Yesterday afternoon when we left Boulder to visit the Mount Goliath Natural Area, rain was coming down hard and we could see lightening and hear thunder. I wondered if this might not be the wisest time to go hiking at tree line and above.

But my good luck held. When we reached our destination, the weather was completely dry and the lightening and thunder was out on the prairie.

The Mount Goliath Research Natural Area is in the Arapahoe National Forest about 60 miles southwest of Boulder near the road leading to the top of Mount Evans. We went there to see Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pines in a 160-acre area set aside for their protection, study, interpretation, and enjoyment. Bristlecone pines may be the oldest single living organisms on earth, capable of living up to 5,000 years. The ones here are up to 1,600 years old.

They live in isolated groves at and just below the tree line, which in Colorado is 11,500 feet. Because the temperature is almost always so cold at this altitude and because of the dry soil, high winds, and short growing seasons, bristlecone pines grow slowly.

We hiked the trail through the trees until we were above tree line. I was short of breath from the altitude but had more energy than on the hike that Sharon and I had taken in Rocky Mountain National Park the previous day.

Sharon and I met up with a four other hikers and photographers on a Sierra Club photo hike. When the group reached the natural area around 5:30, the temperature was about 50 degrees cooler than in Boulder and windy enough that I appreciated my gloves. But the sun was out, and soon the wind died, blessing us with a much better day on the mountain than I had even hoped for.

Not only had I never been to the Mount Goliath Research Natural Area before, I hadn’t even heard of it before reading the Sierra Club trip announcement. And while I have known about these hardy trees for most of my life, these were the first that I have ever seen.

The setting is wild and beautiful.

The View from the Trail

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In the Distance is Denver, Although it Feels a Million Miles Away

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An Ancient Bristlecone Pine

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Sharon and I hiked to Cub Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park this morning. This was my first trip to the park this year and, I think, Sharon’s too.

Cub Lake and the Rockies

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The lake is only 2.3 miles up an easy trail from the trailhead. But I had low energy today, probably from trying too hard to get back to weighing what I did before I started all my trips and eating out early this year. So we went back the way we came for a 4.6 mile round trip.

We didn’t expect to see may bird in this heavily forested area. We were there mostly to get exercise and get out in nature.

But were are a good team of birders. Sharon spotted the birds high in the trees and identified them while I took their photos with my 400mm zoom lens.

A Hairy Woodpecker

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After my friend Sharon and I hiked around Adams County Regional Park photographing birds yesterday, she asked me if I wanted to try to find some burrowing owls that she had discovered a few days earlier. Of course, I did.

So we drove about 15 miles due east of the park, where we found them. These owls actually live within the city limits of Denver at the edge of Denver International Airport, the biggest American airport (and second biggest in the world) in land area.

Burrowing owls here generally nest and roost in burrows that prairie dogs excavate, and these are no exception. Sharon and I spent several hours watching them. We were able to get as close as about 70 feet from their burrow home.

We found a new family. Mama and papa owls has a brood of nine owlets, all about a month old.

When we arrived, we found another photographer there before us — long before us. Mike, an advanced amateur photographer from nearby Thornton, Colorado, had been spending hours almost every day for the past three weeks photographing the family. Such patience I am only beginning to learn.

Sharon and I stayed only for a couple of hours yesterday. I took more than 500 photos of the owls.

But I knew that I could do better today, so I went back. Sharon had something else to do, so this time I went alone, except Mike got there about an hour after I did.

Yesterday I didn’t have my 1.4 tele extender. Even though I used my 400 mm lens, I needed the 560 mm reach that the tele extender would give me, which is effectively 896 mm, since my camera body has a 1.6 crop factor.

Also, with that setup I needed to use my heavier tripod rather than my lightweight hiking tripod that I used yesterday. Further, I had forgot to bring my cable release and forgot to turn off the lens image stabilization.

And I wanted to get to the owls’ burrow earlier for the better light at that time. So I got up at 4 a.m. this morning, arriving just before sunrise at 5:31, when I started shooting. At that time only mama owl was up. An hour later the babies started coming out of the burrow, and I have enough patience now that I stayed for another couple of hours.

Mama at Sunrise

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Three Owlets

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My friend Sharon and I went birding yesterday. She introduced me to Adams County Regional Park in Brighton, Colorado, which is out on the prairie about 30 miles east of Boulder. The birds are there because of several small lakes and one big river, the South Platte, the principal source of water for eastern Colorado.

This Songbird May Be a Female Yellow Warbler

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This Bird is a Great Blue Heron

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A Tree Swallow on its Birdhouse

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A Cormorant Swims

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Pelicans Pose

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A Pelican Takes Off

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And Flies Away

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When I want to get out for a little exercise and taste of nature, I walk around my apartment complex at Tantra Lake. In fact I’ve probably seen more beauty in this oasis in the city than anyplace else. Here’s a glimpse of what I’ve seen in the past couple of days:

Evening on the Lake

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A Western Painted Turtle Sunbathing by the Lake

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A Crow at Tantra Park This Morning

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Breakfast is Ready!

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A Barn Swallow a Couple of Days Ago in Tantra Park

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A week ago I mentioned to my friend Sharon that I would like to put up a bird feeder on the tree in front of my apartment and asked what she recommended. Instead, she came right over with a couple of them. One is for hummingbirds, which aren’t at this elevation yet. I immediately set up the other feeder and the thistle seed that she also gave me to attract goldfinches and other colorful birds. But not until today did any birds discover this bird feeder.

Here is a shot of that first smart bird:

A Male House Finch

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Yesterday was the first day that I could go on a long hike with my new 100-400mm zoom lens. This lens is so big and heavy that I had to get a new Clik Elite Pro case to carry it, and this case just arrived the previous evening.

