Coyote Coincidences

On Saturday (10/22), I saw my first coyote in quite some time.* Up close and personal, he stood behind my car as I was leaving the office at 9:30 a.m. Big, beautiful, and apparently bold, he looked back at me from the rear-view mirror, then calmly ambled off to watch me from a different angle before disappearing in the brush along the creek. (Yes, our office location is really neat!)

The camera was there, but wildlife photographer I'm not, so it didn't cross my mind until later. We'll have to make do with my old illustration. Unfortunately, it also didn't occur to me to do more than quietly observe him!

If my haphazard blogging can be trusted, it's been almost three years since we've seen coyotes around the homestead, 3.5 since we've lost a cat to one, and only in April 2004, I think it was, did we lose chickens to them. With the cats we're never sure; they just disappear and we make assumptions. (But other possible culprits include great horned owls, foxes, and maybe even mountain lions.) The chicken event (15 chickens dead and dying in one afternoon) provided direct visual confirmation of the perpetrator.

But my sighting Saturday turned out to be timely. The day before, Cat Woman lost her cat and heard from a neighbor that there was a big coyote in her area. Putting one and one together, she found the sad evidence, confirming the cat's fate. In her rural area, residents routinely kill coyotes, so she didn't expect one; she worries more about mountain lions.

The week before, my sister—far down in the southwest corner of the state—also lost a cat. Suddenly, coyotes are back on my mind, and apparently, back in business.

Coyotes have had a lot of press lately in the Denver metro area; this recent article serves as an example of the concerns and the lethal response too often being applied locally. (Although, in California, one neighborhood is taking a less belligerent approach.)

They are truly our urban/suburban wild dog: we provide excellent habitat for them and have created a new breed of this canine with the wily reputation. Eons ago in grad school, I researched coyotes for a wildlife class, and learned that there was evidence that, when persecuted, coyotes produce larger litters, and also grow smarter, stronger, and faster. Killing them isn't necessarily going to help! Nature... vacuum... you get the drift.

With decreasing wild land for habitat, coyotes have been quick to learn to live with us. They have to—after all, we're everywhere these days! We have not been as quick to learn to live with them. Some people don't understand the concept of "wild" and insist on feeding whatever cute animals they see in parks or neighborhoods. That doesn't help, especially when dealing with medium-size predators.

Denver has posted lots of information online to help citizens learn appropriate behaviors toward wildlife in the city.** In the case of coyotes, active hazing programs are important to teach them appropriate behaviors toward humans. Now I have a better idea of what to do when I see one—for the coyote's sake!

More personal thoughts on living with predators over at Small Wonders.

Two more coincidences. * Actually my previous recent coyote sighting was when I flew back from Indiana, just a week before this sighting. Carl the Coyote was the whole 'nother animal that graced the tail of my Frontier jet.

** Thanks go out to Ashley DeLaup, wildlife specialist for the City of Denver, who created all that great material I linked to above and conducted educational programs for Denver's citizens. This fall, Ashley was laid off. Go figure.

First Frost

May their seeds be safely scattered
As the annuals hang their heads
May the snakes all safely find their paths
Back to their winter beds.

May next year's buds be safely wrapped
In shrouds of green and brown
And watch from higher branches
As this year's leaves drift down.





With their fledglings safe about them
May birds find a southern home
May bears be fattened, safe in dens
As once more they cease to roam.

May scrub jays find they've safely stored
Enough ripe seeds away
To last them through the season
Til another bright spring day.



In the meadow on the mountain
Where the elk are bedded down
May the grass be always lush and deep
As they rest on mossy ground.

The hummingbirds have scattered
Before the cold front's blast
In Argentina's flow'ry fields
May they find safe food at last.




May the little frogs find safety
In deep mud and warm
In the pond amid the forest
May they winter without harm.








May lichens soften in the mist
And softening, turn to green
In dampened autumn weather
Their best days will be seen.






