ESTESBOG

 Photo by Joe Lewendowski courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife

by Peter G. Walker

In order to put today’s tale in perspective, and to be fair to all concerned, I need to give you quite a bit of background. First of all, those of you who have never visited the little known region of eastern Colorado, you need to appreciate just how rural it is. Discounting Greeley, which is really an eastward extension of the Colorado Front Range, in an area the size of the entire state of Maine, there are only four “cities” that approach 10,000 people in size. The entire region has a phone book about the size of the one we used 30 years ago for the greater Augusta area in Maine. It’s about as rural as it gets. Mayberry RFD with cattle trucks and wheat fields.

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by Peter Walker

USFWS photo by Peter Johnson, 2008

Oh, why does man pursue the smelt?
It has no valuable pelt,
It boasts of no escutcheon royal,
It yields no ivory or oil,
Its life is dull, its death is tame,
a fish as humble as its name.
Yet – take this salmon somewhere else;
And bring me half a dozen smelts!

Ogden Nash, 1902-1971

            I can’t explain it either. But ever since I was a little kid I’ve had a fascination with the smelt. And lots of other Mainers do, too.

            Middle Range Pond, the natural lake at the foot of the hill where I grew up in Poland Spring, Maine had a thriving population of tiny, sardine-sized smelts. They lived in the lake’s depths and were only seen in the early spring around ice-out when they ran up the little tributary brooks late at night to spawn. Men used to stay out all night to go smelting. They would catch the tiny fish with fine mesh dip nets. The limit was 4 quarts per fisherman per night. But, as I soon came to realize, smelts for most Maine outdoorsmen, are simply an excuse to stay out all night and howl at the moon and drink themselves into oblivion.

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Drawing by Wayne Lewis courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife.

by Peter Walker

            Three years ago my then 7-year-old grandson, Jason, introduced me to the recent hit animated movie “Over the Hedge.” One of the funniest scenes takes place in a tract home when the invading small animals are confronted by the woman of the house, armed with a broom.

            In the confusion the skunk turns to one of her compatriots and says, “I’m sorry you have to see this.”

Then she yells out, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

The view pans back away from the house as, “POOM!” a green cloud blows out simultaneously from the windows and doors. Read more…

(Photograph courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife)

by Peter Walker

            I don’t know whether curiosity actually kills cats, but I do know what sort of trouble curiosity once brought to a red fox.

            A Maine Game Warden buddy of mine named Smally Chandler told me about the incident. Smally worked the Camden-Searsport district on the Maine coast during the early 1970s. In those days there was a great deal of night time deer poaching west of the Penobscot estuary and it kept the district wardens in that region very busy. Read more…

This little wildlife drama was photographed and described to me by fellow photographer Mandy Colburn of Fort Morgan. Mandy’s 11-year-old stepson, Ouray Ocanas, is an exceptionally observant nature nut who seldom misses an interesting snake or bug or mammal in his wanderings.

            One day last summer Ouray noticed the family pack of weiner dogs were excited about something on the back lawn. Going to investigate, he spotted a gray and black object in the grass and it was moving. It was a baby bat. Assuming it had lost its mother, and knowing enough about bats to realize he probably shouldn’t handle it directly, the boy put on some heavy work gloves to capture the little bat and put him in a terrarium. He figured that the baby bat’s mother could access the baby through the open top and the little animal might be at least somewhat protected from cats and other small terrestrial predators.

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BIRDING AND NATURE LIST FOR MORGAN COUNTY AND VICINITY JULY 19-26, 2009

What would you get if you crossed a lark sparrow with a meadowlark? Whatever it might be, it would probably look quite a lot like a dickcissel. Dickcissels were this week’s stars in northeast Colorado. This sparrow-sized bird with a big voice has puzzled taxonomists for years. The species apparently evolved to take advantage of temporary weed patches left in the wake of the enormous herds of wandering bison. As the plains ecosystem was altered by man, dickcissels adapted. They have a strong affinity for alfalfa fields. But they remain more or less nomadic, here one year and totally absent the next five or ten. July, 2009 marked the largest incursion of dickcissels in this part of the Great Plains since at least the 1970s. The males can be found on power lines overlooking alfalfa or shrubby habitats. They have at least two loud songs, both manifestations of “dickcissel” – one buzzy and one clearly whistled.

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BIRDING AND NATURE LIST – JULY 11-17, 2009

I returned from two weeks in soggy Maine to find that things are still as wet here on the prairie as they have been since April. The plains are as green and lush as they have ever been in July in my 25 years here. A few fall migrants (sage thrasher, solitary sandpiper, greater yellowlegs) and post-breeding dispersal species (snowy egret) are beginning to show up. A trip to Poudre River State Fish Hatchery on a diagnostics call gave me a few mountain species to spice up my week list. My best bird this week was an adult Mississippi kite here in Fort Morgan. I’ve seen them here fairly consistently since the early 1990s and I suspect the species is trying to expand northwestward. I’ve only seen a nest here in Morgan County once in a huge cottonwood near the train station.

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Mother Nature was friendlier during my second week, giving me two full days of sunshine and a chance to do a little serious birding with my long-time mentor and friend, Don Mairs. We spent one of those days in the central Kennebec River Valley and the second in Sunkhaze Meadow National Wildlife Refuge. Between the two days we checked out both boreal and eastern deciduous habitats, lakes, marshes, rivers, and hayfields. One striking contrast between Maine’s wet northern habitats and high plains riparian woodland is the huge variety of nesting wood warblers. All warblers observed were in adult spring plumage, so the young were still in the nests at that time. Don’s excellent field speakers and I-Pod served us well in calling soras into camera range and pulling some of the more shy species into the open.

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Farmington, Maine.  In the week since I arrived we’ve only seen sunshine twice, and then for only 2-3 hours at a time! Consequently I’ve only taken my camera out of its case a few times. Despite my inability to do any long-term birding, I’ve picked up a lot of species as incidentals or on short forays here in Farmington around my brother Tom’s place and at my brother David’s camp in the Rangeley country.

I bought a Maine nonresident fishing license and managed to go trolling on Beaver Mountain Pond in drizzle on two occasions. It was my first time sport fishing in years. I caught 8 landlocked Atlantic salmon and one brook trout, none of which were legal minimum length – but lots of fun just the same. Read more…

I began the week in Morgan County, Colorado. Now I am in Farmington, Maine some 2,500 miles to the northeast. I arrived here on Friday afternoon and it has hardly stopped raining ever since. On Saturday the sun came out for 3-4 hours in the afternoon and I got out and hiked through mature mixed forest long enough to pick up the songs and a few sightings of some old friends. I’ll be here two more weeks and hope to get out and do some serious birding if the weather ever breaks.

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