Tag Archives: march

Spring Portraits

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2016-03-28SpringPortraits2183

March is “When The Bluebirds Get Here” month. So is February. And sometimes April if the weather has been particularly bad, but this year the month is March.

In the past we had to rely on natural migration schedules to get our quotas of Western Bluebirds. They can be in short supply due to their being the most popular of the bluebird species, and they have often been coerced into going to other states by handouts of Bluebird chow, favorable nesting sites and one state who shall remain nameless but their initials are Utah, tried to make it their state bird, thereby gathering some legal advantage of some sort. In the past we have had to offer some of our sister states to the West a premium of two Stellar Jays and a Clark’s Nutcracker to get one Western Bluebird.

As you know The institute has its own Ornithology department with trained and highly intelligent bird guys (and girls) studying birds, bird books, bird seed, bird brains, and lately bird genetics. That’s the big one. That’s the one that is going to put us on the map bird-wise. Genetics is the new thing. It’s like plastic was in the 60’s. Huge.

They found that they can yank the DNA right out of a bird, futz around with it, and stuff it back in and make big changes to how a bird works. Our problem had been that bluebirds don’t like the cold so as soon as the temp drops much below 60 degrees they haul their little feathered keesters south for the winter. That’s the problem. While they’re down there they can be swayed by any one of those unscrupulous Orno guys from other states and we lose our stock of bluebirds.

The problem was birds head south, then we lose them. Solution, and this is where genius comes into play, is we took that bluebird DNA and added a whole bunch of genetic stuff to it before we repacked it back into the bluebirds. For instance we added the anti-freeze gene to it so now our bluebirds are good down to about -126 degrees, we added a fixed route from anywhere South directly to The Institutes front door to their GPS gene, we added the Horsepucky detector gene so that they can tell when they’re being conned by those guys from Utah, and lastly we added an extra amount of Bluebird blue to their blue color gene so we now have the brightest Western bluebirds in the northern hemisphere.

Their was one more big change we are experimenting with and this is the first spring to see how our experiment worked out. We added an extra gene to the Anti-freeze gene to make a small number of bluebirds hibernational. Hibernational is a term we just made up here in our Ornithology department that means these particular bluebirds can lower their body temperatures down to the approximate temperature of one of those Big Gulp Slurpee’s you get at 7-11 and then be buried in neat rows in the snow over the winter to be ready to emerge at the first sign of Spring.

When the snow melts as it does every spring the snow bound bluebirds slowly awaken as they respond to the sun’s rays on their little beaks, and they pop up through the snow like Pasque flowers and start hanging around, getting an early start on Spring. It gives them at least a two-week head start on those Utah bluebirds so they are already hooked up with a bluebird chick, found a good nesting box, etc. and our supply of Western Bluebirds is guaranteed. Their GPS gene tells them they’re already here so they don’t take off and go cruising somewhere else so we got them locked. Our own inbred species of Western Bluebirds. Neat Right? Science is really cool.

We are photographing each of our newly altered bluebirds and tattooing an ID number on the underside of their tongues so that we can better keep track of them. Here is the first reconstituted Western Bluebird to emerge from its snow bunker. He seems in fine shape. We’ll let you know how he does in the reproduction department as the data come in. So far it looks great.

This Is Not Your Grandmother’s Sand

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You know how you’re sometimes paging through a magazine or looking at pictures on the net and you come across one that stops you in your tracks and you say “Ok, Now that’s pretty neat.” Well that’s the kind of views you get when you look around Great Sand Dunes National Park, especially at sunset.  That’s when you get that great light coming out of the west. The kind that turns the sand into molten gold and the mountains into an icy blue backdrop.

 This is not your grandmother’s sand. This isn’t litter box grey or the blinding white you get at your favorite beach. There are millions of colors trapped in these grains of sand just waiting for the light to release them, and release them it does. It just takes the right angle, the right intensity, the right time, and you to be there to witness them.

This was taken at the end of March at about 6 P.M. and although it was cold, as you can see by the snow still tucked in the valley there in the mountains, the light was fantastic. Because it was early Spring and fragments of Winter were still hanging on, there weren’t many people around to walk the dunes and leave their tracks across the unblemished faces of sand. Even if there had been the wind would have soon have re-sculpted the dunes faces, scouring them clean, erasing all signs that anyone had walked there. Tracks don’t last long on the dunes. This is not a place to permanently leave your mark. This is a place to view and etch the scene permanently into your memory or record it with your camera, or better yet both.

