picked more mushrooms (and wild strawberries) on Cumbres Pass, then drove on west through Chama, N.M, to Pagosa Springs.

I had planned to be in Pagosa the previous weekend for a state-sponsored fire class, but it was cancelled, so this was sort of a consolation visit.

In Pagosa, the weather was warm, and the San Juan River was running high and brown. Tubing outfitters were busy shuttling their customers to the east side of town so that they could ride down past the city park and the mineral springs, where the terraces were crowded with bathers.

In the midst of this "rubber hatch," I saw one guy casting a spinning rod. I thought of congratulating him for upholding the archetype of the always-optimistic fisherman, but he gave up and walked away.

We visited a couple of thrift stores—nothing exciting—where does all the outdoor gear go?—and then had a late lunch/early supper at the Riff-Raff brew pub ("Hoppy people. Hoppy earth").

I reckoned that my cabrito burger with Hatch green chiles was sort of quasi-locavore-ish.

It rained steadily most of the way back to the campground.

The next morning I observed a mulie doe moving strangely through the woods. She had her nose down like a dog following a scent trail.

Was she eating mushrooms? I had picked a few in that area, mostly Suillis  ("slippery jacks"). I tried to follow, but I could not get too close without spooking her, and there were a lot of spruce boughs in the way.

I did see some Suillis that had been scraped by what looked like a deer's lower incisors (Deer don't have upper incisors.) Were there fewer mushrooms than before? Not sure.

Two days later, having done well on a mushroom hunt closer to home, M. and I were easing down a rough forest road in the Jeep when we saw a squirrel wrestling — or something — in the road. It turned out to be trying to carry the stem of a Boletus edulis ("king bolete"), which was nearly as big as it was.

Yesterday M. was walking Fisher on lead down the driveway when he dashed into the oak brush, dragging her along. He had scented another bolete, one unfortunately past its prime. It was probably another Boletus chrysenteron, which grows under oaks, like the one he snarfed off the kitchen counter a few days ago.

Does this mean that he might have a talent for finding good mushrooms? If the French have truffle-sniffing dogs, could we have a Southern Rockies bolete-sniffing dog? Further research is required.

Detail: Monsoon on the Conejos (3) Pagosa Springs & Assorted Mushroom Thoughts