Tag Archives: Colorado

I may Be A Pig But I Love You

Posted on by

ImayBeAPig1548

“I may be a pig, but I love you”. That’s what we heard, that and other porcine endearments that were floating in the air at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge as these two Javelina displayed their affection for each other in open courtship. It was a surprise to find them at the refuge as Bosque del Apache is primarily known for birds. Snow geese, Ross’ goose, Sandhill cranes and the occasional Tundra swan, not to mention every variety of Hawk and eagle, egret and duck, owls, pigeons, goatsuckers and songbird you can imagine.

But not Javelinas. Especially not Javelinas in love. It was unmistakable, they were unabashedly involved with each other, rubbing their flat little pink snouts together, snuffling, standing side by side and stroking each others back with their necks, giggling and muttering little piggy names to each other as they made plans for Javelina trysts.

As we watched they continued as if we were not there, oblivious to everything but each other. When their passion reached a fever pitch they would discretely move off into the brush to be alone then come back out trying to act as if nothing had happened. Yeah, right, we knew. They couldn’t hide it. Like we couldn’t tell that they were Javelinas in love. Occasionally they would stop and watch us for a moment or two, pose for pictures, then become enraptured with each other again and head for the brush. Finally it just became embarrassing and we left.

Spring is slowly coming and with it signs of love are everywhere. If you go south from Colorado in a straight line you will eventually encounter Spring. It will be a solid line that stretches roughly east to west. On one side of it, usually the south side, you will see flowers, and bees messing around, and song birds making suggestive sounds to each other, and lots of love, and on the other side, normally the north side, you will find snow and cold and brown grass, grumpy people and very little love. Right now that line is about twenty miles north of the Mexican border, however each and every day it moves north a little bit. But soon, uh huh, soon it will make its way north toward us and maybe you even, and it will be bringing you-know-what with it. That’s right, Pigs in Love.

Now before you get the wrong idea, it’s not just pigs that get in love, it ‘s everything. Name a creature and when spring hits it, it’s in love. You have to be careful your very own self when you go outside in spring because it doesn’t play favorites, if you’re in the way it’s going to hit you, and before you know it, Whammo Sammo you’re in love and probably out in the bushes somewhere. You’ve been warned, if it can get pigs it can get you. So watch out.

Chicks, Man

Posted on by

ChicksMan4750

For those of you who follow the blog closely you will remember that the Eagle Observation Department (EOD) here at The Institute has been closely following developments at our Top Secret Golden eagle nesting site at Watson lake, Bellvue, Colorado, 80512. Just a few weeks ago we conducted a scientific study concerning the number of Feathers on a Golden Eagle and its importance to their quality of life. You may refresh your memory by revisiting this important study here http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2015/02/07/ .

One of the reasons we have been closely following this Golden eagle pair is that due to recent activity between the two we have been led to believe it is entirely possible that they will produce young. We’re talking Chicks, man. As this is not a triple X rated blog we will not describe all the lurid details of these eaglesque encounters but we have all the pictures just in case someone doubts our word. And just like Kim Kardashian we won’t show you all the intimate details, wait, Kim Kardashian did show us all the intimate details. Hmmmm, however we’ve already said we won’t so we mean it. NO naughty eagle bits here.

But as you well know you can’t be doing the eagle dance of love all the time and there are other things that need to be taken care of before it’s egg time. There’s the eaglet shower, and getting the nursery ready, catching a movie and maybe an eagle dance or two to get in before it’s time to lay the eggs. As each egg is about 3″ long the eagles are looking at a long incubation period of 43-45 days with the female sitting on the nest constantly until the eggs are hatched. Absolutely no eagle dancing goes on during that period for sure I can tell you. The male, who by the time the incubation period has been in effect for a week or so, gets a little grumpy and goes out and hunts stuff and brings back the unnecessarily mangled prey for his mate to eat. This goes on for about 6 weeks after the chicks are hatched and by that time you can’t even tell what it was that the male eagle killed and brought back. Eagles are pretty basic animals, live, grow feathers, love, get frustrated, kill stuff, raise chicks. That about covers eagle behavior.

But as we mentioned earlier there’s a lot of stuff to get done and one of the biggys is getting the nursery ready. Here we see some rather common eagle behavior. Featherglo, the female Golden eagle, is bringing in nesting material to line the nest with. In this case it is a sage plant she has ripped out of the ground and she will use her body weight to press the sage down into the nest cavity forming a lush soft base for her to lay her eggs on.  She will be sitting on this for nearly a month and a half so it needs to be pretty comfortable.

