The tours of Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge have to be the best bargains anywhere to see birds and other wildlife. They are free.

I’ve taken several of these tours. But the tour that my friend Sharon and I took this morning had the best tour guide ever at this wildlife refuge, Dave Rhodes.

While on previous tours I took more photographs worth sharing, Dave taught me much more about the birds we saw today. Dave identified this bird below as a two-year-old Bald Eagle:

A Two-Year-Old Bald Eagle Flies Over

Click on the picture above to enlarge

The other bird photo I liked today was of this Killdeer at the edge of a lake.

A Killdeer

Click on the picture above to enlarge

The Killdeer is a plover that makes a call that sounds like kill-deer. It sounds like this.

The Killdeer doesn’t really kill any deer. We saw a lot of both species of living deer today at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. The name of one of these species is White-Tailed Deer and the other is Mule Deer.
Can you figure out how they got their names and which is which?

One Species of Deer

Click on the picture above to enlarge

Another Species of Deer

Click on the picture above to enlarge

This wildlife refuge is just 30 miles southeast of Boulder and only 11 or 12 miles from downtown Denver. When Sharon and I set out at 7 this morning the weather was still warm from the record high temperature of 82° degrees yesterday. But during our tour a storm front came in. The temperature has dropped early this afternoon to 34° and snow is coming. Colorado certainly has great variety.