Eyes or Nose?

I find it fascinating to spend so much time in the woods with a different species, a dog. We humans rely very heavily on our sight to "scan" the world around us. For dogs, it is undeniably different. I've seen Shyla walk right past all sorts of wildlife - deer, elk, grouse - who were standing still downwind of her. She didn't see them with her eyes, and the wind was taking their scent away from her. This was one example last summer. She didn't see this grouse!

Because we humans are so visually oriented, we tend to focus on the eyes of our dog friends when we look at them.

But, perhaps their portraits should look like this to emphasize which sense is most important to them!

Sometimes I wish that I could "see" the world through a dog's nose for just one day!

Wordless Wednesday

Male Blue Grouse

Our Thundering Herd

This morning, as I stepped out the door, a sound like a thundering herd met me. The pounding came from our dirt road. I quickly scanned and spotted the entire 100+ herd of huge elk galloping down the middle of the road to a favorite meadow. I'm glad that I wasn't in their way - that herd possesses power beyond my imagination. By the time I grabbed my camera, only a few elk rumps were still visible.
As I rode past their meadow, a fog that already enshrouded the high mountains floated among the smaller eastern peaks.
Soon, the entire world became murky, moist, and cold. I didn't really mind because the fog had a ethereal beauty all its own. The Mountain Bluebirds didn't mind either - they continued their sparring for choice territories.
As I rode, I spotted a deer lying in the grass who seemed to think that she was invisible. Then, a quartet of elk fled across my trail from a grassy meadow into a snowy forest. I dropped my bike to investigate. First, what were they fleeing from? It wasn't me... but I couldn't spot whatever had spooked them. I had hoped for a glimpse of a lion - from a good distance, that is.

Next, I followed the elk tracks for a short way but, by then, they were a mile away from me at the rate they'd been moving. As I climbed back up to the ridge to continue my mountain bike ride, I realized that the sight shown in the photo below is common for me. A bike abandoned next to the trail with the rider nowhere in sight. If you live near me and come across this sight, don't worry - I'm just chasing a lion :)
The Labraduo and I hiked later in the morning, exploring our home turf in great detail. We're learning where the snow melts first, leaving bands of moist dirt good for hiking. We still found little evidence of wildlife, except for blue grouse. Grouse had walked all over the territory that we explored. One had scratched out a small pit before leaving distinctive droppings.
The Labraduo was on high alert. After all, they're bred for hunting birds.

We hit an aspen meadow that had a diverse flock of robins, chickadees, three types of nuthatches, and juncos. They all simultaneously sang different songs, their beautiful breeding season songs rather than alarm calls. I sat against a log to listen, feeling as if I could fall asleep with such gorgeous music rising from the treetops. However, the duo found grouse scat nearby... so we were moving again much sooner than I'd hoped!

We hit a high point, where normally the mountains would greet us. Today, gray fog covered them but I still photographed the handsome Labs. The ever alert R...
And, the always wary K, checking over her shoulder for danger...
As we traipsed home, through patches of newly exposed dirt, we kept seeing snow mold, a gray spider-web-like fungus that grows on the ground when it's covered by snow for a very long time. These spots likely hadn't seen the sky since October. A wintergreen plant (I think), who will sport pink umbrella-like blossoms in the summer, survived the snow and is now enduring the fungus. What a hardy soul!
After I photographed the wintergreen plant, I caught K giving me one of her probing gazes. I love her eyes when she looks at me like this.
Although it was a murky and foggy day in our little universe, it was beautiful as well. I'm grateful for every day that I get in our forest with my pups.
I still haven't seen definite signs of active bears in our forest but I have lots of footage still to show you from March. Here, mom surveys her forest while one of her cubs climbed a tree, again. I have to say that I think that this sow has a heart of gold and an endless well of patience to have shepherded such hellions through the dangers of their first year of life. Here's to you, mama bear!

Wind, wind, wind - and a tiny bit of dog agility

Yesterday afternoon, the dogs played in the meadow, sans elk or coyotes, and the skies looked threatening. The sunlight from the west gave the meadow a unique hue.The clouds on the western horizon told me that another shot of winter weather was imminent.
At the end of our walk, there was enough daylight for K and me to play agility. Only about 2" of snow remained in the agility area (that's unprecedented for March) so I had her run through the weave poles a few times. Below, I've embedded a video from last fall when she'd practiced consistently for about a month (for most of the summer, she was afraid of the agility equipment - a situation that rapidly changed when she started taking confidence-inducing thyroid supplements). You can see that she 'single-foots' some poles but not others. Can the experts tell me if dogs naturally start single-footing all the poles with practice? Does a dog as large as a lab normally 'single-foot' weave poles? She turned back toward me at the end because the camera made me hesitate to throw a reward toy (for fear of hitting the camera) - normally she sprints through to chase the toy.



This morning, as predicted by the ominous sunset, a coating of snow frosted the forest floor and trees. The temperature hovered at 10 degrees and the wind gusted to 60 mph. So, this is the wonderful winter weather we've been missing! Actually, I didn't mind any of it except the wind. The snow made the pine trees look like ghost trees.When I saw the coating of snow, I knew that I needed my new studded tires to stay upright. A few days ago, a similar dusting made me crash on hidden ice. I'm horrendous at mechanical tasks, especially installing tight new tires early in the morning, and my husband came to the rescue. A task that would've taken me at least a half hour (optimistically) took him about 10 minutes. Voila - almost magically awesome traction! In the right photo, photogenic K sits next to my brand new studded front tire.



Thanks to those tires, I confidently navigated even a ledgy trail that I knew harbored ice under the new snow. This trail is one of my favorites because it's challenging and lots of wildlife use it.















Along the ledgy forested trail, K and I found Blue Grouse signs. I saw tracks and K picked up the scent. In a flash, she flushed the grouse off the forest floor. The grouse looked awkward taking off and gained altitude slowly. But, as usual, he outfoxed K and taunted her from high in a tree that was swaying in the wind. K must wonder why I never do my job of shooting the grouse so that she can retrieve it. She stands and stares at it, waiting for it to fall so that she can bring it to me. I feel bad - she ended up with the wrong human!

I started wondering why a grouse was hanging out on this west-facing windy slope. When we see grouse, they're always on the forest floor, and snow covered everything that I thought was edible. Moreover, the icy wind made it feel like the Arctic - although I guess the grouse normally wears a down coat! Some research told me that Blue Grouse prefer to eat conifer needles in the winter. They like Douglas Fir and Lodgepole Pine needles, and those two species dominate the forest where we saw the grouse. Moreover, they're picky eaters - they specifically like needles that are 1-2 years old, and they eat only the ends of the needles. The image to the right is borrowed from North American Birds Online and shows a Douglas Fir branch after a grouse has munched on the lower needles.

After dropping off K, I headed out on my own and the wind seemed to rise to the occasion. In a fruitless attempt to stay out of the wind, I dropped down low to an unexpectedly wind-blasted reservoir. Believe it or not, this freezing spot is where I saw flowers blooming the other day. I was too cold to search for them today.I climbed from the water's edge in a gulch thinking that the wind would be gentler down low. Instead, the gulch funneled the wind directly in my face, slowing my progress to a walking speed. The climb took 50% longer than usual. More than once, the wind literally stopped me and I put down a foot to avoid being knocked over. The one upside was that I was climbing toward blue sky. I kept reminding myself to climb patiently - not to get angry at the wind. I found myself ridiculously chanting in my head - I love the wind, I love the wind!