Birds and Nature

This fantastic video is from the BBC One and is like a trailer for their new "Walk on the Wild Side" comedy series (but when I went to the BBC web site none of their programs or trailers seemed to be "not available in your area". SeEtta--BTW, it's even cooler when you enlarge it to fit your screen-just click on the box with 4 arrows at the bottom right of the screen.

This photo shows the brilliant colors of the fresh plumage of this male Williamson's Sapsucker.  In sunlight this bird gorgeously bright.  Also visible in this pic are some of the fresh sap wells that have been drilled into this elm tree limb. I stopped again tonight near dusk and refound this male still drilling at 6 pm.  I didn't see the female and the male flew off into the pinyon-junipers shortly after I spotted him.  SeEtta

Yesterday I found the adult male Williamson's Sapsucker seen in the top two pics in the few deciduous trees (of all things, Siberian elms) in a normally dry wash that are supported by the small amount of water that runs off a gravel road and through the wash. When I saw him yesterday, I thought he was just a latish bird that had made a down-slope move from their breeding habitat in conifers at a higher elevation to the pinyon-juniper foothills near Canon City. I didn't have much time to observe him yesterday so I returned today I found not only the male but a female Williamson's Sapsucker in the same elm tree but that the several small elms here had hundreds of sap wells drilled in many of the limbs--it would seem more likely that one or both of these birds had been here for some time. Canon City has hosted one or more Williamson's Sapsucker, usually females, every winter for the several years but in very different habitat. In Canon City they have wintered in park-l...

Pistol shrimp blowing a blast of water a speed of 100km/h with temp This is way too amazing-this little shrimp can make a sonic blast by snapping it's claws! SeEtta

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Just a shot of our Colorado aspen trees in their fall glory. SeEtta

A common sandpiper in Colorado, this little Baird's was the only shorebird I saw at Lake Henry when I visited last week. I did see a distant flock of flying shorebirds but they were too far away to identify. SeEtta

This is one of the four Burrowing Owls I found in a prairie dog town in Otero County, Colorado. Burrowing Owls are migrating south for the winter and these will likely do so soon.SeEtta

This is one of a number of small flocks of migrating Vesper Sparrows I saw in Otero County, CO earlier this week. Though they such beautiful singers, they are quiet this time of year.  SeEtta