Mountain Bluebirds Brighten my Mountain Bike Rides!

As Shyla and I ride through meadows these days, Mountain Bluebirds seem to flit all around us.It's one of those amazing perks of springtime.

They love to sit atop last years crop of invasive weeds (mulleins). I wonder where they perched before we had so many invasive weeds?

After they swoop to eat a bug off the ground, they return to another very similar perch.

Their color is mind-boggling. The males are brightest at this time of year - breeding season.

It's one of our main signs that spring is on the way because most of our wildflowers are still tiny, not taller than 6". You have to really look for them.

Soon, the meadows will be wild with color. For now, the bluebirds provide us with amazing blue colors. Shyla's toys also brighten up the scene!

Happy Springtime!

A springtime sunset hike

We recently had a sunset hike that made us appreciate where we live so very much!
First, the Duo romped stood and took in the sights together in the sunset light.

Then, they launched off their boulder to come see me.

Just about then, we saw a raptor swoop over the meadow and land atop a Ponderosa Pine. We leashed the dogs and started walking inconspicuously toward the bird hoping to identify him/her.

When we were just getting close enough to get a good look, the bird soared away from us. We never saw the top of his tail but my best guess was that he was a red-tailed hawk.

The raptor soared over top of a fence on the edge of the meadow, and we spotted a mountain bluebird perched there, his blue plumage standing out in the golden light.

Believe it or not, as we gazed at the bluebird, the elk herd started stirring about 50 yards behind the bluebird. It felt as if we lived in the most vibrant and beautiful world as the wild animals moved all around us.

During all our wildlife watching, the light had dimmed but there was still a bit more time for the Duo to romp. K blurred a little as I panned my camera with her.

A few minutes later, the meadow had lost its sunlight, and the speed of R was too much for my camera. The tops of the brown grass looked like streaks on his black fur as I panned with his sprint.

The hike ended with a spectacular sunset as storm clouds sat over the Divide and were lit on fire by the sun.

As dusk began to fall, we hurried home.

What a miraculously beautiful place to call our home! I feel so lucky K is still with our pack enjoying the blossoming of spring.

Receding snow

The snowy carpet is receding, exposing more dirt every day. K and I rolled out into a day that smelled like spring. The wet dirt pervaded my senses, and I could see many green sprouts pushing their heads through the dirt. The amazing thing is that, this year, I think that I can identify many of these tiny sprouts when their first leaves unfurl. I love knowing our forest so well.

K and I climbed up to the highest point on our trail network for the first time since mid-March. A few snowbanks remained but the trail into the sky was mostly dirt. A moist and psychedelically colored stump caught my eye - snow doubtless submerged it until very recently.
I'm pretty sure that the yellow stuff is a lichen but I don't know what the orange slimy stuff is, and I've never noticed it before. It looks glistening wet with grooves - almost like a neon orange brain.
Part of why I noted it is that several dogs that live a mile or so from us have recently been poisoned. No one knows what toxin is the culprit, or even whether it's a natural toxin or the work of an evil person. As far as I know, all of the dogs have survived. In light of a possible natural toxin being the culprit, this bright orange mold-like stuff caught my eye. For some reason, it looks poisonous to me. For once, K showed some good sense and wasn't interested in it. Does anyone know what this orange stuff is?

We reached the top and the awe-inspiring beauty astonished me, yet again.
I had to capture K's lovable image while we stood atop our slice of the world. If you look closely at her photo, you can see pink splotches on her upper lip, just below her nose. I don't know what's causing these splotches that appeared about a month ago and aren't getting worse. My vet didn't seem concerned when I described them over the phone. Any ideas?
After dropping off K, I headed out for a fairly fast ride but a couple of birds caught my interest. A Western Bluebird flitted around me, flying short distances from one perch to the next. I usually spot Western Bluebirds once or twice over the entire summer because they prefer lower elevations yet I've already seen them several times this summer. I hope that global weirding isn't changing their nesting habits.
Next, I passed a nestbox where I saw Mountain Bluebirds and Tree Swallows jousting recently. When the weather turned cold and wet, the swallows fled, presumably to the warmth of lower elevations. At that point, the bluebird pair acted like they owned the box. Today, a single pair of tree swallows busily worked at the box entrance. Their emerald backs glinted in the strong sun. What gorgeous birds!
When I arrived home, S awaited me, wanting a trip outside. We lingered in the sunshine, and I stroked his warm fur. Male hummingbirds trilled past us and a golden-mantled ground squirrel trustingly sat on a rock watching us. S's hind end seems shakier today. It's just a small decrement - but each one worries me. So, I sat with him, enjoying being with him on a fresh spring day. The photo below highlights one of my favorite parts of his face - his blond eyelashes!

