Tag Archives: nature

Temporary Tattoos

Posted on by

Shadows7494

It is now the accepted thing to permanently decorate your skin with a design etched into its surface with ink. These are called “tats”  or “Ink” or even “Tattoos” by those who aren’t quite with it. That would be anyone over 60 or someone raised by weasels deep in the forest. The design can be anything, from tiny little flowers and butterflies placed delicately on one’s ankle to raging south sea islander markings that cover half of one’s body. There is a trend towards getting words in Asian languages that say things like peace and tranquility in Kanji symbols. There was a story where one hapless soul wanted to get the symbol for love placed on a prominent portion of his body and when he had the resulting tattoo translated later found that it actually said “Hotel Bicycle”.

There was also a well-endowed lady who thought it would be cute as well as necessary to identify her prized possessions by placing the words “Left” and “Right” on them, of course the labels got placed on the opposite ones but apparently her need for attention got answered as she spends most of her time now explaining the situation.
What separates a spammer from a regular marketer is the way that they acquire mail addresses to mail to and how they send the mails. 

Nature has been creating tattoos for a very long time, but hers are usually temporary and transitory. Using dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy of the trees above she places the delicate tracery of leaves on a set of boulders. The stream sends its flow over the rocks surface in a vain attempt to wash them away but it is a futile gesture. Later when she is bored with her work or turns her attention to other pursuit’s the design will fade and be gone. Since there is a lot of ‘skin’ for her to work on there will be never be a shortage of new work for us to see and wonder at.

This design appeared at a small creek that found its way down the mountain next to Old Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. You can see it and many more like it anytime the sun is out.

This Is Not Your Grandmother’s Sand

Posted on by

Prettyneat0081

You know how you’re sometimes paging through a magazine or looking at pictures on the net and you come across one that stops you in your tracks and you say “Ok, Now that’s pretty neat.” Well that’s the kind of views you get when you look around Great Sand Dunes National Park, especially at sunset.  That’s when you get that great light coming out of the west. The kind that turns the sand into molten gold and the mountains into an icy blue backdrop.

 This is not your grandmother’s sand. This isn’t litter box grey or the blinding white you get at your favorite beach. There are millions of colors trapped in these grains of sand just waiting for the light to release them, and release them it does. It just takes the right angle, the right intensity, the right time, and you to be there to witness them.

This was taken at the end of March at about 6 P.M. and although it was cold, as you can see by the snow still tucked in the valley there in the mountains, the light was fantastic. Because it was early Spring and fragments of Winter were still hanging on, there weren’t many people around to walk the dunes and leave their tracks across the unblemished faces of sand. Even if there had been the wind would have soon have re-sculpted the dunes faces, scouring them clean, erasing all signs that anyone had walked there. Tracks don’t last long on the dunes. This is not a place to permanently leave your mark. This is a place to view and etch the scene permanently into your memory or record it with your camera, or better yet both.

The Great Sand Dunes is a place where you can experience solitude, feel what it’s like to be out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the towering dunes, the blue mountains behind them, the wind blowing by. To see the last of the sunlight making the dunes fire up in all their blazing glory, a place where you can experience Nature at her best.  If you’re out here wandering around the Southwest stop by the Great Sand Dunes and be prepared  to be amazed.

Hiding In Plain Sight

Posted on by

HidingMtEvans0587-0600

Mountain goats aren’t really known for being stealthy. They don’t have a lot of need to be. There aren’t that many predators up here at the top of the world at over 14,000′ to get them so they usually just hang out not caring very much about who sees them.

Yet Nature, who is in charge of animal protection here in this world, has chosen to give them life saving camouflage anyway. When you enlarge this image by clicking on it, and you know you should, you’ll see that even with them standing out in plain sight your eyes will drift right over them and you’ll often miss seeing them. This effect is even more pronounced when the herd is scattered out and the individuals take on the coloring and look of the boulder field they like to forage in.

Occasionally a coyote and on the rarest of occasions a mountain lion will find its way up here in the hopes of catching a lamb or a sick billy-goat but they’re usually so whacked out by the lack of oxygen up here that their efforts are half-hearted at best. Still the camouflage is there in case they need it.

This is Mt. Evans by the way, and it is 14,264′ up in the air. It is also one of the tallest of our national parks with all kinds of neat facts that you can read elsewhere about how cool it is. The road up here is not for the squeamish and will often involve some or all of the passengers in your vehicle crouching on the floor to avoid the sheer terror of the incredible drop offs just inches away from your tires. Drivers Pay Attention! Gravity is not your friend up here.

For those of you who are going to ask “Is that blue real?” the answer is no. It’s actually bluer than that. I had to tone it down in Photoshop from the real color because it is SO blue, and that is the famous Colorado blue you hear about, that my staffers walking by catching a glimpse of it on the monitor would be frozen in their tracks, stunned into immobility, so totally hypnotized by it blueness, that they would be paralyzed and fall over in what we call the Blue Coma. Since some of you may be viewing this on portable devices and doing things like walking or chewing gum I thought it best, in the interest of your safety, to bring it down into a more tolerable color.

