Features

It is wonderful to see spring greening the hills once more. I drove south to Colorado Springs and Pueblo with friends last week and was once more impressed by the changing landscape south of Colorado Springs.
North of Colorado Springs, the rolling hills of the prairie are green, and trees were beginning to leaf out. South of the Springs, you quickly enter desert country. In a few places, we saw cacti that looked like they might soon produce new growth and flowers, but in most places, the land was so overgrazed that the entire landscape appeared to be sand colored.

Waking early this morning, I looked out my window to see what kind of day it was going to be. It was a beautiful spring morning and hadn’t dropped below freezing all night.
The sky was cloudless, and the sun was just peeking over Stanley Mountain’s shoulder. The small amount of snow that had fallen the day before was gone. It had started melting even as it fell, and the warm night had completed the meltdown.

This is part one of a two-part series.

Soon the ice will break up on Evergreen Lake, and migrating ducks will begin to appear. Usually blue-winged teal are the first to arrive. It is interesting to keep track of the large variety of ducks that can be seen on this little lake.
Ducks are usually divided into two main groups.
The so-called tip-up ducks or puddle ducks are those that tip their tail up into the air, and their necks and heads down into the water to feed in relatively shallow water. There are 16 species of puddle ducks in four genera.

Late winter brings strange weather into this area. This year, January brought much warmer weather than usual, giving everyone spring fever.
February thus far has turned out to be colder than average and has brought back-to-back snowstorms with scarcely a break in between.
The only thing that you can be positive about is that it will change. Whatever it is like at the moment, it probably won’t be the same 10 minutes from now or tomorrow.

We were blessed with spring-like weather during much of January, while the high country has had plenty of snow for the ski resorts. Who could ask for any better weather for all of us? Now I can’t help but wonder if we will have to pay for this fine weather with too much snow in February and March.

It is often the case in rural communities that youth leave their small towns to get an education and then never come back. Fortunately for us, this is not the case for two nurses, born and raised in Clear Creek County, who have recently joined the Clear Creek Public and Environmental Health Department.
The nurses, Crystal Brandt and Tami Bradley, will cover the duties of Jean Barta, retired public health nurse, and Maggie LaRose, RN, who recently moved with her family to Australia as part of a teacher-exchange program.

A pleasant surprise this past week was a letter to the Canyon Courier with photos enclosed of some American goldfinches at a feeder. The photos were taken by Bud and Sandy Madigan at their home feeder in the Upper Bear Creek area. The photos helped me identify the birds.

Many people complain to me that they find winter birding dull because there are no pretty birds around.
True, the winter residents at most feeders, pine siskins, chickadees, nuthatches, hairy and down woodpeckers, house sparrows, house finches, and the various forms of the dark-eyed junco are mostly gray, brown, and black-and-white birds. Not very exciting or colorful, but they are still interesting.