We have given these two Golden eagles identifying names so we can tell them apart and have some sort of reference to indicate who’s who. We have already mentioned  Featherglo our female eagle, and we have named the male Strongbeak the mighty of the Iron Bill clan, Rabbit killer and Talon Thruster, Highest Flyer, Sky Crusher and Rattlesnake’s bane, we call him Strongbeak for short.

Since things are really getting good here at our Top Secret Golden Eagle nesting site, what with eagles flying around doing cool stuff in the air, the frenzied eagle dancing, and nest-building and such, we plan to follow-up this story to its hopefully successful conclusion, which would be young eaglets being raised and sent forth out into the world to make their own lives and repeat the cycle. This will require long periods of time spent sitting in a lawn chair behind our long lens drinking cold drinks and eating Subway sandwiches and occasionally some lasagna we made a few days ago, waiting for something to happen and then photographing it. We are prepared to do that so that you, who can not be here in person, can follow the lives of Featherglo and Strongbeak as they undertake this most important time of their lives.

If there is any problem with this plan it is that our Top Secret Nesting Site is on government property which is controlled and managed by the Colorado Fish and Game department. Consequently they have seen fit to establish the eagle’s nest on a Cliffside across a river, approximately 600 plus yards from where we can set up our observation post where it is handy for us to put up our lawn chairs, coolers for our refreshments, stands to hold our eagle identification books for dummies, trash receptacles, restroom facilities etc. As this is just about the optical limit for our specially designed Japanese manufactured telephoto lens to hope to get useable pictures, we have petitioned the Colorado Fish and Game division to move the nest closer, perhaps to one of the cottonwood trees nearby that line the river bank. That would make life much easier for us and give the eagles a change of view. So far we have had no response to our request. In fact when trying to flag down the government vehicle that is filled to overflowing with government officials that periodically cruise by to observe us, they speed up and will even take drastic measures to avoid the nail strips we place in the road to slow them down. We are considering writing a harsh but carefully worded letter to the New York Times if we don’t get a response soon. I know they don’t want that so we hope to get word from them soon.

In the mean time, we shall be on the job, doing photography stuff, observing, analyzing data, taking short power naps, calling people to see what they’re doing, trying to figure a way to stop the government truck, telling jokes to people who walk by, singing songs of nature and trying to figure out the lyrics to any Joe Cocker song, making bets on what the next food item might be that Strongbeak brings in, and living life. That’s it, Join us if you want to, Oh that’s right, this is a Top Secret Golden eagle nesting site located at Watson lake, Bellvue, Colorado, 80512 and you won’t be able to find it. Watch for future posts then.

Deep Deep Cold

Posted on by

DeepCold6437

We have been getting delayed reports of the deep, deep cold being experienced on the East coast. The  reports have been delayed because it takes 24-36 hours for the reports to thaw out before we can read them. So we’re usually a day behind on what’s happening out there.

Apparently the cold began out there around the same time winter set in and has not let up since. It seems that the problem has been compounded by the fact that cold experienced earlier, that would normally have left the area, has remained, causing an accumulative effect as the new cold piles on top of existing cold and gets colder rather than dissipating. Quite wretched actually. This is known in weather jargon as the double-whammy, stick it to you, OMG, is  the dog stuck to the light post again, kind of cold. Which is similar to our Wednesdays, were we having a normal winter.

However, because we have been living right, here in the wonderful state of Colorado, we have been catching a break as far as nasty winter weather goes this year. In fact this has been one of our warmest on record. Our banana plantation here at The Institute has opened early this year, in fact it was never really shut down, and as you can see the foliage in our tropical garden down near the pond has gotten completely out of control. We are ruing, positively ruing, having given the gardener the winter off. We have been frantically trying to reach him as the coconut palms and pineapples are in desperate need of attention. But enough of our problems.

You guys are in the tough crapola stage of winter and we would like to extend our sympathies for your current state of affairs. So, sorry, wish things were better for you, Spring shouldn’t be too far away, so think good thoughts and uhmm, stay warm. Got to go now, the Passion fruit needs picking. Later.