Soon and that is in a couple of weeks, the ewes will start having their lambs and the tourists will start arriving to see them. The park opens later in the year than most other parks because this geography and weather up here are similar to arctic conditions. There’s tundra scattered around everywhere with arctic plants growing and biting winds and fast-moving storms that race in just to catch everyone unaware, so they, the people in charge of these places, want to give the inquisitive tourists every chance of making it up and back down alive. Plus the roads are mostly snowed shut until sometime in mid June. But life is an adventure and you’re alive or should be so jump in the old Celica and get on up to the top of the world. There’s views, and vistas, and far-reaching sights that will make you say “oh Wow” or even “Holy Moley” and you can see the Mountain goats hiding in plain sight. It’s worth it.

The Great Quail Migration

Posted on by

Migration4273

When going through our archives the other day we stumbled across a treasure-trove of forgotten images. Deep in the hidden recesses of The Institutes’ storage shed we found photographic evidence of one of Nature’s most incredible stories, The Great Quail Migration.

Many of you I’m sure, have never heard of the Great Quail Migration as it happened way before the internet. But back in the latter half of the last century there was a great drought in the high plateaus of the desert Southwest. Plants dried up and died. Insects disappeared and the Quail were faced with imminent starvation. The elders of the flock knew something drastic had to be done and hearing that the government was giving away land up along the Snake river in Idaho to any quail brave enough to make the journey they decided to attempt the long dangerous trail North.

Migration4279

Gathering the flock together they started northward. At first there were just a few hardy souls determined to find a better life, but as word spread of the possibility of a land of plenty just laying there for the taking, others joined in.

Migration4281

Soon there were dozens then thousands until the earth was dark with mottled bodies of quail heading North.

Migration4282

The journey was long and arduous with many of the original flock falling by the wayside. but their determination never wavered. They steadily kept to their dream of tall grass, abundant insects and safe havens. Young were born along the way to replace those that had fallen, prey to the many predators who shadowed the migration.

Migration4284

When the journey seemed to be at its darkest point and it looked as if they would never reach that magical land, the miracle finally happened. They reached the border the government had erected to set aside the land that was to be the home of the quail for as long as the sun would shine and the grass would grow. That was the land that was to be given to any quail that could reach it, for now and forever. Tired, hungry, footsore, feathers dusty with travel they entered one by one into the promised land and safety.

Migration4285

The patriarch who had led the flock those hundreds of miles, who had evaded predators and sickness, who had kept hope alive and guided them unerringly to the final spot where they could begin new lives, was the last to enter.

Migration4287

Realizing what they had left behind, and the price they had paid for it, he took one last look back at the past. Standing at the border that represented safety and a new beginning for his flock he seemed satisfied with what they had accomplished. They had completed the Great Quail Migration.

Today his descendants can still be found living peacefully along the riverside in the Snake River Raptor Rehabilitation Area, a testament to the quails determination and bravery that still is prevalent today.

As always we are proud to be able to bring you the stories of these amazing and often heroic events, many of which never happened, and to share with you the incredible but unbelievable tales that have been captured on film and more recently pixels. We do this so that you too can share in Nature’s glory. No there’s no need to thank us, it’s just part of our job.

The Egg Inspector

Posted on by

EggInspector7575

In our long-standing tradition of bringing forth new and unusual information about our animal neighbors the Director and instructors here at The Institute would like to unveil a new program. It is called Our Animal Friends At Work or OAFAW. Periodically we will feature the occupations of our animal neighbors and highlight their activities and responsibilities.

Given the sheer size of our collective national parks, monuments, refuges, natural areas and other places where the public can come and view the scenic wonders and abundant animal life, humans cannot perform all the jobs required to maintain and keep these areas in working order. Consequently some of these operations have to be delegated to our animal partners.

Our first featured guest employee is a hard-working dedicated individual who is in charge of a very important position at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah. Meet Chief Inspector Long-tailed Weasel, or simply LT as he is known to his colleagues. He has a very important job here at the refuge in maintaining the integrity and quality of the eggs that are produced by all the different species of migrating birds that stop off here at the refuge on their way to somewhere else.

 Literally thousands and thousands of migrating birds pass through the refuge and many will stop off and lay their eggs in nests, depressions in the ground, nests hanging from the bullrushes ringing the shoreline, or for those who can’t be bothered just laying them anywhere they happen to feel like. Without supervision and guidance there is ample opportunity for mishap or just a general lessening of quality of the eggs produced here. That’s where LT the Egg Inspector comes in.

He works tirelessly but ceaselessly, observing, locating and entering every nest he can to check the egg clusters integrity. When he finds a nest his first job is to check on the eggs within for quantity, color, size, conformation, shell integrity, and the well-being of the contents inside the egg. This he does by performing a procedure called CIOEIU (pronounced SEE-Oh-E-EEW)  or Cracking It Open, Eating It Up. If in his opinion the egg contents bear further investigation he will proceed to perform CIOEIU on each egg in the nest until he is sure the viability of the eggs is correct. This is a thankless task as he gets little or no support from the owners of the nest, in fact he is harassed and discouraged from performing his duties at every nest he checks. But he perseveres because that is his job and he must perform it regardless of public opinion.

