Sean Gillies Blog

My reward for braving the blustery weather to run yesterday was seeing 3 Osprey, just arrived from their winter range, fishing at the "ponds" (flooded gravel pits) along the Cache la Poudre River. The birds, or their parents, were introduced to the region in 1989: before the construction of reservoirs there was no habitat for Osprey on the eastern slope of the Front Range.

This Osprey photo was taken by Mike Baird near Los Osos, California. I saw 2 up close on the Mendocino Coast last summer, but wasn't carrying a camera at the time.

Here's the neighborhood vulture roost at sunset, with half of the birds still incoming.

As we did last year, we're regularly one light-colored Buteo soaring with the vultures when they return, and occasionally a second. Ferruginous Hawks, from their markings, and we speculate that they might be using the vulture flock as cover while hunting prairie dogs and jackrabbits. I know I would, in their shoes.

This is P. Strictus, perhaps the most beautiful perennial wildflower of the Mountain West, just beginning to bloom today. We've got several of these around the yard, grown from seed I collected near Granby, CO in 2006. The neighborhood bees are also big fans, and last year inspired our little toddler to yell, "the bees are going in the tunnels"! Indeed. I'm rather pleased at how this shot turned out.

In the background you can see a crimson eruption of P. eatonii, a native of the Colorado Plateau.

In other news, my wonderful gig at UNC is up. I've got a break before my next one starts (continuing Pleiades and getting more into digital humanities), and plan to spend some of it on vacation, some of it in the garden, some of it getting back into home brewing (beer for sure, electronics maybe a little), and some of it on cool Web projects.