Rim Country Land Blog

Two walks this week. On Wednesday the sky was blue and the snow sparkling, tracks everywhere. At the bottom of a gully I spotted dark patches in the snow which turned out to be clumps of long, dark, coarse hair, 6-9″ long. I dug in the snow and found more long hair at different depths and also a few bunches of shorter, softer, 1.5″ long. The canyon was narrow and rocky and there were no deer tracks nearby but plenty of coyote tracks, so my guess is that a coyote dragged a piece of deer here for a meal, eating it while it was snowing and enough days ago that the snow had time to transform a bit.

The sumac bushes were also just beginning to bud, terminal growth on the ends of branches that otherwise are bare. An encouraging sign of growth in the middle of winter.

Continuing on the coyote theme, I decided to follow a set of tracks just to see where this particular canine had gone. It struck me how similar the trail was to a meandering stream, complete with oxbows and waterfalls and eddies. Perhaps there was a destination in mind, but clearly this animal was more concerned with what was happening at the moment than about getting somewhere else. I tried to keep track of where the animal stopped, sped up, or turned around, following the action and for a while sharing the trail, in a way, with another.

I turned off of the coyote trail to check out a favorite canyon, one where a pond has collected to sustain cattails and water skippers even in the dry seasons. Lots of small mammal tracks here, so I decided to put my reference book to use and test myself on identification. I spent about ten minutes taking measurements, making sketches, looking for scat and nests, and generally absorbing myself in the research. I’m pretty sure this was a deer mouse–the measurements were correct and there was significant tail drag–or at least that was the closest thing it resembled in the book. Pleased with my observational skills, I stood up and stretched and was immediately startled by a an owl taking off from a tree about 20 feet away. Had it been there the whole time, tracking me? I had just walked under that tree ten minutes before. So much for observational skills. I’m almost certain this was a short-eared owl. Certainly not a great horned but I didn’t see any ear tufts, so probably not a long-eared owl, either. And last year in this same spot there were two short-eared owls, I hope with a nest. So I’ll keep an eye on the area (though not too often, don’t want to chase them away). Exciting developments!

The last adventure of the day was complements of a herd of pronghorn. I crested a hill and spotted about twenty of them grazing. They either didn’t see me or were not concerned and let me get as close as I ever have to a pronghorn. When they finally spooked, they flew over the snow just like a flock of birds–more starlings or blackbirds than geese–moving as a group and floating back and forth, sometimes turning a complete 180, and often changing their speed. Only stopped at a fence, they took turns ducking under the barbed wire and then continued running. What a beautiful sight, especially with the sparkly snow as a background.

Later in the week there was a full-moon hike, during which we talked about the subnivean world of rodents and determined the age of the tracks we came across. There were two packs of coyotes that yipped and howled just after the moon rose. Even a few owls were heard. And of course the moon was beautiful (photo below by Carolyn Jones).

An active week, the prairie enjoying the almost constant snowcover of this winter. Note: more photos at our facebook fan page, just search for “Rim Country.”

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Two muddy hikes in the last week were a reminder of the unpredictable nature of the prairie in winter. The warmer days did give a few days respite to otherwise dormant prairie dogs. Puddles of water and sunshine also created friendly microclimates for moss growth, which made for a bit of green on the rocks, and for shoots of cheat grass, especially where protected by dead mats of mustard and cheat grass from last year. The fringed-leaf sagewort were also sending up new leaves, as well. We spotted lots of deer and elk scat and a few magpies and crows. A flock of pinyon jays was hopping around on the rocks, presumably searching for insects (of which I saw two shiny black wasp-looking flyers). A drumming sound led me to a tree expecting to see a woodpecker, but instead a chickadee was pecking into the bark. Otherwise, though, the prairie was quiet. I did spend a lot of time looking at the dried stalks of grasses and flowers, reminded of the biodiversity of the summertime by the number of different shapes and sizes of leftover “post-mature” plants. As many of those plants spend a much shorter time in green and flowering stages than they do in this dried form, a guide to identifying them as they are in winter would be quite useful.

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Like a woodcut picture, the prairie fills in its color with hash marks, individual stalks of yellow that suggest a particular shade of landscape. More snow means fewer stalks are visible, so the whole scene lightens. But until you look at the larger trees or the depth of sharp deer tracks, the actual depth of the snow must only be inferred by the color of the landscape.

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See photos from this hike on facebook. Our page is “Rim Country Land Institute”. Check it out and become a fan.

Snow has a way of completely changing the landscape. Like a time-lapse photograph, it captures movement and tells a story. Instead of a just a snapshot of our own temporal field of view, we are able to see movement and change and the activities of a length of time all at once. On a walk in the snow this Wednesday, there were hundreds of trails from deer, elk, bobcat, coyote, small rodents, and turkeys (though no prairie dogs!). It was neat to see where the paths were separate and where they came together and in what direction they were going. In a few places there were more than tracks; one sumac bush showed clear signs of deer rubbing and a few horizontal teeth marks on an interior branch.