Shades of Morning

Posted on by

sunrise3734

Good Morning,  Daanzhonl da, Apache [Jicarilla] (Arizona USA), Egun on, Basque (Spain, France), Jo san, Cantonese (China), Oga’an maolek, Chamorro (Guam, Mariana Island),  God morgen, Danish (Denmark, Greenland), Aloha kakahiaka, Hawaiian (Hawaii),  Uvlaalluaqtaq, Inupiaq (Alaska), Ohayo gozaimasu, Japanese (Japan), Hinhanni waste, Lakhota (United States), L-ghodwa t-tajba, Maltese (Malta), Ma cualli tlaneci, Náhuatl [classical] (Aztec Empire),  Ungil tutau, Palauan (Palau),  Ziech chuknaen, Udmurt (Russia), and Umhlala gahle, Zulu (Southern Africa).*

You can say it in any language you want, in fact I have a very good friend, an old Africa hand, that prefers Ema Asubuhi, Bwana, nacaca taka wiski tena taharuki, Which I gather means Good Morning Bwana, I want whiskey again, hurry. But even he agrees that the best mornings come from right off The Institutes primary photography deck here in Colorado.

We have a morning every single day here and we haven’t missed a single one as long as The Institute has been in existence. This is a pretty good record considering we have been up against some pretty stiff competition. There have been a few rumors that mornings are nice in Hawaii and they’re not too bad from the edge of the Grand Canyon of The Yellowstone but if you want a really good morning then right here, right next to the corner post of our very own photo deck, is the best place to be.

There are more ways to say Good Morning than I have listed. The good folks at Jenny’s Language pages say there are more than 3000 languages and counting so if you need to express yourself in another language you have a lot of possibilities. I prefer Good Morning as that is my native language and I’m familiar with all 60 or 70 words of it so I use it without even thinking about it. Lately I’ve been thinking that I may switch to Inupiaq, what we know as Inuit, because the words just seem to roll off my tongue, but I’m not sure yet. In any event here it is another good morning brought to you by the folks at The Institute. You’re welcome.

* Jennifer’s Language Page at users.elite.net/runner or www.elite.net/~runner).  Jennifer’s Language Pages are  an extraordinary place to find out how to say Good Morning in any language you may want to. Check it out.

Feather Count

Posted on by

Feather Count4410

This is, as many of you know who watch the Nature channel, a Golden Eagle. They are nature’s answer to the stealth bomber, or Italy’s Ferrari, or TV’s Christina Hendricks. I mention her only because of the similarity of her hair color to the color of the eagle’s feathers while soaring against the bluest of blue skies in the late afternoon sun. This must be how Christina’s hair would look as it caught the sun if she were flying around the cliff face here at the eagle nesting site in one of her tightest-fitting dresses…… but wait, did I just say that out loud, never mind, let’s just acknowledge that this is a Golden eagle and move on.

What many of you don’t know is that feather loss is a common but little known problem for birds of prey, particularly for the larger birds like the Golden eagle. The Eagle Observation Department (EOD) here at The Institute has a serious, but totally unnecessary, project in place where we have taken it upon ourselves to perform a periodic inventory of the overall health of this pair of Golden eagles, which includes a full exact feather count of each bird, if you will. We do this simply as a public service at absolutely no cost to you the taxpayer. Since the Federal government has repeatedly refused to fund our efforts in this endeavor we have had no other choice but to take this on ourselves and self-fund this project. Which is why you occasionally see members of The Institute approaching perfect strangers downtown and asking them for money, or canned goods, or checking the coin slots in public phones for quarters, or even, sadly, standing at corners with our cardboard sign saying “Give me money! I’m counting feathers for the community! Thank you, The Institute.” So far we’re barely making it but as this is a necessary project, we persevere.

Yesterday was one of our inventory days, so we sent a three-man team of scientists, photographers and security to our top-secret Golden eagle nesting site at Watson lake, outside of Bellvue, Colorado, 80512. The eagles were there and seemed eager to get this over with as they had mating to do so they could get the nest up and running for this years hatchlings.

Using our secret collection of eagle controlling hand signs, developed and patented here at The Institute, we were able to get the eagles to fly slowly back and forth as we counted feathers as quickly as we could. This is a much more difficult process than at first appears. As the feathers must be counted manually and in order, such as 8001, 8002, 8004 and so on, for accuracy. It is easy to lose count due to people walking up and asking you what are you doing or shaking your tripod leg. After answering you have to quickly reacquire the bird in your viewfinder and start over before it flies out of range. Add to that having to ask the eagle to fly upside-down so you can count the feathers on its back and you begin to get the picture of how difficult this process is.

This is why we have security on site as we inventory. Our crack security officer can keep the most persistent of onlookers at bay by slapping at their knees repeatedly with his attack dog’s leash. They howl and complain that they don’t have full access to events happening on public land but sacrifices often have to be made in the advance of science.  Besides they always want to look through your viewfinder and talk to you about how they once saw a bird that looked a lot like an eagle, and sometimes about their Aunt who suddenly and for no reason took off all her clothes and jumped laughing into the lake, scaring the Canada geese all to hell. We’re busy here people, we don’t have time for idle chit-chat.

It was a long, long day but we finally finished and everyone was relieved including the eagles that we had gotten through another one of these trying but totally unnecessary procedures. We made plans to meet back here again in a month to repeat our efforts and everyone was good with that, except the female eagle who had taken to pulling some of her tertiary feathers out and was threatening to start on her primaries when we made a joint decision to reschedule in six weeks instead. This seemed to placate her somewhat. Some of us remembered that expecting females were often difficult to manage during this time, so allowances were made.

Our tallies were much closer this time than during previous attempts. Our scientist came in with a count of 114,651 feathers for the male eagle, the photographer counted close to 3000, and our security person had a count of 9, but as he was quite busy with crowd control we understood the discrepancy. So added together and averaged that gave us a count of 39,200 feathers for the male. The females’ numbers were tossed after she started pulling out her primaries during the fourth or fifth hour of counting. We are deciding if we are going to keep her involved as one the test subjects or not, we may not, at least until after the chicks are born. She should be in a much more manageable state by then. And besides due to weight gain before she lays those eggs she’ll probably pop a few feathers anyway, but that’s a subject for another study.

In the meantime we’ll continue monitoring the site and observe whatever behavioral changes we see. If this is a study you can support we encourage you to send donations of many dollars, especially large denominations, if you can, to The Institute so we can continue our valuable work. We’re particularly looking for those supporters that don’t pay much attention to details and results but like to be known for supporting wildlife causes no matter what the reason. Remember, the more you give, the better you look. And looking good is great!

A Murmuration

Posted on by

Murmuration0512

Lately there has been an explosion of news on the major networks, NBC and CNN to name just two, about murmurations. Well two rather small announcements actually, one very visible and the other I sort of had to hunt around for. But when was the last time you heard anything about murmurations at all. Been a donkey’s age hasn’t it. One murmuration was in Israel and the other was in England, where they go absolutely nuts about anything birds do.

So what is a murmuration you might ask, well according to Wiktionary it is as follows,

murmuration (plural murmurations)

  1. An act or instance of murmuring. (I know, that really helps doesn’t it.)
  2. A flock of Starlings.

What it appears to be in real life, is a huge flock of birds, usually starlings but can be other kinds too. This flock photographed at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge, is made up of mostly red-winged blackbirds. They gather together in extra-humongous numbers that apparently makes them kind of nuts or something, as they will all take off and fly around aimlessly but enthusiastically, until one of them decides to land, then they all land at once and make noise. This is repeated endlessly.

There are supposedly many scientific studies that explains why they do this. Money has been spent and mans hours accrued by these scientists watching these birds to figure this stuff out. They say that they have figured out why there is this nutso behavior and have published their findings in some awfully prestigious publications. I looked at one and all I can say is it made my brain hurt, your mileage may vary. If you really have to know what they said, Google murmuration – expensive scientific studies, and it’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

Of course our scientific community here at *The Institute has already figured this all out and we didn’t bill the government doodley-squat in American dollars. We sent a team out to look at them, those red-winged blackbirds, take some pictures, kind a talk amongst themselves for a while, go to lunch, take a short nap after lunch, come back out, check them out one more time and come home. Total cost about 12 bucks for hamburgers at McDonald’s, which we fronted out of our own pockets thank you very much.

 Our conclusions were a little different from the scientific types and as we chose to use American, as spoken by everybody on TV as our language, this makes our report a little simpler to understand. Here it is in a nutshell.

These birds are not your average run of the mill dummies. Yeah some of them may look goofy but they’re not. They learn by watching and when they see one of their neighbors grab a seed out of the dirt or find a worm or something they pay attention. They are also greedy by nature and want that worm or seed for themselves so they go right over there and try to take it away from that guy. All of these birds in one place at once, squabbling over a bug causes a commotion, and some of the other birds and it only takes one, freak, jump up into the air and that tears it. Now they all jump into the air and being paranoid figure that the other guy knows where the better food is and they are not going to let him out of their sight for a second.

Hence the flying around in perfect unison. They pack so tightly together that nobody in the middle can even see anything so the guy on the bottom of that murmuration gets a chance to see something, like a juicy bug down there in the weeds, and goes for it. When that happens the result is everybody dives for the ground and you get ‘murmuration’. One of our observers came up with the thought that they fly so close together because they totally believe the guy next to him knows where he’s going, when the truth is not one of all those birds, and we’re talking like, thousands, have a clue. Yes, it creates pretty patterns in the sky but it is not a display of higher intelligence.

Murmuration0542

Murmuration is said to be derived from an old English word or medieval Latin, ‘murmuratio’, the meaning of which supposedly sounds like the murmuring of a crowd from the sound the huge flocks of starlings make as they form at dusk, back then when it was medieval. Well it does if the crowd is making a screechy, raspy, squawky noise similar to fingernails on a blackboard and you have a hangover. But since this word ‘murmuratio’ comes from old English who even back then really liked all things birds, they probably thought it sounded beautiful. To each his own. Just remember these English guys medieval or not, like warm beer and eggs fried to the point of incineration. Just sayin’.

Murmuration is a world-wide event that the media is trying to play up as a special thing that only happens in exotic places like Europe and the Middle east but nothing could be further from the truth. We’re having murmurations all over the place right here in the USA. This one was in New Mexico, we saw one up in Wyoming of Franklin gulls visiting for  a day that put on a great show, and that was just a bird squawk above the state line from Colorado.

I hope we’ve taken some of the mystery out of Murmurations and helped you to understand one of Nature’s little quirks before you get led astray by expensive and some say unreliable studies even if they get on TV. As always if you have any questions about this subject or anything else for that matter, call us, drop us a line, we’re from The Institute and we’re here to help.

*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Never mind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Color Encroachment

Posted on by

ColorEncroachment-6284-Edit

There is a growing problem here in the West. You don’t hear much about it in the media because there are powerful influential groups that profit by it, and by powerful I mean the entire states of Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Arizona is a particularly bad offender, New Mexico, and yes, parts of Colorado. The problem is color encroachment.

Color encroachment is an insidious problem that insinuates itself into your experience of the west in many ways. For instance, lets say you are driving along one of the back roads in any of the afore-mentioned states, gazing occasionally at the  bland, unremarkable scenery passing by, all grays and tans and pale washed out, bluish tints of the sky, when out of the corner of your eye you notice a small seemingly insignificant amount of color creeping into view. It may just be a lighter shade of tan with a hint of yellow in it amongst the roadside vegetation. Or perhaps a reddish hue to the distant rock faces and a deeper purple-ish color to the low-lying mountains off in the distance. Then you come around a corner and it smacks you right in the face.

Incredible shades of indigo blue and deep purple, rose-colored hillsides and brilliant greens of trees next to lesser shades of yellow and pale oranges in the grasses, the deep earth tones of fences and boulders. This is color encroachment. This is raw elemental color and it is right in your face. This new spectrum of color doesn’t stay safely away in the distance, it comes right down to the roadside threatening to spill out right into your path. The dangers are obvious. Black tire marks on the pavement as vehicles screech to a stop. Burned private parts from the spilled coffee of unaware drivers who become GobSmacked by the sudden sight of this massive color change. Digital cameras of all types filled to the brim with the ones and zeros of abused pixels. The list goes on and on.

There have even been traffic accidents caused by this massive influx of color, none fatally so far, but it’s a real possibility that it could happen in  the future. Many of the states have begun to take steps to control color encroachment but so far it has been too little, too late. Wyoming for instance has started fencing in much of its color as you can see by the image above. This has helped a little but since the color can be overwhelming to those visitors who have never experienced it before, it isn’t enough. Utah and the main violator Arizona have begun running public service ads warning the unwary and first time visitors to their states about the dangers of color encroachment, but there is a powerful lobby of resort owners, tourist orientated businesses and the auto repair industry trying to keep these to a minimum, shown only late at night after the info commercials, and they are pressing fiercely to do away with them altogether.

What has been recommended by the various auto travelers associations to combat color encroachment, has been to prepare yourself before you leave on that trip of a lifetime, by looking closely at old copies of Arizona magazine, watch the various videos and documentaries that show the wonders and colors of the west and practice placing contrasting but harmonious colors on a sheet of paper with a selection of magic markers. This will go a long way towards making your trip a safe one and still allow you to look at the colors of the ever-changing scenery.

Following those few simple suggestions will get you there to that colorful wilderness you long for and bring you back again safely without harm.  And remember to pay attention to those signs posted along the highway saying, “Drowsy drivers cause accidents”.  When they should really say “Drowsy drivers fall asleep, run off the road and scream out over the cliff onto the canyon floor miles below much like Thelma and Louise. Don’t do that.” They haven’t posted the “Beware of Color Encroachment” or “Color Encroachment Ahead” signs yet but prepared drivers have them in the forefront of their minds as they drive the beautiful but colorful highways and byways on the West. Remember, Be Safe and as they say out here “Vaya con Juevos”.