On Seeing Liatris -- Thoughts of Poverty and Summer Sadness

Many people call this late-summer wildlflower "blazing star," but I always call it by the bontanical genus name, Liatris. It is the only wildflower that I call by its Latin name, and the reasons have to do with poverty and sadness.

Liatris blooms in late August. It is a perennial, and its energy-storing coms must have gotten a good soaking in our wet early summer, because I have never seen it thicker on the slope behind the house.

Its message is obvious: this is the last blaze of summer — enjoy it while you can. (Meanwhile, some are impatient for summer to be gone, but that is another story.)

I almost hate to see its blossoms, not only because summer is ending, but because they always take me back to the summer when I turned 36 and the bottom fell out.

M. and I had come to Cañon City, Colo., so that I could work on a friend's start-up magazine, but it failed (as most start-up magazines actually did in the pre-Web era). There we were in our 1910 smelter worker's cottage without enough money to leave town, nor any idea where to go if we did.

The mortgage payment was low, but with her working only part-time and me just selling an occasional freelance article, our finances were tighter than tight.

Our friend Hank stepped in. His family were florists in Pueblo. He had earned a master's in agronomy at Colorado State and worked for a seed company in Idaho breeding peas, but he wanted a change, so he came home and started a wholesale flower business on part of his family's little acreage on St. Charles Mesa (SE side of Pueblo). 

It was pretty much a one-man operation -- including the long drives to deliver flowers down the Arksansas River and over into the San Luis Valley -- and sometimes when he had a lot of harvest and prep to do, he hired us as casual labor.

He grew commercial varieties of Liatris, taller than our wildflowers, because they made good cut flowers, with the blossoms opening over several days. Good "vase life," you might say. He always called it "Liatris," so I did too.

Things changed. I thought I was done with newspapers, but took a job at the Cañon City Daily Record that fall. It paid the bills, and overlapped partly with our seasonal job censusing owls for the Bureau of Land Management. I finished the overdue thesis and started teaching part-time, then full time, finally saying goodbye for  good to journalism. M. did likewise, teaching at a community college and finding she was good at it.

Hank's marriage ended, and so did the flower business, but he too switched to community college teaching, got a doctorate, and ended up on the biology faculty at Merritt College in Oakland, Calif. 

I wonder if he sees any Liatris out there, and if so, what its mental associations are. When I see them, I still get a quick gut-flinch: What am I going to do?

A Dog's Three-Dimensional World of Light, Shapes, and Scent — Mostly Scent?

Is Marco the dog following a visual trail, with the additional visual cues of rocks lined up on the side, or is he following "a rippling, three-dimensional tapestry of light, shapes, and scents, with every object effusing odors that are further revealed upon nose-first investigation"?

According to the researchers interviewed for this article in Popular Science, "Why Your Dog Needs to Smell the World," too many dog owners neglect smelling opportunities in favor of motion. 

Many dogs, however, live in less enriching circumstances. They spend most of their time in relatively scent-impoverished indoor environments and then, when taken outside for a walk, are hurried along at a pace that’s more about their caregiver’s interests than their own. Even just a cracked-open window can make a difference, says Horowitz, though she tries to let her own companions, Quiddity and Tilde, sniff to their hearts’ content while exploring on a stroll.

Dogs change too: Our former collie-mix, Shelby, used to charge forward on walks. She never learned not to pull the leash -- or I was unwilling to correct her again and again times 1,000. 

More often she was off-leash except for the last bit of the walk home, past the other houses.

But as she aged, she more and more prefered to take "sniff walks," going a couple of yards and then pausing to examine some tuft of grass or bush. That is what old dogs often want to do.

Blog Stew with Mountain Lion (Tastes like Pork, They Say)

Just a lion walking past a trail camera two years ago.

•  The culinary side of mountain lions (cougars) is not covered in this Colorado Parks and Wildlife video series, but you get one legally, be my guest. (Or should I be yours?)

Episode 1 - Mountain lion biology and historical perspective
Episode 2 - Mountain lion habitat and human expansion
Episode 3 - Hunting
Episode 4 - What to do if you encounter a mountain lion

• What is chronic wasting disease and why is it a problem for deer, elk, and msein the Rockies? Two more videos here from CPW.

 • Yes, beavers are great! Beavers in every drainage!    

SILVERTON, Colo. — Colorado’s San Juan Mountains are home to about 15,000 abandoned mines, according to Rory Cowie, the president and owner of Alpine Water Resources.

Several hundred of these abandoned mines are in need of a cleanup, which is something multiple federal agencies are working on. Cowie refers to these mines as “legacy mines”— mines that are no longer in use.