Foggy beauty

Thick fog surrounded and enveloped K and me as we rolled out the door this morning. I'd procrastinated in remarkably creative ways because the weather looked so nasty - fog, light rain, and 30 degrees. But, I had a relaxing and fun time riding through the surreal world. It seems that I might never truly learn, and commit to long term memory, that it's almost always fun to mountain bike through the forest with my dog, even on nasty weather days. Almost immediately, K and I bumped into my husband and R as they ran. Just short distance away from me, the fog seemed to consume them.The rain and freezing temperatures created art from K's fur and eye whiskers.
Similarly, the currant bushes, whose delicate green leaves just recently dared to peek out, became ice sculptures.As I passed by the meadow where the swallows and mountain bluebirds jousted over a nestbox the other day, I noticed that the swallows had 'abandoned ship' - probably fleeing the frigid mountain weather to the relative warmth of the flatlands. In place of the swallows, Western Bluebirds, who mostly live at lower elevations, fought for territory with the Mountain Bluebirds. The plumage of Western Bluebirds contains rust colored feathers while the Mountain Bluebird plumage is crystal clear blue and white. The photo below captured what I think is a female Western Bluebird (her mate was perched a bit further away) with puffed up feathers to keep her warm.
As I passed the willows whose catkins I focused on yesterday, a plethora of birds flitted in their branches. The photo below was intended to include a bird, who zipped out of the picture before I captured her image, but the lushness of this microhabitat is overwhelming.
A Cassin's finch carried nest material in her beak while perching in the willow. Then, a pair of new migrants fluttered from one branch to another, Ruby-crowned kinglets. The one photo I captured of a kinglet was overexposed but it shows how small she is. In fact, kinglets are among the smallest of the songbirds.
I borrowed a better photo, mainly to let you imagine how well the kinglet's plumage blends in with the yellow willow catkins.After the cold numbed my fingers during bird photography, I rode through the fog down to the usual water's edge of a reservoir. I found an almost empty basin except for the creek feeding it. On the last occasion that I visited this spot, heavily bundled people played ice hockey on boots while monitoring fishing lines dropped into ice holes. It looked dramatically different today.
Next to the basin, wild flowers bloomed while covered in water and ice droplets. Their purples and yellows splashed the drab foggy day with color. The purple gem was, I believe, a Storksbill.
I believe that the second colorful flower was another 'weed', Wild Alyssum.
Even if the rest of the world classifies these flowers as weeds, they brightened my day.

For the rest of my ride, I decided to 'get over' being tentative about my health scare from the other night, and I rode hard from the water's edge up to a ridge top. I played my pace-changing game - 1 minute of hard fast spinning followed by 1 minute at a sustainable pace. A big part of what I love about mountain biking is that my entire world tunnels down to navigating a narrow path, pushing my burning muscles to keep pedaling, and listening to my the sound of my breath. For brief intervals, nothing else invades my tranquil mind.

Real life is rarely so simple as a long hard mountain bike climb but it's good to have sweet escapes. Between S's cancer, a close relative's rapid decline, my iffy health, and all the tempetuous events in the larger world - I think that it's important that we make time to do what we love. For me, riding my mountain bike and spending time with my human and dog pack top that list.

Surreal and foggy spring world

Last night's mellow sunset walk was short but sweet and gave no hint of the stark transformation that would occur overnight.When K and I rolled out into the forest this morning, a thick fog enshrouded the world with forms appearing like ghosts out of the mist. A breeding pair of mountain bluebirds perched atop dried mullen plants, guarding over their newly claimed territory despite the cold fog.Just as I thought to myself, I bet that lions can hunt during the day when the visibility is so poor - a galloping labrador silently sprinted up behind K and me. I was so startled that I nearly fell off my bike. It turned out to be our pack-mate, R, and, in the photo below, K and R wait for my husband to catch up.We discovered that when I'm foundering on slushy and slippery snow, a runner and biker move through the forest at a similar pace. Meanwhile, the two dogs romped and frolicked in circles around us. Although K had refused to play with R for weeks while she struggled at the nadir of hypothyroidism, she instigated play today and didn't back down when R's frantic excitement escalated. After dropping everyone off at home, I took a leisurely ride, noticing intricate details of the forest. The thick wet fog coalesced on fuzzy pasqueflowers. It looks to me like being fuzzy lets pasqueflowers collect moisture from the air which then drips down to feed their thirsty roots.Aspen catkins almost glowed in the fog with hoar frost.And, as I rode up a gulch next to a creek, I noticed that a small tree's (willow, I think) deep red buds had burst since yesterday and now had pure white catkins peeking out. I've never noticed these details of spring in past years, and I'm excited to watch each little step now that I'm awake and alert!
















As I neared home, I spotted my second male Williamson's Sapsucker of the year - again drumming near the top of a utility pole. As I snapped a photo, a female swooped and landed near him, joining an impromptu jam session. In Williamson's Sapsuckers, a female looks astoundingly different from a male. She's smaller with speckled brown plumage (photo borrowed because mine was blurry).

Next to the trails behind our house, Williamson's sapsuckers have excavated nest holes in towering live aspen trees in past years. I've homed in on their nestholes because the chicks squeak so loudly that I noticed while zipping by on my bike. A close look at the trees and holes shows that bears have also examined the nest holes.

My nephews were the first to notice the bear claw marks when they asked their dad to lift them for a peek into the hole last fall. It was a fun vision - a bear peeking in the hole just like our little boys. In the photo, the nesthole is at the top and the visible claw marks are on the left of the trunk.

While Sapsucker parents industriously tend to the eggs and then their noisy chicks for weeks and weeks, they use an intriguing strategy when it's time for the chicks to fledge. Soon after the chicks venture on their first flight, the parents abandon them. Since the species has flourished, this abandonment obviously isn't disasterous for the chicks. Biologists think that the chicks survive because a sapsucker's foraging strategy is simple - it involves gleaning insects from pine bark and drilling holes in pine trees just deep enough to reach the 'sap' or 'phloem'. Later, the birds return to their drilling sites to eat the sap and the bugs stuck in it. Instinct must tell the chicks how to find food without parents to help them.

About when I spotted the sapsuckers today, the sky darkened even more (although I hadn't thought it possible), the wind picked up, and my glasses started fogging - sure signs that driving snow is about to freeze me on my bike. I started hammering toward home. My lungs feel a smidgen better than yesterday so riding hard for a short burst was physically possible.I reached the warmth of my house before the snow became intense and was met by the vision of our sweet S working on a kong with homemade dogfood frozen in it - one of his favorite treats in the world. He looked warm and content along with our other labs. I love our labrador trifecta.

S at sunset and spring birds

Yesterday around sunset, we did an easy hike, just enjoying being together as a pack. Since S's diagnosis with metastasized cancer, we savor each day that all of us are together. In the above photo, S decided to take a rare foray ahead of the pack for a view to the east. He loves our hikes. He still spends an hour on the trails with my husband every morning and about 40 minutes with me every evening. Usually, he starts pacing and staring at me mid-afternoon to remind me that he has a hike coming up. He even tries to follow me into the bathroom and barges in if I don't latch the door - as if he thinks that I might escape out the bathroom window to go hiking without him!