The aspen is a spendthrift
Dropping leaves of trembling gold
May its forests prosper likewise
As this year grows old.






May the bluestem on the hillside
Shining ever in the sun
Glowing red, embrace the frost
Minding not that summer's done.


May the big skunk in the henhouse
Stealing our eggs
Scuttle safely 'neath the coop
On short, fat, little legs.

May the stars again gleam brightly
Once clouds have cleared away
Orion's winter's in the sky
And Scorpio's gone to stay.


Autumn is upon us
Winter's icy breath we feel
May all beings greet the coming year
As again we turn the wheel

May all here on the homestead
Prepare to do their parts
To welcome winter's shelt'ring snow
Holding summer in their hearts.

I am NOT a Mouse!

Okay, I know I'm cute, I get that, but please don't think I'm a mouse. (Smelly pesty little rodent...) Au contraire, I'm a "fastidious, beautiful animal" and "hardly deserve the negative stereotype most people have" of my kind. And that's according to the Colorado expert on such things. Photo credit: National Park Service.

When The Husband called me to look at a little critter jumping in and out of the chicken feed bucket late last month, I leaped to a quick conclusion. Despite my hasty conviction that the little guy is a Woodrat, I'm open to corrections.

Historical Perspective: Back in 1877, while hunting dinosaurs near Morrison, Colorado, Arthur Lakes preferred the outdoor life:

For myself I still adhered to my tent life & adjourned every evening to my canvas dog tent pitched by the side of the stream. At last however after one or two snowstorms it became rather dismal to leave the warm stove and go out through the snow to the cold tent & so I cam in & for the first night slept on the floor but the mountain rats kept up such a racket that sleep was impossible. So I turned my tent into a swinging hammock & swung myself up into the rafters above the boys head.

In annotating this journal excerpt for a local publication, I wrote:

Bushy-tailed Woodrat (Neotoma cinerea)
Lakes' "mountain rat" is likely to be the bushy-tailed woodrat, better known as the packrat of western lore. Of some 20 species of woodrats in the west, five [six*] occur in Colorado. The other 15 species occur mostly in Mexico and Central America, where some subspecies are considered endangered.

The bushy-tailed woodrat, as its alternate name implies, is best known for its acquisitive habits. The Mexican woodrat occurs in southern Colorado and extends its range northward through our area, taking advantage of the milder microclimates provided by the hogback and adjacent foothills. The larger, more common bushy-tailed woodrat occurs well into the mountains and ranges from Alaska to Mexico. Woodrats eat a variety of plants, preferring the leaves, quantities of which are stored in crevices for winter use. Woodrats generally nest among rocky outcrops in vertical cracks, caves, or shelves, although they also use old mines and outbuildings, as Lakes discovered.

*According to my favorite mammalogist, there are six species of woodrats in this state: Mexican, gray, white-throated, eastern, desert... (I can't figure out his sixth from that article, and don't have his book handy.) Most sources I found neglected to distinguish among—or provide a scientific name for— the species, but here's a Colorado list, courtesy NatureServe:

White-throated Woodrat Neotoma albigula
Bushy-tailed Woodrat Neotoma cinerea
Eastern Woodrat Neotoma floridana
Desert Woodrat Neotoma lepida
White-toothed Woodrat Neotoma leucodon

Other sources do list a gray woodrat, the Southern Plains Woodrat (N. micropus), so that or the white-toothed may be the sixth species in Armstrong's list. I'm guessing these little guys are tough for a novice to tell apart.

Meanwhile, back to Our Story:
As you can tell from the previous post, it took several tries before we were able to capture this little fellow at all clearly (window and screen notwithstanding). Mostly my shutter finger was not quick enough. I got several nice photos of the empty bucket, though.

But as he traveled back and forth from the feed bucket to the stash many times, we were finally able to catch him going in... and out of... the bucket. He was quick!