“They either have draining water that's of poor quality, or they may have a bunch of mine waste or tailings ... near them,” Cowie said. “And so, for the past 25 or 30 years, there's been efforts to clean up these mines, but there are a lot of them and it takes a lot of funding.”

But Cowie has a low-cost, natural solution in mind: the American beaver.

But be careful. As Ben Goldfarb writes Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, mountain lions look at newly dropped-off beavers the way that you might look at a cheeseburger. There is a video embedded.

Instagram Blamed for "Crystal Mill" Access Closure

The 1892 Crystal "Mill" was actually a powerhouse. (Library of Congress)

 If you live in Colorado, you know this image. As the man quoted says, it's on the wall of every dentist's office. (Except my old dentist, who stuck streamer flies in the ceiling tiles sothat you could contemplate them when the chair reclined.)

What used to be a popular destination is now closed off. It was just too too Instagram-able.  The owner used to charge visitors a $10 fee. Now access is closed, reports the Colorado Sun.

Some of the visitors to the Crystal Mill and Crystal City ghost town area — estimated at thousands a week in the summer season — had started prying off bits of the historic mill. They were carving their names into surrounding trees and spray painting on structures. Some threw a party inside the rickety mill building. One slung a hammock from the side of the mill. Some buzzed drones over the area. One pulled a gun on a Cox employee when asked to pay the $10 access fee.

Marble locals have reported that others went to nearby private historic cabins and walked in on summer residents, thinking the structures were there for more of their backcountry exploration. People relieved themselves outside the cabins after they found they couldn’t wander in and use a toilet.

Marble business owners who run tours to the mill or rent rugged vehicles capable of getting there, blame social media for the influx of ill-intentioned visitors bent on snagging the best selfies with an internationally recognized mining-era structure.

 Find your own damn social media hotspot, OK?

Help! Which Beetle is This?

I was taking Marco to a favorite pond yesterday when I saw this large beetle marching down the dirt road we were on. Overall length was about 2 in./5 cm.

I thought of a pine sawyer, but there are no pine trees in that area, only cottonwoods. There is a cottonwood borer, but it has a distinctive black and white pattern.

One that looks close is the palo verde beetle. No palo verdes grow here in southern Colorado, but I read that their grubs will also bore into cottonwood roots. Maybe someone could save me a hard day's night of reading guidebooks and websites and identify it?

A Kinky Barn Owl

I was going to say "kinky" because p. 236 in my Sibley guide is Amazon parrots, but then I realized that I was using the "Western North America" version.

Restoring Shortgrass Prairie for Native Plants and Carbon

Fendi Despres (right) and a prairie-restoration volunteers.  (Photo: Fendi Despres via 5280).

5280 Magazine describes how the 1,100-acre Plains Conservation Center (owned by the city of Aurora) is a test area for restoration and carbon sequestration.

[It’s] one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet,” [ Fendi Despres, natural resource specialist] says. This includes a surprisingly long list of native animals, ranging from birds to reptiles. The shortgrass prairie also performs critical services for the environment, such as providing clean air and water. But perhaps the prairie’s most intriguing characteristic is a superpower that we can use to combat climate change and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions: carbon sequestration.

Depres says that the prairie ecosystem is particularly effective at capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it underground because its root systems run surprisingly deep—as much as 12 to 15 feet. And unlike forests, which can lose sequestered carbon stored in tree trunks during logging and wildfires, when the prairie burns, most of its carbon remains safely stored below ground.

The area is inside the E470 beltway, which means that it is accessible to visitors who want to take wagon rides and learn about regenerative agriculture. No dogs permitted though.

Colorado Is Now Out of Drought, But New Mexico Is Not

Click to embiggen.

This graphic displays moisture changes in Colorado over the last 90 days. As you can see, the Eastern Slope and High Plains have been wet. Nearly 11 inches (28 cm) have fallen at my house, and other places have more. While in some climates that counts as "somewhat damp," for us it is "Oh my gawd when will it stop?"

 The plains in particular have had tons of hail, which threaten the wheat harvest.

"Heavy rains and severe thunderstorms continue in the Southern Plains where producers are watching forquality impacts. In Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota, producers are hoping for dryer and/or warmer weather ahead of harvest." (US Wheat Associates harvest report, July 7, 2023).

On the other hand, it is starting to look like a good summer wildlflower season, although spring was not so good.

A quarter of New Mexico is "abnormally dry," while the southeastern quadrant is in either "moderate" or "severe" drought.

If you find this information endlessly fascinating, visit the .gov "Drought Portal." Your tax dollars at work.

