My New Friend, A Lonely Dove

This is the kind of self-indulgent entries that blogs are famous for.

As I was walking up my very long and steep driveway this morning, a dove flew in front of me. I live high up in the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by national forest. Doves are not native around here. A couple of hours later, I'd made a new friend, who you can see sitting on my shoulder.

I called over to my neighbor, who once had brough up some doves from Denver. He told me that this last, lonely dove had been hanging around there, but he was afraid that it would soon become Red tailed Hawk food.

Perhaps my new friend figures that if its friends with me, then the hawk won't get it. I hope she's right, because after getting a expert ear cleaning from her, I'm starting to like this bird.

The Grand Yellow Green Pollen Cloud Finali

There are some hazards to living high up in the Rockies that you don't find out about until you're actually living here.

In the winter, there are the large stinging clouds of swirling snow.

Right now, we are just coming to the end to the large gritty clouds of yellow green pine pollen. ON warm days (>80 F) like today the pine pollen gets ready in the calm morning air.

Then, as the first gust of afternoon wind blow across the hillside, the pollen takes flight, and forms huge yellow green clouds.

These clouds coat everything with a thick, gritty, yellow-green coat. This pollen keeps blowing around until it is finally washed down by a afternoon thunderstorm, like we just had.

We had similar situation last weekend. The whole process was interrupted by a cold snap that we had right after the weekend.

Hopefully, this is the end of pollen season. It takes weeks for the pollen coat to disappear from surfaces.

Finally back online

In my previous post I mentioned a bad wind storm. It knocked out our internet connection shortly after the post until this morning.

It's been stange weather. We had a hard frost last night, and I had to bring in all the house plants that did not have the good sense to come in on their own.

Wind and Snow

It has been quite windy today, as illustrated by this knocked over Aspen tree.

It also looks like its trying to snow over Thorodin.

Suggestions for a bear proof bird feeder

This morning, I heard the dogs in the neighborhood go crazy with howling an yowling. "Must be the bear" I thought to myself. Sure enough, I saw bags of scattered trash when I went throuhg the epicenter of the yowling a few hours latter.

Another bear related note: --
A neighbor suggests this for a bear proof feeder:

Hi Everyone,

A few years ago, we used a pulley system like the one mentioned here
to keep our birdfeeders out of reach of the bears. It worked for
about a year but then the bears started to figure it out. The first
bear to figure it out climbed up a tree until he was higher than the
metal cord that we had running between two trees (about 15 ft off the
ground). Then, he jumped down and grabbed the cord as he fell. This
method worked for him but it was a long jump down. We put the pulley
system back together, and the next bear (or maybe the same bear)
figured out which rope lowered the feeders. He pawed at it until he
got the feeders to fall.

We abandoned the pulley system at that point, and my husband
constructed a new system. We have a 15 ft tall metal pole sunk in
concrete, and 4 arms coming off of it near the top. There's a feeder
on each arm. We have an electric fence (3 fence posts with wires
going around them making a circle with diameter of about 2-3 ft)
around the base of the pole. We have a long pole with a hook on the
end to put feeders up on the arms (or take them down). This system
has now worked for 2.5 years or so. We've observed bears (in the
daytime) trying to get at our feeders, and they get completely
spooked when they touch the electric fence (it's not a huge shock -
we've touched it to see what it feels like). From what we've
observed, each bear never tries again after getting shocked once.

If anyone else is interested in setting up a system like this, I
could take some pictures and post them. My husband could provide
technical details. We really like this system because we can leave
the feeders out all the time with no worries that we're helping
corrupt bears.

Claire

Mountain Lions Sited on the Neighborhood on Saturday

Just a quick report on a great wildlife sighting from a Neighbor:

Brian and I saw three mountaint lions on Magnolia this past Saturday night
about 11:30 pm. The cats were in the road as we came up, roughly 2.25 mile
mark. We guess it was a mom and cubs since they were traveling together,
but don't know for sure. Got a solid look at one, two dropped off the road
quickly but the long black tipped tails are unmistakeable!

Save Forsythe Falls

I took a walk down to Forsythe Falls today.

I wanted see how far above the current level of Gross Reservoir it was. I eyeballed it, but I suspect that there is only about 30 feet between the current full level of Gross Reservoir and the bottom of Forsythe falls. Raising the level of Gross Reservoir will destroy this beautiful falls.

I have posted three pictures for posterity.

More Bear issues in the Neighborhood

Hi All:
Last weekend -- during the DAY a bear must have come on my deck and destroyed the bird feeders and on the other side of the house dismantled the hummingbird feeder. I want to feed the birds but I am not gonna do that anymore as it attracts the bears so much. I would love to have a bird feeder on a pully system between two trees but I bet the bear will pull on the roper or chain. Any suggestions from clever humans???
Terry

At 09:10 PM 6/1/2007, greg joder wrote:
>Hi everyone,>>The bear, or a bear, that has been around here for the last couple >weeks just tried climbing onto my deck (9:00 p.m.) - we could see >its feet, paws and face! My dog and cats went crazy!>>Just took in the feeders too (no trash out). Keep an eye out!
>>greg
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