(The feed bucket is 9.5 inches/24 cm in diameter. Armstrong says the smallest Colorado species of woodrat is 12 inches/30 cm long. Is he including the tail? I can't imagine a local rodent more than 12 inches long, except rock squirrels and marmots. Anyway, bigger than a mouse, for sure.)

We weren't the only ones appreciating the show! The cats, trapped behind glass, enjoyed it even more!

The first personal encounter I recall with woodrats was a sad one many years ago. A woman, startled by the appearance of this creature in her brand new foothills mansion, captured it in a glass canning jar and brought it to the museum where I worked at the time to get an ID. Without punching holes in the lid. Horrified, I told her what the freshly suffocated creature was, but was not nearly as welcoming as I would have been with most visitors. An educational opportunity lost: I suspect she never set foot in the place again!

For some time, we've known that woodrats occupied the peripheral spaces of the chicken coop. Sometimes I even see (more often, hear) them in the ceiling or under the floor when I collect eggs and count beaks each evening. Occasionally one of the cats leaves a half woodrat on the doorstep. Last week, the entire ceiling of one part of the coop collapsed, exposing a collection of mummified lilac twigs complete with leaves, chewed foam panels, nesting material, and a vast accumulation of waste material. We were on our way to a veritable packrat midden.

Yes, woodrats, aka packrats aka trade rats, particularly in the southwest, are benefactors to humankind. Their middens, one of which is pictured here, are archeological time capsules that record vegetation, climate (via pollen trapped therein), and other conditions dating back as far as 40,000 years! Being fastidious, as Armstrong says, they deposit their refuse in discrete areas, where it accumulates to form deposits that are almost geologic in scope. Cemented and preserved by crystallized urine, the mass is capable of preserving most anything in it and, thus, a boon to researchers. More on this photo.

Our woodrat continues to live under the front step, where I hope he will elude the cats, live long, and prosper. He still enjoys sunflower seeds and chicken scratch, although to date he's shown no signs of leaving us any shiny baubles in return.

More on woodrats:

Nice writeup on the Colorado species of Neotoma.

At Wikipedia (see also species pages and links)

Species of concern, on Univ. of Calif Santa Cruz campus, which has some good photos of the "stick-pile" nests they build when not living in rocky cliffs. We saw a lot of these in the deserts of Arizona.

——

Okay, it must have been a really lousy photo. I'm awarding the prize to Swampy, at Swamp 4 Me, who at least got it to the right Order (Rodentia). Thanks, everyone, for chiming in! Swampy, send me your address to claim your original historic postcard of this fabulous local spot where you can see packrat middens.

A Small Saturday Challenge

Simultaneously displaying my amazing skills as a wildlife photographer and giving you a little something to puzzle over this morning-- check out this terrific shot from last week.

Got ideas? I'll be back later with the full post, just packed with information and (yes, promise!) better photos. Oh, guess I'd better be thinking of a prize for the first correct guess, too. Hmmm...

Feeling Picked On?

At home?

Or maybe at work?

Actually, I'm fine, thanks, just couldn't resist sharing these!

Have a great weekend...

Of Vermin and Varmints

How often have you heard the two words in the title in recent decades? Not much, I hope, though I know they are still used. I'd never thought of wildlife in these terms until I moved to Arizona in grad school, and discovered "varmint hunting." Say what?

Wikipedia does an intriguing etymological job on vermin, albeit relatively citation-free, pointing out that both words have evolved from the root (verm-, meaning wormlike), which originally included mostly insect pests, to cover pests that range in size from rats to small or medium-sized predators, such as (in Arizona's predominant case) coyotes. Soon I found myself writing letters to editors (okay, one, in response to a Paul Harvey diatribe) and hanging out with HSUS types occasionally. I wanted a chance to see coyotes, alive and without holes in them. And that, in the category of "things you can see while hiking in Arizona," is putting it mildly.

