Monday, June 30, 2008

Pics from the week

Our baby gorilla, Tumani, is about 17 months old now. She still rides on mom's back when traveling, but is also quite independent. Here she is out in the outside exhibit:

I was over at Sherrie's house Saturday night, working on the baptism outfit I'm making for Boy Twin Geske. These lilies (I think tiger) were blooming in front of her house:

Today, Sherrie and I did a 4-mile hike in Sondermann Park and Open Space and found a few caches. The prickly pears were blooming all over the place:

There were lots of these damselflies along the trail. I found a dead one, which Sherrie was holding for me to photograph when this live one landed on her hand:

While we couldn't find one of the caches, this Western Tiger Swallowtail landed nearby:

Monday, June 23, 2008

Blooms, Butterflies, & Birds

Today I went on an Audubon Society field trip hike. The name of the field trip was the same as the title of this post (Blooms, Butterflies, and Birds) and we headed off to a place called Emerald Valley to look for those things. One of the priorities of the hike was to look for and do a rough census on orchids. This part was certainly intriguing to me, since I didn't even know we had wild orchids here. We also were looking for butterflies and, of course, birds. The group tally for bird species seen or heard was 28. Without the help of the experience birders in the group, I probably would have ID'd about 5! It's so much fun to go on a field trip like this and just absorb the knowledge of the others on the trip. Well, enough with the set-up, here's the pictures:
Colorado Blue Columbine (Colorado State flower)

Paintbrush

Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchid

Two more Yellow Lady's Slippers

Field Crescent

Western Tiger Swallowtails

"Puddling" butterflies - some species of "blue". I'll edit when I find out the species.

Western Tanager - gotta be one of the prettiest species of bird in the US!

A flower spider eating a bee on a wild rose. Luckily my friend Jenyva spotted this or I would've missed it.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Oh deer!

This time of year brings babies in the wild population of deer around the zoo. This morning when I looked out the back door of my building at work, I saw a doe walking toward the wooden fence outside the orangutan yard. She didn't appear to be grazing, so I watched her to see where she would go - if she jumped over the fence, it was sure to bring an interesting reaction from the orangutans in the nearby enclosure. Instead, I watched as a tiny fawn walked shakily from a spot out of my sight and joined her. It wasn't still wet, but for sure it was born within the last 12 hours or so.


I stepped just outside the door and snapped a bunch of pictures as she licked him, nursed him and he went for a short, wobbly stroll. Too cute!
Then she started walking away and he followed out of sight around the end of the fence. Later I saw her alone, so I started looking for the fawn between where I saw them last and where she was. For those of you unfamiliar with deer behavior, does will "park" their newborn fawns under a tree or in the grass while they go off and forage for food. The little ones just can't keep up with mom yet. The fawn instinctively stay very still even if someone approaches. Their dappled coats provide excellent camouflage. I actually walked pretty close to the fawn once when looking for it, before finally spotting it the second try. Here's a pic of it curled up in the grass:

Monday, June 9, 2008

Mining for paint?

Pastor Doug has been telling Sherrie and I that we needed to go hiking out at the paint mines near Calhan. It's out on the plains about 30 miles northeast of here, so we were waiting for a cooler day to go. He also said for the best lighting we should go in the morning or evening. Sherrie wasn't available until after 2pm today, so with temps in the low 70s, today was the day to head out there. The formations found in Paint Mines Interpretive Park are composed mostly of sandstone and clay eroded by water. The colorful clays were used by American Indians to color pottery, thus the name "paint mines". Narrow trails wind amongst the wonderful formations, with a new delight around every turn. I took close to 100 pictures, but here are a few of my favorites:








Overview of part of the park

There were lots of wildflowers, especially wild roses. We also found a horned lizard.






Thanks for the recommendation, Pastor Doug!

Monday, June 2, 2008

Hiking, friends, music

Those 3 words describe my 3-day weekend pretty well.

I had a day off from work on Saturday, so I got some friends together that can't hike with me and Sherrie on Mondays and did a Saturday hike. Almost everyone could only hike in the morning, so we decided to hike in Palmer Park in Colorado Springs. Though it's in the middle of the city, this is a large, bluff-filled park with miles of trails. Gil, Ani, Sherrie, Alison (& Sadie)& I ended up hiking about 6 miles on a perfect morning. Here's a group shot of us where we stopped for a snack and a picture of a bumblebee on some wild iris:



On Sunday afternoon, our new associate pastor, David Hall was installed at church. It was a wonderful festival service full of music. Our choir sang 4 different pieces, handbells played several, and brass as well.

Today, Sherrie and I headed to the Mt. Herman area near Monument, CO for more hiking and geocaching. We hiked about seven miles and found 8 caches. Here are a few pictures from today - baby pinecones, a white-breasted nuthatch and an assassin bug: