Deer leg

Went for a snowshoe around the Rio Grande & the state wildlife area; the dog found a tasty treat which she gnawed on the remainder of the night. Even missed her dinner for it.
We got 11" of snow overnight last Thursday; I skipped work to shovel, rake snow off the roof, split firewood, and go snowshoeing.

Owls, heron, deer

Went for a walk over in the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area the other night. The great horned owls were hooting from nearly every direction - I probably heard four to six individuals. At one point, I was walking on entrance road to the wildlife area, and had a sudden urge to look up. A large great horned owl was sitting up in a tree about 20' off of the ground staring at me. My eyes felt riveted to hers/his. It was such a neat experience!
Then we saw the great blue heron that seems to like hanging out around the Empire Canal. Again, I wonder how it survives the winter.
And on the way home, strolling through the Veteran's Center, the deer were out on the lawn feeding and pooping (Caddy loves to eat the latter).
It has been fairly mild here during the day lately, in the 30s and 40s. Today, however, signaled a change in the weather with steady snow beginning around 11AM or so, and continuing through the evening, at least. Mountains (eastern San Juans) are getting hit hard with two to five feet of snow! Blizzard warning in effect for the mountains, and Highway 160 over Wolf Creek Pass was closed at 6PM today due to poor driving conditions.

Dry, old snow & gardening catalogs

The snow here needs to be replenished with a new supply. We're getting drier & drier; soon I'll have to go out and water some shrubs and an evergreen or two. Haven't had new snow for about a month or so. Even the mountains around us have been mostly missed by storms.

The 2010 gardening catalogs have been trickling in - High Country Gardens, Burpee, Territorial Seed Company, Fedco, several more. Very soon I want to take an inventory of my vegetable & flower seeds to find out what needs replacing or adding to for the upcoming season.

The kitchen scraps both from home & work are beginning to pile up a little; during the winter I store everything in "Trugs" & five-gallon buckets until the compost heaps outside thaw and allow me to turn their contents over. Of course, in the meantime, the mostly-outside sunroom starts to smell a bit "aromatic", especially on those warmish days that we've had lately (upper 30s).

Twice in the past week we've spotted the lone great blue heron that hangs out around the patches of open water in the Empire Canal nearby. Ice-skaters have been taking advantage of the cold nights we've had to do some skating on Home Lake.

Found: Old, frozen, Canada Goose eggs

On our morning dog walk today, we passed by a nesting platform at the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area. Likely designed for Canada geese (maybe other birds also), the flat nesting platform is attached to a roughly 6'-high post, and the platform itself is surrounded by a fence-like barricade - maybe to keep the eggs & mother from rolling or falling off to the ground?

As we walked by the platform, Bruce noticed that there were three lone goose eggs sitting on the otherwise-empty platform. Since I'd never had the opportunity to hold a goose egg, I instructed him to gather all three of the eggs so I could pocket them for the walk home, to examine later. We surmised that something had happened to the mother goose during the spring '09 nesting period, thus leaving her eggs bare & unprotected. What was surprising is that the eggs were still completely intact - no cracks or anything. Why had no opportunistic predator come for this protein-filled treasure?

(The photo above shows a brown chicken egg--for scale--along with the three goose eggs.)

Once I returned home, I lightly rapped one of the eggs with a stick of wood, and it cracked open with a sound like gunshot! Since the contents were frozen, the shell was under some pressure. Sadly, in the one egg that I opened, evidence of an interrupted incubation was found by the presence of an incompletely-formed gosling.

These unfortunate eggs and their contents will become organic matter in one of my several compost bins, so their death won't be a total waste.

Quiet Christmas Eve

The weather is quiet - no new snow, blue sky, sunshine. My temperament is more receptive to a Christmas with gray skies, swirling snowflakes, and cold temperatures. Therefore, we will spend part of Christmas skiing into and staying at a backcountry yurt, where there will likely be swirling snowflakes and cold temperatures, though possibly no gray skies.
The image above is one of a yurt that we stayed a couple of winters ago with several friends. The weather evident in that photo is what I relish!

Flicker at the birdfeeder

Last weekend a pair of flickers appeared in the backyard - one female and one male. They even attempted to perch on the finch feeder perches, and looked pretty funny while doing so.
Most of the yard is still snow-covered but with temperatures some days in the mid-30s, it won't be for long.
Nights have been in single digits, both above and below 0.
Snow up in the mountains is piling up quickly; we've had a few days of high-quality skiing and snowshoeing already so early in the season.

SNOW & COLD

Yep, it's that time of year! A supposed blizzard (really! Even the National Weather Service is calling it that) is hitting the San Juan Mountains west of us, and the San Luis Valley is supposed to get about 3-4" of snow by end of tomorrow or so. Wolf Creek is due to get about 50" of snow out of this storm! Hooray for skiing!
All of my water barrels are now empty for the season, bird feeders are full for now, and the birdies have water kept thawed by the new water heater.
We went jogging at the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area yesterday, and saw a lone great blue heron. I bet we'll keep seeing it throughout the winter, which I marvel at. What does it find to eat? All the sandhill cranes appear to be absent now; the very cold temperatures we had this past week (low was -10F) probably drove them away to the Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico.
I've already received two 2010 garden supply/seed catalogs! Even I think that's a bit early.....