"God's dog," it turns out, is persona non grata in the Southwest, where hunting is regulated not as a game animal, but in a special class for predators.* I'd say "was" but here's what the AZ Game & Fish Dept has to say on their website today:

The take of coyotes by hunters has been relatively stable during the past 10 years, about 13,000 hunters taking an average of between 30,000 and 40,000 coyotes a year. Most of these animals are taken while "varmint calling," while hunting other game, or simply as opportunities arise...[updated April 2009]

* "Predatory mammals as defined by A.R.S. 17-101 are coyotes, bobcats, foxes, and skunks. Bobcats are the only predator also classified as a furbearer with an export tag required to ship a bobcat pelt out of state.
August 1 - March 31 is open season for Bobcat and Foxes as authorized in Commission Order 13. The season for Coyote and Skunk is yearlong." [Emphasis mine.] If you like this one, you'll probably want to read their Predator Management Policy.

From the immediate at that time, my interest shifted to the historical today. Just last month I encountered an arresting tidbit: this account of pests destroyed at a bird sanctuary in 1929-30, from Bug Girl's blog. I hope she won't mind my repeating it here for those who may have missed it.

A Disgraceful Tally

You really should click to enlarge this—it gives you an idea of the real abundance and variety of wildlife, even into the early decades of the last century, if so much can be destroyed on one small 700-acre preserve. (Note, however, that the take of most every group was down substantially the second year.) I've no doubt the taking of 174 snakes and 58 owls necessitated the killing of the 2,644 mice!

"Such birds and animals as were poisoned have not been included in these totals." Gee, that's good to know.

I quite agree, Bug Girl—things have changed, thank goodness! Else we couldn't have enjoyed last week's Cooper's hawk without fears, so close to "civilization," for his life.

——
In related news, on March 6th Dyana Furmansky, author of Hawk of Mercy, a biography of Rosalie Edge, will discuss her book. In the early 20th century, Edge earned the title "Nature's hellcat" by campaigning against such prejudicial practices on the part of conservationists who protected sport species (think ducks) at the expense of hawks and snapping turtles. Details here, and a great story on Edge by the author here.

Note: Illustrations, from a collection I did years ago, are copyright S.L. White and not to be used without permission, as are photographs. Thanks!

A Walk in the Woods

Sorry, boss. Earth Day is a nationwide holiday, and it's on my schedule of days off. And what a lovely (irresistible spring) day it was... Bee Lady and I, along with her dog Jake, just had to get out for a walk in the woods, if only a short one. We chose O'Fallon Park for a section of "hiker-only" trail I hadn't checked out before. Driving up Bear Creek Canyon, enjoying the views, we spotted several Elk in the meadow at Lair o'the Bear, an Open Space park west of Idledale. There's a new beaver dam there, too, but we were not deterred from our destination.

Nor did the surviving snow on the ground deter us. Jake, in fact, reveled in rolling in each patch we slogged through, perhaps easing his old bones. We walked through a slumbering forest of Ponderosa Pine and Douglas-fir, yet untouched by spring, and were soon rewarded with fabulous views of the mountains to the west. The late sun made capturing the mountains a challenge, so you'll have to exercise a little imagination to see Mt. Evans in the distance here.

Looking back toward Independence Mountain provided a good view of the north-facing slopes still buried in last week's snowfall. Spring will be delayed even longer there. On our warmer side of the hill, Leafy Spurge and Dalmatian Toadflax (both invasive exotics) were already getting a head start on the natives.

There was even time for an ecology lesson. We saw several trees whose tops had been snapped off by the weight of the wettest snow of the year, so when we noticed many tips of PPine branches laying on the ground, I assumed they, too, were victims of seasonal weather-pruning.

Not so, said Bee Lady. See these bare twigs next to them? This pruning is the work of the Abert's Squirrel¹who, instead of caching pine seeds as the Chicarees (Pine Squirrels) do, nibbles on the cambium layer of selected pines. Selective like Porcupines?, I asked. [Those guys choose trees with high sugar(?) content, which are often the ones in the earliest stages of disease or insect attack. It's been reported that Porkies can recognize a sick tree long before any evidence is visible to the forester.]