There are many selfless dedicated animal volunteers that perform thankless tasks like this every day of the year to keep our natural areas open and operating at peak efficiency. Without them we would be overcome with problems that we would be hard pressed to solve ourselves, so we thank you Chief Inspector Long-tailed Weasel and all others like you for doing what needs to be done. Because of you Nature is a better place.

Buffalo Spawn

Posted on by

BuffaloSpawn1741

Boy oh boy oh boy are we here at *The Institute excited. It’s Spring and time for one of the greatest, if not the most unlikely, spectacles ever to occur in Nature. We’re talking about the Buffalo Spawn that happens every April along the Firehole river in Yellowstone National Park. This phenomenon was first discovered several years ago by one of our free range wildlife photographers working on a separate project in Yellowstone and we have been fortunate to document this amazing process ever since.

The Institute, as has been noted many times in the past, has many ongoing projects underway at all times and the one our photographer was working on at the time this spawning phenomenon was noted, was a study on why river banks are just wide enough to accommodate the water that flowed through them and no wider, when he noticed strange behavior in the buffalo herds. The buffalo began gathering at the riverside jostling and shoving each other until they began to frantically enter the water and begin moving up-stream. Sometimes singly or in pairs, cows and bulls alike struggled upstream against the current in a single-minded desire to reach the shallows at the headwaters of the river to begin their spawning.

No obstacle was too great to keep them from moving ever upstream, clamoring over rocks and boulders, leaping mightily up water falls, their coats and horns glistening in the sun as they swam exhaustedly against the raging current, struggling until they reached that final tributary where they had been created many years ago. There under the light of a full moon the cows released their eggs and the bulls their sperm and as the river slowly allowed fertilization the eggs containing the new buffalos began to tumble downstream through rapids and wide gentle bends until catching up against a snag lying across the  stream, or a pebble bed where they could sink into safety amongst the stones and germinate, the eggs rested, began to grow, and thereby begin a new generation of buffalo.

Life is never a sure thing here in Yellowstone and the eggs were at constant risk of being found and devoured by predators. Wolves hungry as only wolves can be searched constantly along the riverbanks looking for egg clusters that had attached to rocks or plants along the shore and finding them, greedily devoured them for the protein that future young buffalo calves could provide them while in their embryonic state.

 Grizzlies could be seen out in the middle of the river casually turning over great snags, the remains of giant trees that had fallen into the river to float downstream until they lodged themselves in the shallows and found a permanent home. Ripping the snags apart with their tremendously strong forearms and sharp claws, the egg clusters of the new buffalo generation were easy pickings for the mammoth beasts to find and consume.

But life always finds a way. And many of the eggs escaped detection and over time developed into their next phase of development which of course is the ‘buffpole’ stage where they began to grow their little hooves and tails and assume the shape we recognize as ‘Buffalo’. By now they had been fed steadily by the nutrients in the river and were beginning to break free from the egg sack that had enveloped them. If the light was just right these small fry could be seen forming little groups or herds, galloping from one place of safety in the water to another, gaining strength and nimbleness needed to leave the confines of the river and move on to land to begin their new lives as the Giants of the Plains, the buffalo.

Once established on land the new young buffalo, now known as ‘calves’, would be adopted by an adult female or ‘cow’ and be nursed and shown how to graze. They grew rapidly and were now totally independent of the river from which they formed. Yet you can still see some remnants of the behavior established in their early stages, such as when they gather in large groups or ‘herds’ and run thundering from one place to another for no apparent reason. This is a hold over from their schooling behavior when they were freshly formed fry in the river, and now it has become established as part of their genetic behavior on the land.

If you want to observe this spawning behavior of the buffalo you must hurry to Yellowstone because it doesn’t last long. Once it starts the buffalo are tireless in their obsession to get upstream and complete the spawning process that ensures that the new herd will be replenished. It is often over before you arrive, in fact if you are reading this now in May, you’ve already missed it. Sorry, but we can assure you that it does happen as proven by the huge number of buffalo seen grazing in the vast meadows of Yellowstone National park. After all where else could they have come from.

* 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, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Transistions

Posted on by

changes8424

This whole tree color changing process is marvelous to behold. You spend your time in the warm summer months watching the different shades of green appear and it seems endless. Every day is another day of perfection. Then like all remarkable things it cannot last indefinitely, even if you want it to, and the change begins.

Such are the ways of these aspen. As the days shorten and the cold returns they have no choice but to begin their metamorphosis in preparation for the long sleep awaiting them over the dark winter months.

Sometimes Nature hurries the process and send howling winds and cold rain or even a heavy snow storm to shake the trees and loose the leaves from their twigs and branches, sending them sailing off to their final resting places to become one with the forest again.

Other times the process is drawn out and takes days or even a few weeks to remove all the leaves and send the trees to sleep. That is what is happening here high in the mountains of Colorado. A series of mild snow storms gently fall on the forest and melt only to reoccur again over and over until the combination of cold and darkness and time completes the final preparations for winter.

While this is happening you as an interested participant get to watch the slow transformation and marvel at the beauty that Nature can create with the simplest of methods. This is transition and it’s happening right now in the high country.