A Summer When Some Signs Fail

Last of the low penstemon.

A now-gone rancher friend used to say, "All signs fail in times of drought." Maybe they fail in times of heavy rains as well.

Spring started dry. I was out on a couple of small fires in April, and we all worried what was coming next. Rain was coming next: from mid-May to mid-June we got more than nine inches (24+ cm). 

All my May outdoor projects — plantings, rail-fence repair, house-painting — were postponed.

The natural world was similar. The usual spring wildflowers were never seen or only rarely. Spring beauties (Claytonia) not at all. Sand lilies — just one or two. Pasque flowers, hardly at all.

Bird life changed too. A flock of evening grosbeaks (as many as eighteen) that had hung around all spring finally dispersed, except for a couple, when M and I went down to Taos for a week in early June, taking away their free food, because we don't leave bird feeders out all night when the bears are about.

Colorado Springs had the wettest June since record-keeping began.

I don't know if it was the cold and rain or what, but the roll call of spring migrants was incomplete.

The broad-tailed hummingbirds arrived in April as usual, and two males are busy disputing rights to the sugarwater feeder. Black-headed grosbeaks are here, although perhaps not as many as I expected.

But spotted towhees, which are usually screeching from every oak thicket as they proclaim their nesting territories, don't seem to be here at all.

I miss Lucinda. There were many Lucindas over the years.  Back in the 2000s, every year a little cordilleran flycatcher would nest in some inconvenient (to us) place, like on the front porch light, and so we named all the mother birds Lucinda.

A few years ago, I built the Official Flycatcher Nesting Shelf high up under the eaves on the quiet back side of the house, and the birds liked it. They would nest mid-June, and the young would be out of the nest by late July. 

In 2023, as I recall, some eggs were laid but never hatched.  Did some predator nab that year's Lucinda? And this year, no flycatchers. The chain seems to be broken, and I am surprised  how sad that makes me feet.

So many things seem to be happening late, and I keep hoping, but I don't think it is likely that they will show up to build a nest two weeks later.

Wildflowers recovered better. June saw a burst of blue-flowered low penstemon in every forest clearing, supported by some vetches, clover,  feral lilacs and others. Wild plums bloomed profusely , but ponderosa pine pollen was scanty.

 In late June, we flipped from rainy to hot with highs hitting 90° F, all of which goes to show that when it comes to weather, "average" is just a number. So M. and I are still setting out plants and even seeds, hoping for a long warm fall, with backup plans of moving some container plants into the unheated greenhouse if need be. 

And mushrooms! Thanks to all the rain, we're picking here around the house, mostly shaggy parasols, but a twenty-minute drive put us into some giant puffballs, sitting in the high grass creekside like skulls on an ancient battlefield. Two of those in a shopping back feel like serious food. Maybe 2023 will go down as a great mushroom year.

I can't tell what it all adds up to though. Some things good, some puzzling.

Shootout at the Watering Hole

Photo: Colorado Sun

 "Pastoral cultures are always violent," I read once in an anthropology book. 

You know the scenario: two herds are convering on a watering hole from different directions, and the respective herdsmen get into a fracas over whose animals will drink first.

I figure it will be the same with electric vehicles, which politicians are pushing with religious fervor. 

They typically take about an hour to charge, and charging stations are still few and far between in most places. Like having a small city of 100,000 people with two filling stations.

Today's headline out of the Denver inner suburb of Edgewater: "Fight between Tesla drivers ends in deadly shooting at Denver-area charging station."

A fight between Tesla drivers at an electric vehicle charging station in suburban Denver escalated into a fatal shooting that killed one driver and left another man in custody, authorities said Wednesday

With all the "plans" and "mandates"out there, and all the glee in the news media, this might be a new part of our future.

No Matter What We Do, They. Keep.Trying.

The National Weather Service office in Pueblo posted these radar images on Facebook today.

See the oval on the left? That is not rain, it's birds.

No matter what we do. No matter who is running for president. No matter whether the stock market is up or down. No matter how wet or dry the winter was (dry here in the Arkansas River drainage),  they keep trying to live their ancient, ancient lives.

You can do them a solid by turning off as many lights as possible. They don't need your lights. They know the way.

Great Information for Colorado Birders, Ecotourists, and Upland Hunters

When I was young and the internet still only dial-up, I had an idea for a Future Farmers of America chapter fundraiser.

A chapter in, say, Wray, Colorado, could poll its members' parents and friends and come up with a list of landowners who allowed hunters on their property (for free or for a small trespass fee). 

This list could be photocopied into a little booklet and sold at the Chamber of Commerce or fundraising events.

