Dreaming of a white Easter

Do you think we'll have a white Easter, R?

Nah, I don't think so. Look, K, even the sand lilies are blooming in our meadow!

And, the elk are calmly grazing by the pond. They're not fleeing down the mountain like they often do before storms (the rest of the herd was just outside my field of view).

Look at those sunset clouds. I don't know, K, maybe we will have a white Easter. It looks like a storm is heading our way.

Needless to say, we all awakened to a snowstorm. I dusted off my snowbike so K and I could romp on the trails together.

This is the time of year when my attitude toward snow starts to sour although I know how desperately we need it. Even K looked a bit dubious about having clumps of snow on her face.

But, she bounced back and so did I. We played in the snow.

Later in the day, I visited spring, 3000' below us. Look at the spring blossoms!

The rule of thumb is that springtime lags by 10 days for every 1000' of elevation gain. So, the Pin Cherries should bloom here in about 30 days! Now that's something to eagerly anticipate.

Is anyone else having a white Easter?

Pushmi-pullyu

Yesterday afternoon, as I sat quietly taking photos of our Abert's Squirrel, a mountain chickadee wanted to make friends with me. Here he is, so close that I wondered if someone had fed him by hand in the past. He's a year-around bird here but a favorite of mine.

Shortly later, I took the Duo for their evening hike. Because our world has been enveloped by storms lately, darkness fell early but the dogs still had time to romp to their heart's content.

Although K rarely beats R in a race anymore, she knows  how to strike a dramatic pose on a boulder. It's her favorite evening activity!

As the sun set, three Robins sat on the pointy tops of Douglas Fir Trees singing their spring songs with full hearts. I love the sounds of spring in the forest almost as much as the flowers. The Duo and I sat still and soaked up the beauty and music.

This morning, K and I headed out for our morning mountain bike ride. More trails are melting out since our 15" of snow last week, and we had fun exploring for rideable terrain. We climbed up to Hug Hill where the view of the snowy mountains, normally shining brightly behind K, was enveloped in clouds.

K has astounded me daily with her verve. She's taking antibiotics for her UTI but they don't seem to bother her in the least. She is bursting with enthusiasm and happiness during our rides.

As K and I explored a range of trails, some snowy and some not, we discovered the route that the mountain lion took into our trail network a few days ago. He came from the west, using a trail for part of the trip. He appeared to be circumnavigating the usual elk grazing grounds, perhaps looking for a place where the herd was vulnerable to a sneak attack.

However, in the photos that I captured a few days ago, he looked very well-fed. So, he may not have been very hungry during his journey toward my camera. I'm assuming that he's a mature male based on his body shape which bulges with muscles. By contrast, look at the body shape of another lion who visited the same site in December. It's in flip-book video form, and if you cannot view it embedded in this post, then you can go straight to its Youtube location.

You can probably see from the December photos that, in contrast to the recent visitor, that mountain lion was long and lithe. That lion might have been a female or a younger male. He/she certainly wasn't muscle-bound like the recent visitor.

After dropping K at home, I headed out to try to find more melted out trails. It was a magical day of seeing elk and deer at close range, none of whom seemed spooked by me. This pair of last year's deer fawns reminded me of a deer pushmi-pullyu, like the two-headed llama made famous by Dr. Doolittle.

After leaving the south-facing sunny meadow areas, I headed toward home on a shaded and chilly trail that is frequented by large wildlife. Sections of it were lined by moss-covered rock walls and covered in soft spring snow.

These sections often make me nervous about wildcats lurking at the top of the rock walls but today, the mossy walls caught my eye. They are like miniature forests, complete with grass (moss), flowers, trees, fungi, and lichen.

One plant grew out of the moss, with its bright green leaves covered in a rust colored fungus.
Although new life sprouted from the moss everywhere I looked, icicles still hung from it. It was an amazing example of plants who could flourish in the most difficult of habitats.

Enjoy your weekend!

Crazy spring

Many of our recent days have started in a windswept world of fog, painting our pine trees and meadows with hoar frost.

Most days, the sun soon shines through the waves of mist, almost blinding us with its glare on frost and fresh snow.

K and I mountain bike through fields of kinnikinnick covered in a fresh coat of wet goopy spring snow.

But, within minutes of the sun breaking through, the snow melts. The kinnikinnick glows in its beautiful bright green spring color.

K and I have been enjoying high voltage romps every morning. She's so full of energy and spunk - I smile as I watch her matching my speed while hurdling downed trees in the forest. She's in a phase where she likes to parallel me, with me on the trail and her acting like R, flying among the trees.

