Cryptic coloration—the ability of an animal to blend in with its surroundings—has always fascinated me. Cryptic coloration is the reason there are so many brown, striped sparrows. It’s why female ducks and other species lack the bright plumage of their mates. It’s why birds show regional differences. And it’s why I almost missed seeing the Long-billed Curlew shown here.
Drifts of Spring
Carpeting the ground with drifts of white, pastel pink, and soft blues, Grecian Windflowers are the epitome of spring. The large, star-shaped flowers are set off by ruffled green foliage that form a mat a foot across and only a few inches high. Anemone blanda is a delightful addition to any informal landscape.
April Quiz: Answer
To refresh your memory, here is the photo from April’s Bird Quiz. The bird was seen in California during the month of April. Don’t read any further if you want one last chance to identify this bird.
A Colorado Gardener
As a gardener, I’ve often dreamed of living someplace where plants actually want to grow. Colorado is definitely not that place. The weather is wacky, we’re short on water, and the soil dirt runs to extremes—we can either make pottery or fill a golf course bunker.
You might wonder how anyone could grow anything in such an inhospitable location, but there are definite advantages. As we look forward to another growing season, and I am looking forward to it, I want to focus on the positives. Here’s how an optimist views gardening in Colorado.
April’s Bird Quiz
Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken in California during the month of April. The answer will appear next week.
Auto-corrected Flowers
A (long) while back I posted Heidi’s list of auto-corrected bird names. I thought it was pretty funny, partly because most bird names are not normal words. What’s a spell-checker supposed to do when confronted with names such as Willet, Phalarope, or Gallinule?
Being both a birder and a gardener, I began to wonder how Microsoft Word would treat some of the more unusual flower names. Typing a quick list was quite revealing! Then, as I went to retype everything in WordPress, I discovered that they don’t use the same dictionary. In a few instances, it had its own list of suggestions, making things even more interesting!
See You at the Festival
There are many places to look for birds in the Pikes Peak region. Take a hike around a mountain lake. Stroll around a mountain lake looking and listening for returning summer residents. Enjoy a hike in the aromatic junipers and scrub oaks of a foothill riparian area. Go higher in elevation and see what birds call the montane forests their home.
Blizzard Gardening
Today (as I write this) is officially the third day of spring, but you’d never know it here in Colorado. I can barely make out the house across the street through the snow hurtling by at up to 70 mph. Cottony clumps of white stuck to the window screen have totally blocked the view from my office (right). Those who can are staying home, businesses are closed, and schools would be too if the kids weren’t already off for spring break. The blizzard warning keeps changing. We can expect a mere 1 to 3 inches of snow. No, we’ll get 6 to 12 inches. And now they’re saying 8 to 16 inches with significantly higher drifts.
My first daffodil bloomed yesterday.
It’s Spring!
Usually, Colorado’s seasons have little to do with the calendar. This may be the vernal equinox, but we still expect snow and it’s way too early to plant those tender flowers and veggies. After gardening in California for years, I’ve mostly adapted to the challenge here, but from March through mid-May I would drag around the house feeling frustrated that I couldn’t plant anything the least bit frost-tender.
Then I started birding—and to the birds, March means spring! As a birder, there’s plenty of activity to keep me glued to my binoculars.
Heavenly Blue Wildflowers
Who doesn’t like blue? With clouds of sky-blue, 5-petaled flowers that seem to float among the surrounding foliage, Blue Flax is a welcome addition to any garden. A perennial hardy to 9,500 feet, the fountain-shaped plants are comprised of graceful, wiry stems reaching two feet in height, and embellished with blue-green needle-like leaves.
Flax’s open, airy stems tend to go unnoticed, but the abundant true-blue flowers will fill those empty spaces between more vibrantly colored blooms in a perennial border. However, flax is most at home naturalized into a grassy meadow, where it can mingle with blue gramma grass and other short-grass prairie wildflowers.
Mountain Plover 