Maybe someone did something like that, somewhere. But now Colorado Parks & Wildlife has done something a little bit similar.

I picked up this 6x9-inch spiral bound book last month at the High Plains Snow Goose Festival. It is for southeastern Colorado —  there are similar books for the other three quarters

There is an overall "birding trail" page at the CPW website.

 You can also download the books as PDF files or pick up durable printed copies (if they are in stock) for free at regional offices.

You will find descriptions of accessible sites such as public parks, state wildlife areas (all adults must have a hunting or fishing license or SWA pass), and others, and also farms and ranches that engage in eco-tourism, offering hiking, camping, birding, and in some cases hunting access as well.

Fees are not given, but there is contact information. 

There are also auto-route guides, such as this excerpt for Cordova Pass in southern Colorado.

It's a lot of good information in one place, and you should have it if you live in or travel through Colorado for outdoor recreation.

History Wars II: Where is Your Fine New Signage Now?

In 2008, I described two different narratives about the area south of Florence, Colorado, in the pre-Civil War era of trappers, traders, and would-be ranchers. 

I called it "History Wars in Custer County," which was slightly misleading, because the marker also relates to SE Fremont County. But it was a Custer Co. historical group that — annoyed by the then-Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado) replacing the good ol' historical marker with something more self-consciously multicultural — decided to erect a replica alongside it.

That group is winning the battle of the elements. Their old-style sign, with occcasional repainting, has outlasted the new one, which has been erased by the gentle Colorado sunshine. 

Go to the early post to see how the new sign looked when it was new and to read some of its text. Back then, you could read it. Now, like most derelict structures, it is attracting graffiti. 

This historical-marker database lists the new sign as "marked unreadable," but you can read part of its text.

It's kind of like how well-maintained traditional buildings outlast modernist structures whose concrete splits and spalls and whose cladding falls off.

Are Chickadees Hybridizing and Is That a Bad Thing?

Mountain chickadeee (Poecile gambeli). Cornell University

A recent Audobon Society article spoke to possible hybridization between mountain chickadees and black-capped chickadees (more common at lower elevations) here in Colorado:

Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees mate more often than previously believed, research shows—especially where people disturb their habitat. 

Three chickadees clung to a suet feeder outside Denver, but one of them looked different from the others. Unlike the two Black-capped Chickadees, an eBird user noted in December, this one had a faint white band above its eyes, characteristic of a Mountain Chickadee. In July, at the Randall Davey Audubon Center in Santa Fe, another birder spotted a chickadee with a Mountain’s white eyebrows and a Black-capped’s buff sides and white-edged wings. Similar birds have popped up in Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, and other Rocky Mountain metros. 

Prior to eBird’s creation in 2002, the scientific literature held only three records of hybridization between Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees, each report more than 25 years old. But in the past few years, Kathryn Grabenstein and Scott Taylor, evolutionary biologists at the University of Colorado Boulder, noticed that eBird users commonly spot hybrids of the two species in the West. The platform includes more than 800 such reports today, many of them from cities and towns. The researchers decided to look further into the phenomenon.

Funny thing, here in the foothills of the Wet Mountains, essentially a young (post-1960s) ponderosa pine forest mixed with a Gambel oak understory, I see both chickadee species about equally in smal numbers, usually no more than two of each at a time. This habitat has evolved and contains houses, but I would not say that there is a large number of introduced deciduous trees.

"Species "is a human concept, and definitions are often changed. There used to be several species of juncos, for example, and then the American Ornithological Society decided that there was only one: the dark-eyed junco. Bye-bye, Oregon junco and the rest.

Nature writer Emma Marris comments in her new book Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World (the paperback subtitle is What We Owe Animals in a Changing World),

One approach to sorting out whether animal hybrids are "good" or "bad" in terms of biodiversity is to ask whether the resulting organisms will be more resiliant and likely to persist in the face of the ongoing processes of environmental change that we humans have kicked off. Another way is to investigate whether the individual hybrids themseves will be more or less able to be happy and flourish.

So as long as a there is a chickadee out there doing chickadee stuff and living in the trees, it's all right, she would say.

"The Native Three," a Short Video on Some Upper Colorado River Fish

I'm working through a backlog of news-related potential blog posts. Here's a short video about state wildlife biologists working with non-game species — but still important native fish.

Just think, there is no "Roundtail Chub Unlimited" with chapters all over the Colorado River basin. Pity.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife's aquatic research scientists have embarked on multiple projects to protect the three fish species native to the Upper Colorado River Basin (Flannelmouth Sucker, Bluehead Sucker and Roundtail Chub). This video, ‘The Native Three’ helps tell that story.