Although we've been getting light coatings of fresh snow almost every night, the animals seem to believe that spring is here. One year-around inhabitant of our area is the Abert's Squirrel, or Tassel-eared Squirrel. We rarely see any of them during the winter but they emerge to forage near our house in the spring. They're usually very shy and easily spooked but one of them let me take his photo today. Look at those gloriously punk ears!

They rely on Ponderosa Pines for food and for building their nests. Today's visitor climbed a Ponderosa Pine to get a better view of me.

Then, he did a classic Abert's Squirrel trick, hanging by his hind feet and stretching head-first down the tree trunk. One year, I saw two Abert's Squirrels mating in this precarious pose.

Look Mom, no hands!

Not all of them are jet-black. Some are gray with white underbellies. Others are cinnamon colored. For a couple of years, we had one near the house whose front half was cinnamon and back half was black. Unfortunately, her tenure was before my photography hobby had taken off.

We been loving the late sunsets. The Duo and I hike, enjoying the light show in the sky on the days when the clouds aren't too thick. Unfortunately, K took advantage of yesterday's hike to behead a Pasqueflower. Here's the evidence. The petal-less flower is on the left, and the blossom is on the ground on the right. K performed this heinous act during a snow squall so the flower is covered in water droplets.

The perpetrator stood by while I took my photos. I saw no signs of guilt in her eyes.

Wordless Wednesday

Regal.

Holy Moly!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

A different perspective.

The landing.

Jubilant.

Prancing and dancing.

The Return of the Mountain Lion

Yesterday evening, a storm swept into the mountains while the Duo and I hiked. K's UTI already seemed somewhat better, and she enjoyed a mellow hike. She and R posed against the stormy sky.

Then, while R sniffed out rabbits, K perched on a lookout point.

By this morning, K seemed like herself. This is the normal course of a UTI for K. Within about 12 hours of starting antibiotics, she bounces back to her usual energy level. I'm so glad that our vet lets us keep antibiotics for UTIs at home so that we don't have to delay treatment while waiting for a vet appointment.

We headed out for a short mountain bike ride, through about an inch of fresh snow. I tried to upload some photos of the beautiful morning but my internet connection did not cooperate.

However, something very exciting happened during our mountain bike ride. First, we saw a band of about 30 elk, splintered off from the main herd. They watched us pass by without worries. They seem to know that K won't chase them.

As we re-entered the forest, we saw where this elk faction had spent the night. Each elk's bed was a melted out oval in the midst of the pine trees, and the thirty elk had all lay close together.

After checking out the elk beds, K and I went a little further, and I checked a wildlife camera. I saw a big scrape under the Ponderosa Pine tree where a mountain lion visited 2 weeks ago. I looked at it closely and thought that it might be fresh rather than 2 weeks old but I wasn't certain.

Indeed, when I arrived home and checked the camera's memory card, I discovered that a muscle-bound mountain lion had visited the scent post last night when the snow was flying out of the sky. I'm guessing that he was hunting the elk who were spending the night nearby.

Upon arriving at the scent post, he started to scrape the ground with his hind paws while he stared at my camera which was emitting a muted red infrared light.

After scraping the ground, he sniffed the base of the tree.

Finally, less than 10 seconds after entering the camera's view, the mountain lion departed.

Notice how much this mountain lion looks like the one who visited 2 weeks ago.

I've made a "flipbook" video of his visit to the scent post which you can view here if the embedded video doesn't work for you.

It's an amazing feeling to find a series of photos like those on my wildlife camera for a host of reasons. First, to choose where to put my cameras, I've spent hundreds of hours in the forest, looking for subtle signs of where the wildlife travel and mark their territories. So, when I hit the "jackpot" with photos of an elusive animal, it feels like validation of my ability to read animal signs in the forest. Part of why that makes me happy is that, for every camera placement of mine that is super good, I have at least three that aren't. So, the good ones make me smile!

A second reason why I get so elated by photos like today's is that I have undeniable proof of a huge predator mingling in our trail system. This scent post sits about 50 yards from a "popular" trail (which means that it's used one or two humans a day, on average). This predator moves through the trail system like a ghost, never letting himself be seen by human eyes. My cameras are teaching me that mountain lions pass through our trail system at least once a month because that's about how often I get their photographs. However, I'd bet that they actually visit more frequently but I don't get photographic evidence.

It was truly amazing this morning that I knew for a fact that I stood exactly where the huge lion did, less than 12 hours earlier. It's a powerful feeling - a mixture of awe and fear.

Here's to the Year of the Mountain Lion!

Up and down

K and I had a mountain bike ride that mixed snow and dirt, clouds and sun, and sleepiness and energy. Here was one of K's down moments, while she guarded my back as I checked a wildlife camera. I truly appreciate her doing this guard duty when I'm checking cameras that mountain lions visit regularly.

Then, as we rode under the steelshot gray skies, I spotted a partial rainbow over the mountains. You can see it to the right of K in the photo below.