Just so, said Bee Lady as she explained how the squirrels cut pine tips and select twigs behind the growing part, leaving green tassels strewn beneath the tree. She even demonstrated the cambium-munching technique, much like a person eating an ear of sweet corn. (Okay, I probably shouldn't say cambium, so much as inner bark, that is, phloem and cambium, the living parts of a tree stem. The nutrient-free wood, or xylem, is left behind.) The squirrels are selective, it turns out that ecologists just aren't quite sure what they're looking for in the target trees.²

To add to this tangled web of a story, Bee Lady says the Abert's Squirrels must munch certain fungi come June or so to maintain the necessary enzymes (or some such) to digest all that cellulose they'll be eating next winter!

Our short hike seems to have gotten too long for one post, so it's actually continued in the previous post.

——
¹Sciurus abertii, but comes in several subspecies too. Thanks to Deb for the squirrel photo link above, better than the one at Wikipedia. There's another nice page on Abert's at NatureWorks.

²According to Marc Snyder, 1992, "The phloem of target trees had significantly higher concentrations of nonstructural carbohydrates and sodium, and significantly lower concentrations of iron and mercury, than the phloem of matched nontarget trees. Oleoresin characteristics associated with selective herbivory were unaffected by simulated herbivory over 2 yr, supporting existing evidence that these characteristics are under strong genetic control. Because herbivory is associated with these host traits and results in dramatic reductions in host fitness, Abert's squirrels are probably important agents of natural selection in host ponderosa pine populations." Yum! Nonstructural carbohydrates!

On the other hand, Pedersen and Welch (1984) found that "Protein and other nutrients did not differ significantly between feed and nonfeed trees. However, both outer and inner bark were easier to remove from the woody portion of the feed tree twigs than those twigs collected from nonfeed trees. Therefore, due to the lack of differences in monoterpenoid and nutrient content between feed and nonfeed trees, we attributed the use of certain trees for use as feed trees to the ease of peeling and separating outer from inner bark."

Elk in Velvet--and a Surprise

Our Earth Day hike (see following post, actually written first) brought us a few other delights of discovery, mostly on the return trip. Stomping through one of the wet snow patches, I noticed some tracks that didn't belong to us or the dog. Puzzled, intrigued, and grateful we hadn't obliterated them on the way out, we searched for some clear enough to photograph. Here they are, once again without a scale object other than a few Doug-fir needles, but they would have looked nice with one of my Colorado quarters I keep forgetting to bring.

The tracks were too big for the squirrels we had been discussing, too small for a dog and not-quite-right for raccoon, we thought, though there was some resemblance. In the snow, they looked almost like an infant's handprint, except for distinct claw marks. Bee Lady decided on a Pine Marten, and I quite liked that conclusion. It could, of course, been some other small weasel, but we relished the thought of this little guy watching us from a tree while we looked for him.

The Pine Marten or American Marten (Martes americana) is the largest weasel we're likely to see in these parts, Fishers being pretty rare, and Wolverines almost nonexistent. Apparently secure in Colorado and several other western states, the Marten is imperiled or vulnerable in Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and Oregon, as well as in most of the northeast. Its broad range, though, makes it globally secure thanks to abundant populations in Canada. (See Distribution map at NatureServe.org.)

Check out the photo—pretty cute, huh? (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.) I shouldn't feel too bad about never having seen one—my source says "even people who live in marten habitat may seldom see them." Darling Husband did see one on a hike in the mountains a few years ago. Ours was probably watching from the treetops as we headed back down the trail.

Here are the photos DH took, June 2007, near the trailhead to Gray's and Torrey's Peaks. Brightening to get his face to show up washed out the old snow behind him; not as perfect a pose as the one above. Click to get a better view of him.

Also a rear view, in typical weasel observation pose, to show off his shape. These guys are about the size of a small housecat.

We'd somehow overlooked a couple signs of spring on the way out. First, I spotted this Mountain Candytuft (Thlaspi alpestre), a delicate spring mustard that is easy to miss, usually occurring by itself, scattered along the trail. We saw only this one.