On the recommendation of a friend from church the week before, I hiked Hall Ranch’s Nighthawk Trail. He said that I would find lots of flowers, and I did on my 7-mile hike.

In fact I took so many pictures that I just now finished viewing them. Here are those worth sharing.

Hall Ranch is usually a dry, Southwestern-looking open space maintained by Boulder County about 20 miles north of here. After the heavy rains last week it is green, but we find lots of cactus there. I love to photograph the cactus flowers because of their great contrast of flower softness with needle hardness.

Cactus and Flower

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Another high-contrast plant is the musk thistle. It seems to be a favorite of bees and birds.

Musk Thistle and Visitor

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Yet another plant that is better to look at than touch is the prickly poppy:

Prickly Poppy

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Because of a good deed today, I got to see my first cormorant in Colorado and my first good picture of one ever. When I was in New Zealand in February and March, I saw lots of cormorants, but never got close enough for a good shot.

I had walked over to the office to deliver a notice to another resident that came to me by mistake. On the way back I noticed a strange bird on the raft in the lake. At my apartment I quickly grabbed my camera, thinking that the bird would have almost certainly flown away before I got close enough for a shot. But my motto is that if you don’t try, your chances of success are zero.

Fortunately, when I got close enough, the bird was still there, and the sun was finally out after three days of rain. So I fired away, taking 360 shots — almost a full 8GB card — in 9 minutes. I only stopped because the sun went behind a cloud.

Then, my first problem was picking the one shot that I would keep. This is the one.

A Cormorant

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The other problem was identifying the bird. According to The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America, this is a double-crested cormorant.

As I walked over the bridge across a corner of Tantra Lake early this morning, my thoughts turned to a turtle that I saw there last summer. I wondered where the turtles go in cold weather and whether I would see one this year.

Less than five minutes later as I crossed the parking lot in front of the Tantra Lake office, a turtle was the first thing that I saw.

Turtle

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Closer

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I only wanted to take a short stroll around the grounds of the apartment and condo complex where I live. But I received more photographic rewards than I expected.

Like this parade across the lake of two parents and three adolescents.

Canada Geese Family

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And this flower, which I can’t identify in my reference books. Perhaps it’s not a native Colorado wildflower, although it was growing near the stream bed of Tantra Park, which surrounds the complex on three sides.

A Pretty Flower

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One of the most common birds here is the robin.

Robin Takes Off

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I like the light behind this common squirrel standing on a rock near the office.

My, What a Big Tail You Have!

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Such are the joys of a late spring on an early Boulder morning.

Colorado doesn’t appreciate its prairies. I didn’t myself until I heard Dave Showalter speak to us at the Colorado Nature Camera Club in January. Dave wrote Prairie Thunder: The Nature of Colorado’s Great Plains and is the photographer for the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

The prairies comprise the eastern third of the state. Most of us hike and play in the central mountain ranges, including the Rocky Mountains. But relatively few animals inhabit the forests of mountain slopes. To use the  technical term that says it best, the biomass is greatest on the state’s eastern grasslands.

This morning I hiked the trails of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge for more than four hours and never encountered another sole. No hikers, no cyclists, no joggers. Just me and the wildlife.

Lots of wildlife, especially birds. But also the usual suspects that walk on four legs — the deer, the rabbits, the prairie dogs. I photographed the birds today.

Birds were what I wanted to photograph so that I could put my new telephoto lens to work. I just bought the ultimate lens for handheld bird photography, a 100-400mm Canon L-series zoom lens with image stabilization. Anything with even greater reach would be difficult to hold steady.

This new lens is a direct result of my recent photo safari to shoot wild horses of the West with Weldon Lee in South Dakota. Weldon uses the Nikon equivalent and his partner Lori uses this Canon lens. Lori let me use her 100-400mm lens one day, and I was convinced.

Red-winged Blackbird

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Tree Swallow

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Juvenile Tree Swallow at Home

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And, as a bonus, one flower:

Prickly Poppy

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The word “arsenal” in the name of this refuge may be what discourages many lovers of nature to come to this wild land just 10 or 11 miles north of Denver. But it hasn’t functioned as an arsenal for years.

Maybe people stay away since this is a Superfund site, where the U.S. Army produced deadly nerve gas from 1942 to 1945. Then until 1982 Shell Chemical produced pesticides and herbicides there. The 1,700 acre core area, or Central Remediation Area (CRA), is clean. The cleanup is complete, and the current work involves completing the landfill in the middle of the refuge. While that area will never be open to the public, there is no risk to visitors to Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

Congress designated the entire area of the refuge as the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in 1992. It’s huge — 27 square miles or 17,000 acres. And except for the wildlife, I had it all to myself today.

The Spring Brook Loop Trail is one of my favorite foothills hikes. For starters, it’s less than 6 miles by road from my apartment in south Boulder, and a bird could fly there in 4 miles.

It is a lollipop loop, meaning that I see most of the trail only one time. The trail offers varied scenery, starting in the plains and passing through hills covered with the wildflowers of late spring before climbing moderately up to a pine forest. The total distance is about 5 or 6 miles, providing a nice workout.

The only problem with the Spring Brook Loop comes after a rain, when the trail turns into thick, slippery clay. But today’s weather was clear and cool when I hit the trail at 6 a.m., although Boulder warmed up to 89 degrees this afternoon.

This is the third time that I have written about my love affair with this trail. My earlier photo essays are www.mendosa.com/fitnessblog/?p=2936 in December 2008, just after the city officially inaugurated the trail, and www.mendosa.com/fitnessblog/?p=3839 last May.

On the plains the cactus stalks are blooming.

Cactus in Bloom

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When I saw these two stalks leaning into each other, I anthropomorphized, thinking “cactus kiss.” But it’s really more of a cactus hug.

Cactus Hug

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