He came down with another anal sac infection yesterday, caused by the tumor that inhabits that sac. The vet restarted his antibiotics to calm down the infection. We've decided to try steroids to shrink the tumor and lymph nodes and possibly buy some time. For the moment, he's off all anti-inflammatories to clear his system for the steroids.

S has had many close calls, the first being when he was a heart-breakingly cute little puppy. He became randomly lame in various joints over a period of months, and the vets diagnosed him with OCD (osteochondritis dissecans) in something like 8 different joints - too many joints to perform surgeries on all of them. S's first family was advised to euthanize him because the vets predicted that he'd live less than 3 years due to severe joint pain.

Fortunately for all of us, my dedicated brother and sister-in-law instead treated S with glucosamine and committed themselves to consistently taking him for long walks so that he'd have strong muscles to support his joints. Amazingly, he's flourished! He's taken many long hikes in the Colorado mountains, playing in wildflowers and wading in lakes. Sometimes, he'd need anti-inflammatories to make him comfortable after a big outing but, otherwise, his joint pain remained under control. Now, his arthritis is obvious and he needs his anti-inflammatories daily - but he's approaching 14 years old so it's not surprising.When I told a friend about S's cancer, she replied by telling me that he'd had an amazing life and that her dream was that she'd eventually be reincarnated as a dog in our pack. It's true - I have no regrets about the life we've given S.

Yesterday evening, we simply enjoyed watching a dramatic sunset as a family. The sunset seemed to warn of approaching stormy weather, with clouds darkening the sky over over the Divide but sunlight still filtering up from behind it. The weather forecast agreed with the sunset but no snow has fallen.
K and I headed out to ride the trails this morning. Due to an upper respiratory bug, I didn't get out early. I have a dilemma whenever I get sick because I need to stay active to avoid crushing back pain. If I lounge around the house like a normal sick person, my back pain rapidly escalates to cause more discomfort than the illness. My usual solution is easy spinning on my bike - trying not to stress my immune system or lungs but to give my spine the movement that it needs. A nice side effect is that being out in nature makes me happier.

The trails remained a nice firm frozen tundra for a while - and K romped and I rolled on my Fatback at a good clip. Below, K shows off that she could walk and run on the snow crust. When I checked, she was leaving no tracks whatsoever - so coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and mountain lions likely have the same ghost-like super-powers to move through the forest without a trace on the crusty spring snow.After dropping off K, I tried to return to the trails but the solar factory had cooked up slush stew. As far as I can tell, no existing mountain bike tire can propel me through this slippery slurry. My tires fishtail from one side to the other, leaving a drunken cyclist track. Other trail users must shake their heads about the lengths that I'll go to in order to ride my bike. Today, I turned around and headed out to the little side roads to enjoy the sun and mountain views.The magpies swooped and called warnings as I passed a meadow full of bluebirds. The magpies breed early using huge stick-constructed nests in relatively small trees like willows. They're astonishingly maneuverable fliers for their large size, and many people say that the slightest movement of their exceptionally long tail causes a quick direction change. Although I normally enjoy watching magpies, I dislike them when smaller birds, like the mountain bluebirds, are fledging. The magpies watch the nestboxes and prey on fledglings just as they clumsily attempt their first flights. I've heard that, one year, a neighbor stood guard over bluebird nestboxes with a shotgun - and actually used it against the magpies. I don't know whether the story is true.Every year, a pair of Cordilleran Flycatchers nests under my deck, and I do become protective of them. The first few years, they tried to use a tiny ledge on top of a supporting pillar, and they lost their nests to predators every year.Then, I built them a nest tray one winter, and their fortunes reversed. But, I feel responsible for them. I'm like a mother hen, chasing away Stellar's Jays, Crows, Ravens, squirrels, and the occasional magpie. Below, the last two of a clutch of four chicks prepares for their first flight attempt last summer.They successfully made it to a small Douglas Fir near the deck, although they made several stopovers along the way, where they lined up on a branch for a rest. Then, they followed their parents deeper into the forest. I could hear the family 'talking' in chirps in the pine trees around our property for weeks thereafter. I'm eagerly awaiting the flycatcher arrival in May!