At a ridge about 2/3 of the way up a canyon, three different species of winter birds were congregating–hairy woodpecker, pinyon jay, and robin. I was struck again at how well the robin blended into the colors of the burned forest. We got to watch one of the pinyon jays working at a pine cone, prying out the seeds.

Some of the dust from the prairie dog town had blown onto the snow drifts, mixing with the snow and making it much harder than the surrounding snow. Because dirty snow absorbs more heat and melts faster than ‘clean’ snow, it seems that this snow had undergone more of the melt-and-refreeze process and so was more ‘transformed’ than the still-fluffy clean snow.

I have to admit I was unprepared and didn’t take any measurements or make casts of any of the tracks, so especially those of the rodents remain unidentified. I’ll have to take a kit next time.

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The full moon hike last night was cold, but beautiful. New snow really made the colors of everything stand out. The orange needles and burned bark, the golden dried grasses, a bright green juniper in the dog town I had never noticed, and a single stem of annual wild buckwheat with tiny dried rust-colored flowers. The colors were all there before, of course, but with a new white background they are pretty dramatic. The prairie dog town was covered in snow but, unlike every other time, there were no prairie dog tracks. At all. The quick drop in temperatures must have driven them underground all day, starting to eat into their stored supplies for the first time.

The thin layer of snow on un-frozen ground was in some places really fuzzy-looking, like a fine white shag carpet. Not sure why that happens, so if anyone knows they should comment here. There’s a photo, but I’m not sure it gets the texture across.

And, of course, the moon was out and brilliant. I tried to get a photo framed by the burned trees but couldn’t quite get the focus. Against the rims, though, it was a great view. Here’s the un-edited version.

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Two visits to the land this week. On both the air was absolutely still, rare for even one day on the prairie. We spotted elk tracks and scat around and North of some cattail-filled puddles. The puddles themselves were much muddier than they were all summer, perhaps because of the increased amount of debris left from the fire? There was also a splattering of mourning dove feathers on a hillside, a meal for a hawk, most likely. A pair of small-ish mountain lion tracks were in the dirt around one of the North canyons, as well. Most of the leaves are off of the sumac bushes. New shoots of cheatgrass are sprouting below the dried grass stalks, though, and some of the burned areas (especially where the dirt is very compacted) are covered in new green mullein rosettes. This morning the cold moved in, so we’ll see what changes that will bring in the next few days.

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A walk under the full moon on a calm, warm evening–it doesn’t get much better than that. At least two great horned owls were out, and the coyotes were singing to the South (one of them made a loop-de-loop sort of sound). There’s evidence of badgers back at the prairie dog town on the East end. And we got to experience the dramatic changes in air and humidity that are unique to dry open climates. At the slough above an opening to one of the side canyons, the air was immediately cooler and more humid, returning to warm and dry at the top of the slope. A ‘pocket’ of air is really a great description, and sometimes walking up and down the hills in the evening is as dramatic as stepping through the door of an air-conditioned or heated room, though of course here the only ‘door’ is one we can’t see. Photo by Paul Miller, one of our participants.

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I first noticed this spider burrow near the gate a few weeks ago and caught a few images of light reflected off the eyes. Yesterday the spider was in full view, basking in the sunlight. By the time I got my camera it had retreated a bit, but I still got a few good pictures. I think those are spiderlings on its back, note the deflated egg sac near the entrance to the burrow. A fun find so close to halloween.

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I wish I could capture the smell of the sagebrush in fall and send it through the internet. After all of the other late-season blooms have faded and the grasses are mostly just straw, sagebrushes are just getting started. In September and October, thousands of little yellow flowers dust the grey-green prairie with a gold tinge and the air with their distinct smell. Add the rain and snow that often shows up around this time, and the whole smell and sight of the landscape is clearly dominated by Artemesia, especially the big sage and silver sage, each plant pollinated by the wind and producing millions of tiny seeds.

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Walks and wanderings in the last two months have seen the prairie go from green to tan to golden. Late summer flowers have bloomed and are now mostly gone and the leaves of sumac and chokecherry are turning to their autumn colors. At the beginning of August we watched the abundant grasshoppers of this year take advantage of the also abundant foliage. One grasshopper in particular we were able to catch at the beginning of its molting process. Our group stood for about twenty minutes watching the grasshopper shed its old skeleton and dry out in the sun. The old skeleton was so thin and clear. Later we found the shed remnants of another molting and looked closely at the delicate shell, even to the tiniest spurs on the legs of its former owner. The deer and turkeys are still around, and the migrating birds of late summer are flying overhead and stopping to rest.

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