Next up was the one we'd been looking for: the Mountain Ball Cactus (Pediocactus simpsonii). It's a dramatic plant, especially when in flower, but very capable of hiding in plain sight among the rocks and lichens. Often where there's one of these beauties, there will be more, but again, we saw only one blooming.

Still with me? If so, you're probably wondering about those Elk by now. We found them again, in a meadow a little further downstream, and took a quick detour for a better look. Five or six, mostly bulls (maybe all bulls, some just too young to show antlers), in the picnic area along the trail.

They are just beginning to regrow their annual racks, now just fuzzy protrusions from their foreheads as they grazed. Again, without scale, it's hard to convey how BIG these guys are! Almost 5 feet (1.5 m) at the shoulder, and weighing in the neighborhood of 700 pounds (320 kg), they are twice as heavy as Mule Deer (though they easily look three times!). Somehow, though they're around daily in the mountains west of home, it's still always exciting to see them (at least for those of us who don't have them munching on our landscaping).

So, in all, a great day on our little part of the Earth!

A Little More on Elk

By the final years of the 19th century, when the frontier was not only closed but almost sterilized, Elk had become so rare from overhunting that their conservation became an important effort in the early 1900s. When the bison preserve at Genesee Park was established in 1914 (with bison imported from Yellowstone Park), a couple dozen Elk were brought along to form the nucleus of the herd that still resides there.

The irony is that, 95 years later, the captive herd is well outnumbered by wild Elk (like the ones pictured above) in the foothills west of Denver. Today the species is not only back from the brink of extinction, but so numerous that it is one of the Rockies' most popular game animals with hunters. Elk have even overpopulated habitat in Rocky Mountain National Park to the extent that culling has again become necessary there. An Elk Vegetation Management Plan guided removal that started in February and took about 33 elk (out of 100 planned), all cows. A bit of fertility control is also being tried out on the remaining herd. The program has been controversial, as the following articles show.

Elk culling to begin
First animals taken
Wolves are the better answer
Estes Park residents disagree on culling plan

Coyote Morning...

Just got home from the Big Box store, and Husband said "there's a coyote barking out there"... Sure 'nuf! Only took a minute to find him/her with the binocs!

Finally, coyote pictures to go with my stories!! Only minutes old as I post these... (Foreground pines and fenceposts are in our yard; the junipers behind him/her about 200 yards/meters beyond.)

Bee Lady says the coyotes are gone from Red Rocks; nice to know there's still at least one around.

The dogs were inside, fortunately, but clamoring to get out. A week or so ago, a woman in the Denver metro area was attacked by a neighborhood coyote.

Wait for dark—maybe you'll get lucky and find a fresh hen! (Thank goodness it's cold, and the cats are inside!)

Tracking a Mystery

Yesterday seemed to be a perfect day for tracking, perhaps because even the wind was frozen. When I went to the mailbox, I found several stories written in and next to the driveway, including one little mystery.

Cottontails abound, so to speak, around here these days. One friend suggests local coyote populations have been drastically reduced, perhaps by disease; we don't hear them as often as we used to. That leaves these guys as our most ubiquitous and visible mammal. So here's a good classic bunny track, including one with even front paw marks showing.

Loosely related: Speaking of wild canids, I saw one just the day after I wrote this post. At first glance, I thought coyote, of course, but looking closer I realized it was a foothills resident I'd never encountered (alive) before: The Grey Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). Alas, no camera, but my what a stately critter! Needless to say, I was thrilled!! (Expect a post in the future.)


Next up, near the top of the drive, a small rodent (?) ran or hopped perpendicularly across the driveway, from one weedy rough over to the rabbitbrush, where the shelter was perhaps better.

