From yesterday's hike:

New Kris Lewis

 Kris Lewis

Lynx

Retired National Park Service employee Steve Chaney spotted two lynx in southwest Colorado last weekend and managed to capture the rare encounter on camera - via CPW

Colorado Wolverine

M56, the juvenile wolverine tagged in Grand Teton National Park near Jackson, Wyo., in April of 2009 and believed to have walked to Colorado soon after, still is ranging in Northern Colorado. Here he eyes a photographer on April 22, 2012 near Guanella Pass. (Cameron Miller, special to The Denver Post - follow link to see more of his work and support this photographer)

This morning's Denver Post has an interesting article about the first wolverine seen in Colorado for 90 years - called M56. According to the article at the Post, only 250 wolverines are estimated to exist in the lower 48 states. There are talks of re-introduction of the species into Colorado - with hold ups from various "shareholders" (skiing, mining, etc). Like many people, I love a good underdog or lone-wolf story - I think that's part of the lure of the West. In 2008 I wrote about a possible wolf in Rocky Mountain National Park and this story of M56 closely relates - both in the rarity of the species in Colorado and the talk of possible re-introduction. For more information, check out the Wolverine Blog.

Wild Turkeys

Wild Turkeys in Rocky Mountain National Park

Bird

This unusual bird was hanging out on the outskirts of the main street in Grand Lake, Colorado. I'm not sure what kind of bird it is, but it sure was unexpected near a frozen lake up in the mountains.

UPDATE: Liza at Postcards from Colorado just left a comment informing me of this painting:


You can purchase a print of this painting by The Mincing Mockingbird on etsy - or visit the blog here.

Weekend photos

We had a nice time up in the Winter Park/Grand Lake area this weekend. On our travels we spotted bighorn sheep, elk, marmots, mule deer, five moose, a fox and a pelican. Not bad huh?

Here's the fox - running through ditches off of the side of the road outside of Grand Lake.

There were five moose in this small group inside of the Grand Lake side of Rocky Mountain National Park - they were across a field of snow, so most of the photos were taken through my binoculars (thus the vignette).

Hope everyone stopping by "minutiae" had a great weekend too.

From the Weekend

Photo taken by Lorna Cochrane on Mount Evans yesterday.

Estes Park Traffic

Taken Saturday in Estes Park.

Conservationists unveil plans to restore bison to North American plains

photo by Nathan Abels -outside of Tetons National Park

Conservationists unveil plans to restore bison to North American plains

Mountain Lion in Oklahoma

This mountain lion was captured on Ryan Ritter’s trail camera near Atoka in southeastern Oklahoma- via Cryptomundo. See also, "Some Mystery Left" - a post I wrote about the mountain lion found in Chicago in 2008.

A Pair

Doug Aitken

David Lynch, "Twin Peaks; Fire Walk With Me"

New Year - New Photos

We took these photos in Moab, Utah where it was much snowier than we expected but really beautiful an a other-worldly way.

Our road out of Moab looked like this:

We saw this bald eagle off of I-70 near (appropriately) Eagle, Colorado

A trip to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge

We took a short trip out to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon. It's less than half an hour drive from downtown Denver (just a little over 11 miles away) and a great stop for a leisurely afternoon walk or hike. I'm pretty familiar with the Arsenal from the air because we photograph it monthly as part of my aerial survey job, but I was impressed by the scale of the place on the ground (27 square miles!). Here's a photo of part of the arsenal from the air this summer:


On the drive towards the visitor center we were greeted by two impressive bucks and their friends:

We're pretty sure this was a bald eagle:

photos by Nathan Abels

Scottish Deer

Deer, originally uploaded by Caro Jones.

Photo of the Day

source.

Wild Neighbors

At our lodging on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park this weekend we had several local residents over to visit: (in order of appearance)

(he picks his head up 20 seconds in on the video)

This doe was with two others - but this was the better photo.

Bear and Ladder

Bear climbing out of a skate park in Snowmass, CO - photos by Tina White - at the Denver Post

The world we live in

Here's an excerpt from Alan Prendergast's article in this weeks Westword titled, "In Colorado, it's not about why the wildlife cross the road, but whether they'll survive the trip";

"Establishing safe passages for wildlife is a long-term investment in the state's future, insists Julia Kintsch, an ecologist who operates her own consulting company, ECO-resolutions, and has worked on the Vail Pass bridge project for years. 'There's this hangup that it's for wildlife, not for people,' she says. 'We need to recognize that wildlife are an important part of the world we live in, too. It doesn't always have a monetary value attached to it, but it has value to our economy. It's a large part of why people come here to recreate and to live.'"

More Denver Area Coyotes in the News

On my way to work last Thusday morning I was stopped a light at 7 am in the Tech Center area of Denver/Centennial and I looked off to my right and thought to myself "who's dog is that?" because there was no one near the creature besides three lanes of office workers sipping coffee in their cars. It took me a second to realize that the dog I was looking at on the manicured lawn among Tech Center office buildings was actually a good sized coyote. As soon as the traffic started moving again, the coyote ran out of sight. Coyotes have actually been making a lot of local headlines lately:

Here's a photo of Greenwood Village's own "Limpy" the Coyote - see the campaign to protect "Limpy" and other area coyotes here. Also - this week's Westword has an article about Greenwood Village coyote hazing using paintball guns.

Recent headline on the Glendale Cherry Creek chronicle - article here

April 2009 photo from Aurora, CO - photo by flickr user HopefulNebula