In the warm weather since our big snow, the flowers have had a spring party. Pasqueflowers are popping up everywhere.

But, I've never mentioned that K has a vendetta against Pasqueflowers. Because they're our first flower of the year, I tend to fawn over them, getting down on the ground to look at them closely and photograph them. K doesn't like me paying so much attention to anything besides her.

So, she beheads them. Literally, as she runs past one, she bares her razor sharp teeth and bites off the flower. She spits it out in the grass and runs onward, pleased with her destruction of these flowers that distract me from focusing on her. As you might imagine, I completely freak out, telling her that she should never again behead a beautiful Pasqueflower. My lectures have never had much effect on her, and the Pasqueflower destruction has continued.

So, today, I tried a new strategy after five springs in a row of K beheading Pasqueflowers. I had her lie down next to one while I photographed it. I gave her tons of treats as I looked at the spring flower. My hope was that she'd start to see Pasqueflowers as a good thing in her world - they cause her to get a lot of treats! I'm sure that we have a long way to go... but, for today, she didn't behead any of my favorite flowers!

After I left K at home, I went out for a leisurely ride, stopping to enjoy the small signs of spring along my route. As I passed a small willow tree, a buzzing sound overwhelmed me. I screeched to a halt, and I saw that the willow catkins had begun to produce pollen. Fortuitously, or due to the incredibly precise timing of nature, bees had emerged for the first time this spring and were hovering all around the tree, diving into the pollen dust like a dog dives into a bowl of ice cream.

The willow was a literal beehive of springtime activity. I smiled.

A little later, I spotted my first Aster flower of the year. I don't know what species it is but it's a tiny one, and always blooms very early in spring.

Those two small things, the willow tree and the aster flower, made me smile throughout my ride.

Unfortunately, I arrived home from my ride to discover that K has a full-blown urinary tract infection. These infections invade her body regularly due to a congenital defect. Using preventive measures, we've reduced their frequency to about once or twice a year. She now has antibiotics and pain medications in her system and seems subdued but less uncomfortable. That's a good start.

Mountain madness

Our evening hikes have been underneath ominous clouds recently. Unfortunately, those clouds have been obscuring the almost full moon. However, you can see the moon in the photo below, just rising above the rocky peaks near the left of the photo.

 Last evening, as the sun set, the eastern sky became bluer and the clouds became gold.

K stood in silhouette against the clouds, looking over the meadow.

Last night, my driveway wildlife camera saw action for the first time in a little while. A rotund (or pregnant?) bobcat sauntered down the cleared path.

Shortly later, a rabbit gallivanted by the same spot at high speed.

I think that cleared human routes are important to the wildlife after snowstorms. However, as soon as more hidden paths open up, the animals seem to abandon routes like our driveway and use trails instead.

This morning, K and I headed out into a slushy and muddy world. The wind still rushed off the mountains in intense gusts followed by eerie calm interludes. The wind really scared K. So, I played some training games with her to distract her from her fear. It worked!

K's fears are strongly correlated with her thyroid function. She's had a recent resurgence in fearfulness, acting intensely afraid of noises, sudden movements by us, and walking down a small set of steps. It may be time for a blood test to see if she needs to take more oral thyroid hormone.

After I rode with K today, I headed out to ride my mountain bike on some trails that had melted out. A tiny wildlflower (Noccaea Montana, Wild Candytuft) that I've been watching for had bloomed all over the south-facing hillsides. The white flowers are tiny, about a half inch across, and grow in clusters. I think that they were waiting for a long drink of water before blooming.

After noticing these tiny treasures, I took lots of photos and relaxed in the sunshine near them. Consequently, it was very hard to believe how fast the weather turned on me. I rode up onto a ridge, and the wind refound its strength, gusting so hard that I couldn't pedal forward during the biggest gusts. Then, the rain started, driven by the wild wind. Fortunately, I know that weather in our mountains can be crazy at this time of year, and I had extra layers in my backpack that kept me warm.

But, I had a brief moment of wondering "What the heck am I doing out here on this ridge?". I snapped a photo at that moment. It's amazing how benign the scene looks by comparison to the power of nature that was knocking me around at that moment. The photo didn't depict the freezing driving rain or the gale force winds.

I tried to hurry home but, believe it or not, some trails were still choked with a foot of heavy snow. I slogged along at a snail's pace even though I was working as hard as I possibly could. As I fruitlessly pedaled, I kept reminding myself that I *do* love mountain biking. By the time I finally caught sight of my house, the storm had abated and the sun was peeking through the clouds.

Yes, I do love mountain biking, and I love the wildness of the mountains. It's just easy to forget when I feel like a piece of driftwood caught in the maelstrom of mountain madness.