Then came a set of bird tracks, or rather marks. Definitely not walking around, more like alighting, poking under the snow, and leaving with a distinctive wing burst. Hope he/she found whatever was being hunted. I like the long scratch marks on this one, suggesting a Rufous-sided Towhee (as they used to be known; now Western Towhee I believe). I was starting to be intrigued by the different colors the camera caught from the same snow.

This better bird print reminds me of the fossils from Solnhofen, Germany, with a more complete splay of wings and even a suggestion of body and tail. A nice takeoff... See more fossils at this gallery.

Okay... here comes the mystery. This little guy(?) made a neat row of tracks all along the driveway, but they ended abruptly halfway up. Hmmm. No sign of struggle, what could it be? I noted that it was traveling next to the DH's tracks as he left for work this morning.

Coming back, I traced it in the other direction, beginning to suspect the truth this last photo confirms. Even the inanimate (if snow is such) can leave traces of its existence, often more regular and predictable than those of the living. Another nature mystery solved, another track decoded!

Stormy Weather...

Postponing my errands yesterday turns out to be a bad idea. It's far worse out there today. Ten (6C) degrees colder than yesterday's 26 (-3C), snowflakes getting bigger and bigger by the hour. And no suet to share with the feathered friends. A day to make warm oatmeal for the chickens, and work up the ambition to go out and feed them soon. (I should have known it would be bad; THREE Steller's Jays in the yard yesterday.)

The cold weather is bringing out the birds; it's clear that winter weather brings birds and people close together, at least around here. All perches on the thistle feeder are occupied by Pine Siskins, most upside down, with more waiting in line on the chain of the adjacent birdbath. One of my favorites; click to see how many I caught in the air! Juncos are everywhere, and several Magpies, but only a few Red-winged Blackbirds have ventured out today.

A sassy new guy has also moved in of late; can you see him in the top photo? Sign of the times, as we never used to see these. Fox Squirrels (Sciurus niger) are going from occasional to regular; I think this one has set up shop somewhere in the yard. (Here's a closer view.) They are invasive, moving west along the tree-lined riparian areas of the Great Plains, setting up a stronghold in Denver's urban forest (Tree City USA), and now, growing more common in the foothills even outside riparian areas. Curiously, the distribution map at Nature Serve implies they belong in Colorado, but are exotic in Wyoming and other western states. Click on "Distribution" and scroll down to see a map with that distinctive finger reaching into Colorado along the South Platte River system. Apparently they haven't progressed as far in the Arkansas Valley. NatureServe suggests they're even vulnerable (to extinction, or rather extirpation) in Alabama, North Carolina, and New York states.

It's a good sign, I suppose, that our yard is arboreal enough to support these little monsters. I'm a softie, of course, so have thus far used no repellents or deadly force against them. We see no more than one at a time, and each has moved on in its own time, perhaps finding better pickings elsewhere. But today he's hungry, as is everyone else out there, and the sunflower seeds are too tempting, so he strikes a "cute squirrel" pose to convince me he's just part of the local ecosystem. And maybe he is.

NatureServe, by the way, is a handy reference to plant and animal distributions and taxonomy. For plants, I often use the USDA Database as well. This morning, while googling an obscure fungus, I discovered another repository of biodiversity information, the ZipCodeZoo. Pretty neat idea, but currently soliciting donations to prevent its own extinction. Drop by and see what you can learn about your own neighborhood; this site is rich in data, references, and links. (But use with caution: I've yet to see a Basking Shark or Pawpaw here in Colorado.)

In a closet somewhere in this house is a half-completed needlepoint sampler bearing the message Storms and Winter Weather Bring Plants and People Close Together. I think I'll propose this as a theme, at least in the northern hemisphere, for the upcoming edition of Berry-Go-Round. (Okay, so in my younger days I had illusions of being creative and skilled in domestic crafts, so what? We're all trying to figure out who we are here...grin)

Before leaving this a.m., the DH (bless his heart!) laid a fire for me in the woodstove, using his "new" upside-down technique. Works like a charm—10 minutes after lighting it, I had this lovely fire going, taking the chill off the house.