The Great Sand Dunes is a place where you can experience solitude, feel what it’s like to be out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the towering dunes, the blue mountains behind them, the wind blowing by. To see the last of the sunlight making the dunes fire up in all their blazing glory, a place where you can experience Nature at her best.  If you’re out here wandering around the Southwest stop by the Great Sand Dunes and be prepared  to be amazed.

Hey! What’s The Holdup?

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We just received an urgent message from one of our summer residents regarding the weather up here on The Institute’s grounds. Normally our summer people, in this case the Bluebirds, begin arriving at the end of February, first of March and find themselves up to their tail feathers in snow and cold. This winter however has been different with milder temperatures and almost no snow.

Apparently what is making the bluebirds itchy is the fact that now that satellite TV is so prevalent, even down in central Mexico where these guys winter over, they can watch the Weather Channel and figure out when they should start back. The Eastern bluebirds don’t have a problem. They watch the east coast getting dumped on and they go “No way, Jose. I’m good right here for another month.” They have no problem hanging out down here catching rays and eating Maguey worms until things break up North.

Our Mountain Bluebirds are of hardier stock and they’re tired of the good life down there in mañana land and they know how tough it is to get reservations in the better places. Their wives are reminding them everyday that egg time is getting nearer and if they want that good nesting box down by the pond where all the bugs are they better get their feathery little butts in gear and get this show on the road. Hence the cryptic message “Hey! What’s the Holdup? You guys ready, or what?”.

Well our response was “Hey yourself! We’re not in charge of Spring, buddy, if I was you I’d be gone already.” There is no holdup weather-wise as far as the Institute is concerned so we sent word down, the gates are open, and if you want that nesting box by the pond you better have your deposit here by the end of the week or we turn it over to our timeshare people and they’ll put it out there for bids. This is a cutthroat business. There are a flock of a lot of bluebirds out there and only so many nesting boxes so this is one of our critical times to maintain our cash flow. The Institute as you know is a non-profit endeavor but we do have expenses and if we don’t make our bottom line, people go home, you know what I mean? We love our little feathered friends but if they don’t pony up you’ll find them walking down the road dragging their little egg sack behind them.

Now that the word has spread that the weather’s ok, and we’re open for business, the deposits are pouring in and we expect to see out little blue buddies in a week or so. The only problem we have is the squatters that have hung around all winter, I don’t know where, someplace warm and out of the wind I guess. They sneak in the first warm day regardless of the date and set up housekeeping in our dryer vent way up high on The Institute’s wall where you can’t get at them. Last year we hired a team of Barn Swallows to evict them and that solved the problem. We lost about a week and a half’s rent but it could have been worse. The Barn Swallows made up for it, they pack about 30 of them in that space and as we charge by the head we came out ok.

Below is a shot of the offender that now hangs on our undesirable board. He has been put on the very bottom of the list for the next 11 years and since bluebirds tend to only live around 9 years he’ll be setting up housekeeping down by the landfill for the foreseeable future. The words’ out pretty good now “No Line Jumping!”

Squatter2218

Now onto the next big problem, where to put all those Barn Swallows.

Shadow on the Mitten

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There is a special event that happens just twice a year in one of the most spectacular places on earth. That place is Monument Valley located on the border of Utah and Arizona and watched over by the Navajo people. Towards the end of March and the end of September the sun sets at just the right spot on the horizon to cause the shadow of the Mitten on the left to be cast upon the center of the mitten on the right. If you are particularly lucky, and who isn’t, there won’t be a cloud in the sky and the full spectrum of colors will display. As you head into sunset the colors shift into the reds and get deeper and richer until you think it can’t get any more beautiful. You get a sense of how quickly the sun drops down behind the ridges to the west and how short the sunset is as suddenly the scene goes from being brilliantly lit to deepening into the dark of early evening. It would not be unreasonable at this time to demand that the sunset last for at least an hour or so. The colors which were so intense moments before morph into deep shadows and the show is over for the night.

 This process of the shadow being cast starts several days before the finale and last for several days after but is different from the centering because the shadow doesn’t line up on the center of the right mitten until the one day in the middle when all of the conditions are perfect. What makes it imperfect, if that is even possible in this place, is the shadow drifts off to either side of the right mitten and is only partially formed depending on whether you’re at the beginning of the cycle or the end. If you happen to miss the centering don’t feel bad, just being in this truly incredible place will be one of your greatest experiences.