Daddy's little girl

Watching a baby gorilla grow up in its family group is very exciting and entertaining, but one of the best things has been watching Tumani's relationship with her father, Rafiki. This guy weighs about 475 pounds and has the strength of at least 6 men, but he can play with Tumani with such gentleness. It may not always look gentle when he's flipping her around and "wrestling" with her in such a way that she probably thinks she's winning, but it is. His powerful jaws that can easily crack nuts and chew up tough vegetation can playfully mouth her tiny belly, tickling her and sending her into gales of gorilla laughter. Yes, gorillas do laugh, orangutans, too, actually, but gorillas laugh audibly. You have to be really close to hear it, but it is one of the coolest sounds in the world.



These pictures will also appear soon in CMZ's new blog (link on the lower right on my blog page)

Last hike?

The thing about hiking in Colorado this time of year is you never know when it's going to be the last mountain hike of the season. Sure, there are plenty of places in town where you can do a winter hike without much snow, but when it comes to hiking on a mountain, once the snows come there will be places where it won't melt until spring (or even summer). So with temperatures last Monday close to 70°, I planned a hike with some altitude. There are several geocaches on top of Blodgett Peak which is on the northwest edge of Colorado Springs. I've been wanting to get up there for years, so on Monday that's just what Sherrie and I attempted.

We went up over 1000 feet in elevation in almost 2 1/2 hours of hiking and were within 450ft of the next geocache, but I had to be somewhere by 6pm, so we had to head back down. That 450 feet was also across a boulder field that would have taken a long time to cross. The "trail" we were on was probably at least a 45° incline. Here's a pic of Sherrie coming up part of that slope:

The really bad part about that slope was that we had to come back down. My knee is still recovering. We met a guy with two dogs coming up just as we turned back. He had been to the top before on the real trail. He described how to get there, so next time we'll go that way.
We still found 6 geocaches and enjoyed some very nice views. The weather must have been perfect for flying, because there were plenty Air Force Academy training gliders in the sky.
Here is the view toward the south, including Cheyenne Mountain way in the distance from one of the caches:

Here is a pic of an AFA glider in tow and then 2 pics of the glider overhead:



So, I don't know how many more hikes I'll get in this year, but it's supposed to be in the 30s and maybe snowy next Monday.

Poor Dog! (+ some other stuff)

Yesterday, while I was scratching Logan's incredibly soft ears, I noticed that one of them was swollen. He had a hematoma on his ear. I called Em to see what I needed to do, and she advised me to take him in to the vet today, and that he'd probably need minor surgery to fix it. He didn't need surgery, at least not yet. They drained the hematoma, bandaged the ear and fitted him with an Elizabethen collar. He is quite miserable with the collar on and needs to wear it for a week. Draining it was about $400 cheaper than the surgery, so hopefully it will work! Here's Logan in his collar:




We've had some cold weather and winter can't be far away, so very soon I won't have any insects to photograph. Is it wrong that I'm already looking forward to spring? I did get a good photo of a Painted Lady this week (and a fly):


One last photo is of the pumpkin that I carved for Boo at the Zoo:

Bee mine

I just wanted to make a quick post to show off this picture of a bee that I took yesterday while caching in Monument Valley Park.

It's a female long-horned bee (Svastra obliqua). I only got this one shot before it took off, so I was pleased to see how clear a shot I got, and I love the color of the flower and the bee.

Fall Colors

Last Monday, Sherrie and I and Pastor Doug went on a hike to the Crags to check out the aspens. The timing was pretty much perfect. There were still some green leaves in some areas, but the majority of the aspens were in full yellow and some were already losing leaves. There were even some red aspens. With a winter storm blowing through some parts of the high country tomorrow, most of the leaves will probably come down.
This was the first time I'd hiked the Crags. I'm not sure why, I've just never gotten there. It's certainly a trail I'll be back to. I'm sure the wild flowers there in the spring and summer must be awesome.
When we got to the top, these gray jays were posing nicely for us:


Here are a few pictures of the aspens:






Since I haven't posted in quite some time, here's a picture of a bee fly that I took in Waldo Canyon a few weeks ago. It's one of my favorites of the summer.

Catching Up (Balloons & beautiful babies)

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, so I figured I'd catch you up before I get any further behind.

Labor Day weekend in Colorado Springs means hot air balloons. I headed over to Memorial Park before church on Sunday to watch the balloons take off. The weather was perfect with almost no wind. The balloons went up and hung around. The lead balloon even came back around and did a second "splash & dash". Prospect Lake is just south of the takeoff field and the balloons try to skim the top of the water and take off again. This is called splash & dash, and it makes for some great picture opportunities.
Here are a few of my favorite balloon pics:






Last weekend, I drove to Amarillo for the twins' baptisms. I went down on Saturday and came back on Wednesday. Everybody else from out-of-town left on Monday, so I had a couple more days to spend time with Joy and Jacob (and Joshua, Laura & Jeff). I only wish I lived a little closer, so I could spend more time down there! Here's a few pics from the visit:
Jacob with his blanket and puppy.
Joy with her blanket and lamb.
Me with Jacob and Joy.
Joshua :-)

Butterfly survey

I spent today helping the U.S. Forest Service survey sections of National Forest for the threatened Pawnee Montane Skipper. This skipper is a very small (1 cm wings) butterfly found only in the South Platte River drainage area in the mountains of Colorado. It is considered a threatened species and much of its habitat was burned in the Hayman fire of 2002. Our zoo has selected several conservation projects to devote time and money to this year, and one of those is butterfly conservation for native Colorado butterflies. Helping with this survey is a way for us to do some hands-on field work. I rode up to the site with another keeper early this morning and we met the Forest Service employees and the researcher doing the study at a park near Trumbull, CO.
After an orientation to go over what exactly we'd be looking for and recording and safety, we divided into 3 teams and headed off to our transects. Each team had 5 transects to survey. Each transect was 400m long and 10m wide. We walked each transect and counted skippers (both the Pawnee and the more common Comma), blooming Liatris stems (a favorite flower of the skipper) and in the case of our team, we also counted dead trees. Every 50m we stopped to record the number of flower stems and dead trees in the last 50m and to note the presence of blue gramma grass, which is the grass the skippers lay their eggs in.
Gayfeather (Liatris punctata)
We also noted the presence of other species of butterflies, mainly to show that the conditions were good for butterflies to be flying. Temperature, wind and cloud cover were also recorded periodically. The hiking was a bit tougher than what I usually do, since we had to follow straight lines up and down ridges.
This photo is looking back down one of the transects - not many ridges showing in this one, but they were there!
As we headed to our last transect, we got a radio call from one of the other teams that their car was stuck. In case you were wondering, Honda Fits probably are not good off-road vehicles. We hiked back to the park to head over in one of the Forest Service trucks to help. He had tried to turn around and got the front end high-centered on some soft sand. The front end was being lifted up enough that the front wheels had no traction whatsoever. They had been digging with sticks, but we had shovels. It still took quite a bit of digging before we could push them out.


We went back and surveyed our last transect before heading into town for some ice cream. I have a day of professional leave next week to go back up for another day of surveying. Next week's surveys are on more rugged terrain in the burn area. Hopefully, next week I'll see some Pawnee skippers.