Saw two “new-to-me” moth species tonight under the back porch light. Lacinipolia renigera: a bristly cutworm moth, of the family Noctuidae ~ and Cyclophora nanaria: a dwarf tawny wave, of the family Geometridae.
After hearing the first of frogs this year a couple of days ago, last night 3 owls flew across the road in front of me and today we have new crawdad castles popping up in the yard. The critters say that spring is just around the corner.
Insects appeared en masse on the highways of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky on April 6th and last evening (the 7th) I saw a frog crossing the road. It’s good to see flowering trees everywhere and to occasionally feel the sunlight’s warmth on your skin. Summer is peeking out from under its covers.
Yesterday I found a cicada nymph emerging from the dirt in our neighborhood. It is one of the large mountain cicadas that we get here in Greeley every year. We have had many cicadas singing in the trees for weeks now, and a giant cicada killer wasp digging burrows in the neighbors' rocks for several days, so this one seems to be a late riser. I see adults and the exoskeletons of nymphs more often than I actually see a living nymph, so it was cool to see this one. These are definitely larger than the ones that I grew up with in Yuma, Arizona. I placed this one on a tree in the front yard and found the shell on the ground beneath it this morning. Nature is cool!
Codebreaker is another of many recent documentaries about Alan Turing. It covers the many noteworth points of his
fascinating life that we've all seen in the previous productions of late, and a bit more. One new aspect of his studies brought to
light and covered in some detail by this presentation is Turing's work
in the area of biomorphology. Turing was interested in why the particular number of petals on a given flower often corresponded to Fibonacci numbers, and how individual cells in an organism "know" what kind of cells to become in a fully formed organism.
"Morphogenesis," of particular interest to Turing, describes how shapes and patterns emerge in living organisms as they
develop. Turing was the first to try to develop a mathematical
explanation for how stripes and spotted patterns form in nature. His pioneering work in the 1950's showed that chemical processes, following
simple mathematical rules, could spontaneously create striped and
spotted patterns such as those we observe in nature. Turing's scientific paper, "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis," described the process by which spots on
cows are formed.
I found the scenes in which the actor portraying Turing
speaks with his psychiatrist about his life and his feelings to be a bit contrived, but
not a major distraction. Those scenes still managed to convey something of the character of the man that may have been difficult to present in any other way. Overall production was extremely informative and entertaining. I give it 4 stars out of 5, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone with even a cursory interest in the life of Alan Turing.
Today as I was walking along the Spring Creek Trail near the Fischer
Natural Area in Fort Collins, when I spotted a flicker pecking on a tree
and hopping in and out of a hollow that it seemed to have claimed for
itself.
A woman that I met along the way asked about what I was taking pics of, and then asked if I had ever seen the
screech owl that lives on Spring Creek Trail. I told her that I had
not, and she proceeded to give me instructions on how to find this owl,
which she called Penelope.
Above is a short video of the owl in the tree.
The first time that I headed over to her
tree, she was nowhere to be seen, but a few minutes later I was still in
the area and I heard a walker asking her partner if she could see the
owl. I headed back over, and there she was.
*
This is what the owl's tree looks like from Spring Creek Trail.
The flowering trees in Fort Collins are bursting out, abloom with white
and pink: petals everywhere. Over the last couple of days the petals
have begun to drop, creating petal puddles in every nook and crack along
the sidewalks and in the streets. Today my wife
and I went for a short bike-ride (shortened because we decided it was
too windy and would be a better day for a hike on Spring Creek Trail).
On our way back through the neighborhood, we witnessed a new sight, a
"petal-devil" rose up from the street like steam, filled with softly
tumbling white petals, spiraling up and out of sight above the trees.
We saw marmots and pikas on our drive through Rocky Mountain National Park on July 12th, 2014. These photos were taken near the Rock Cut turnout, which is at an elevation of 12,090 feet. Rock Cut is the only area in RMNP where blasting was necessary to build the road. The views from that area are absolutely stunning. We saw several marmots and a few pikas. One marmot in particular was bullying the nearby pikas, waddling over to commandeer whatever rock they were sitting on at the time.
A marmot in the flowers.
Photogenic marmot.
Video of a marmot posing.
Marmot wedged in the rocks.
What a view this marmot has!
Pika on a rock.
If I didn't know better, I'd name it the Colorado Rocky Mt. Chinchilla.
Marmot and pika in the pic above.
Video of pika and marmot.
Flowers, Clouds, Trees, Marmot, View.
Marmots running away from the camera...
***
FYI: Just a few minutes before these pictures
were taken, several people were injured, and one man was killed by a
lightning strike at the Rainbow Curve, which is just a short distance from the Rock Cut turnout. We were (naively) oblivious to the extreme
lightning danger at this altitude. Being above the tree-line in CO
during the month of July
after noon is one of the worst possible place/month/time combos, as far as the
risk of being struck is concerned. If you're going to be
that high in the summer - it's safer to plan your adventure before noon, when
the risk of lightning is lower. Don't become a statistic. In the
future, we'll either go before noon, or stay in the car on cloudy days,
after noon, above the treeline.
We hiked the Lower Monument Canyon Trail on June 14th, 2014. We saw 2 groups of bighorn sheep (pics and video below). The first group had about 14 individuals. The second group had at least 10.
The sign at the trail-head.
Petroglyphs on the trail hint at what is to come.
*
View of Independence Monument from the trail.
Looking back towards Grand Junction.
Mt. Garfield and Grand Mesa are in the background.
There are people on the trail near the middle of this photo.
To give an idea of scale, now we're closer in.
Look for the people on the trail in the lower right hand corner.
And closer still. Now those folks are on the bottom left.
A second group is walking in a line near the center higher up.
Closer still.
Bottom right corner again. Mt. Garfield in the distance.
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