Not Long After All That Snow

It was just a few days ago that we had about 10 inches of snow. Then, as is typical for Colorado soon after a snow storm, yesterday it was in the low 70's and today in the 60's and quite sunny. I went for a lengthy bike ride and even got a bit of a sun burn. Not too bad, though.

I went up Waterton Canyon in hopes of finding some wildlife. I saw very few birds up close but I could see a lot of them near Chatfield Lake. I didn't venture over there to get any pictures. I wanted to explore the Chatfield Pond areas on my way to and from Waterton Canyon. There was not a single water bird in any of the ponds. Maybe the snow of a few days ago encouraged the migratory birds to head farther south.

In Waterton, I saw more Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep that I had ever seen up there before. I saw one group of 16 and another group of 10 for a total of 26 sheep!

Since Waterton is a canyon, the sun does not shine in there for a good part of the daytime so it was a bit chilly up there. Fortunately, today was almost windless. This also made for quiet ponds and in one place behind the diversion dam, the South Platte River was as smooth as glass. This picture turned out nice but it doesn't do it justice. The photo only captures a part of the scene.

Tagged Goose

Here is a tagged Canadian Goose. I found a website to report this sighting. I wonder where this goose has been and who tagged him.

Mallards

Here is a nice couple I spotted in a park in Littleton.

Quiet Chatfield

I left work a bit early today to get in a bike ride before it got dark. Went over to Chatfield with my camera to see if I could catch something interesting on electronic film. I saw lots of water birds but could not get close enough to get a photo or to check their ids. I did see a red tailed hawk fly over me. Neat.

The most interesting wildlife I saw was some deer and one of them is in the photo below. Usually, when I see deer in Chatfield, they are female - without antlers. This one and his nearby buddy (not in the photo) were both sporting some fashionable antlers.



On the way back, these two deer had joined 6 others nearby that I had missed when I first rode through. Some had antlers and some didn't.

I like how they stare right at me when I stop to stare at them.

Chatfield was very quiet. I got there about 5:15 and left about 6:00 this evening. I only saw about 3 other people the whole time. Maybe that's why the deer were so easy to find - there weren't a lot of people to encourage them to hide away.

More Water Birds

Not being content with the lack of battery power for my digital camera yesterday, I recharged it and rode my bike over to Chatfield today for exercise as well as to see if I could photograph a few of the birds we saw yesterday but didn't get pictures of. Here are the results.

First up is a squadron of pelicans.



Next up is this little guy which I think is some sort of grebe. This fellow is quite small - about half the size of a typical duck. It might be a younger version of the next one below.



This next one might be another type of grebe (horned grebe?).



There were also either some Clark's grebes or western grebes in the area as well but they were too far away to get a good picture. I'll try again next time.

A Little Birding

Having bicycled through Chatfield State Park, I know where there are a number of good places to spot birds - especially water birds which I find interesting. Heather and I drove over there today to see what we could find and we found plenty. Unfortunately, the battery on our digital camera pooped out so we couldn't get pictures of the pelicans or the grebes or a number of other birds that we saw.

Cormorants and Canadian geese were plentiful and so were coots and gulls. Also saw mallard ducks and some mergansers. We even saw some shovelers but they were too far out to get a clear picture. Here are some pictures we did take:

Killdeer



Dowitcher



What kind of gull is this? (Ring Billed Gull? Herring Gull?)



What kind of gull is this?

My Third Bike

My third bike was a Schwinn with a banana seat. It wasn't a Stingray, though. I believe the Stingrays were the first Schwinn bikes to have the banana seats and the high handlebars. Later Schwinn came out with a series of similar bikes that were 5 speeds. The tire in the back was about 20" and the one in the front may 12" in diameter. These models had names like Pea Picker, Orange Crate and Apple Crate. Those models were replaced with the bike I eventually got, the name of which I cannot recall. It was similar since it had 5 speeds but the front and back wheels were the same size. It was a blast riding that bike.

It eventually got stolen off the side porch on our house. We kept it there unlocked at night and one day when I went to ride it, it wasn't there. We never found out who stole it.

My father and I spent some time driving around looking for it, though. This was about 1970 and oddly enough, I still remember the serial number – CD11802. Isn’t that bizarre?

One day after swimming at the public pool in Lombard with my friend Kevin, we called my mother to come and get us and had a little time to kill. There was always a zillion bikes at the park so we went to check them out – looking for that serial number. Much to my surprise, we found it! When my mother got there, we told her and the police were called. They showed up and cut the lock off the bike and put it in the trunk of my mother’s car.

Meanwhile, the kid who had the bike had also been swimming in the pool and he came out to get "his" bike while it was being put in the trunk. This was quite traumatic for him and he started bawling.

He was not the one who had stolen the bike, however. It had a sticker on it indicating where he had bought it – a store that is still there (I checked on the internet). Whoever had stolen it had sold it to this store and of course they had no record of who that had been. The bike store that we always patronized kept records of who sold and bought what at their store and we thought this other store was disreputable.

Well, the kid who had the bike ended up getting a brand new bike as a replacement. I wonder who had to pay for that – his parents or that bike store.

I had already replaced my bike with a new one as well so the recovered bike was surplus and I no longer wanted it anyway since the kid who had it had put a "sissy bar" on it. That was a fad at the time to extend the rear seat support up about 3 feet. It was hideous looking. Besides that, it had been beat up somewhat so we got rid of it.

My First Bike

I got my first bicycle when I was in second grade. I remember my father running behind me trying to help me learn how to ride it and get the hang of balancing. I did not have training wheels and it was difficult at first. I think he helped me with it twice. After that, I got determined to ride it myself and did so without any additional help.

It was a second hand bike with 16 or 20 inch wheels. I am pretty sure it had only the one speed or gear.

I rode that bike all over and even had a few adventures with it. One day, I decided to find out where the end of our street was. I already had been as far as I could go to the north so I rode south. Stewart Avenue in Lombard, Illinois goes quite a ways south from the 300 block but it doesn't go directly through. I discovered that there is one spot where you have to go around the block to continue down the street. Eventually, it dumped out on Roosevelt Road which was a very busy 4 lane road and I rode on the shoulder for a ways and found a different way back home. No place for a second grader!

On another occasion, I rode the same bike on the sidewalk down Main Street in Lombard. I came to a place between Maple Street and Parkside Avenue where an alley dumped out onto Main. As I rode by, a car popped out and hit me. I was knocked to the ground. The man who was driving the car jumped out to see if I was hurt and I remember telling him that my little finger hurt but that was it. He told me that I should call him later if I discovered that I wasn't okay after all. I said okay, got on my bike and rode home. I thought later that it would have been difficult for me to call him since I did not know his name nor did he give me his phone number! I wonder if he ever thinks about when he hid the little kid with his car.

These two events happened when I was in second grade when I was 7 years old. I finally told my mother about them 40 years later.

I Like Ducks

Found a beautiful pond yesterday in Littleton, Colorado and here are some pictures of what I saw there. First, an American Wigeon.



Next is this interesting duck. It is a female wood duck.



This duck didn't come very close to the shore. I believe it is an American Coot and if so, I suppose it is not really a duck at all.



These white ducks were extremely vocal - much louder than any of the Canadian Geese they were hanging around with. They were almost as big as the geese, too!