Looking east with the sun at our backs.
Treated to that golden glow and a beautiful moon.
The sun is setting far too soon as November makes its way.
Tag: ecosystem
Leaves and Lake
Golden fall colors reflecting upon a very calm lake. Silence is golden.
Mormon Cricket: Anabrus simplex
The Mormon cricket is actually not a true cricket, but rather a shield-backed katydid. The common name derives from an invasion of the crops of Mormon settlers in the Salt Lake area in the mid-1800s.
We ran across plenty of these katydids on a recent hike although not in the numbers depicted in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy3dQJYquoY. While these insects can be quite destructive to crops they do eat the grasses and plants in natural rangelands much as large grazing mammals do (or did). I also find them quite interning to look at as each has subtle color variations.
Given these were not marching across our hiking trail in plague proportions I enjoyed seeing them on a late fall afternoon moving through the already dry grasses.
Green legs and all
An American Bittern forages for an afternoon meal along the edge of the water where the colors of bird and marsh meld into one. Even the Bittern’s funky yellow-green legs seem to mirror the changing fall colors of the cattails along the ponds edge. Camouflage is a wonderful thing.
Sniffing Snowberries
A young Black Bear using their extraordinary sense of smell takes some time stop and sniff the berries. Snowberries to be exact. He decided to pass but snowberries are an important food source for many birds in winter. Snowberries are also but considered poisonous to humans.
Green Tailed Towhee: Pipilo chlorurus
We had not seen a Green Tailed Towhee all summer so it was quite a pleasure to see one of these secretive birds in the distance a week or two ago.
Along the wash
Cottonwood trees, canyon walls and a fine blue sky. Life finds a way where water flows.
Inherent
Beauty and geology were both inherent and walked hand in hand across the landscape on a fine fall day.
So far from home
So close yet so fat from home a Sand Dollar washed up on the beach as the tide goes down. I can empathize with this guy as the west becomes more developed and the human heard marches across that landscape. Home feels so close yet so far away.
Tansitions
Sometimes abrupt and sometimes gradual, change is something we can count on, and it sure is good to have something we can count on.
nature has no boss 
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