Outdoors

Have you been miserable the past two weeks? If you are allergic to pine pollen, you probably have been most uncomfortable for this has been a very heavy pollen year.

We have jokingly called it the “yellow peril.”

The warm, dry weather produced an abundant crop of pollen, which blew around until we finally had two rainstorms in our area that washed most of it down to the ground where it seems to stay.

There have been several reports of white pelicans this spring, most on the reservoirs east of Denver and even a small flock on Evergreen Lake for part of one morning.

White pelicans are regular migrants through the area and nesting summer residents on the prairie reservoirs in eastern and northeastern Colorado. White pelicans can be seen in both spring and fall at Barr Lake and other reservoirs. They nest at Riverside Reservoir and on prairie lakes northward into the prairie provinces of Canada.

While out on the patio today, I was constantly serenaded by the boisterous song of a house wren.

Later I noticed it was constantly busy carrying great mouthfuls of some stick-like material into a nest box. It is a strange nest box that a friend made some years ago and brought to me to try it out. It is supposed to attract swallows because the entrance hole is in the bottom of the box, but from the day I put it up, it has been used by house wrens every year.

The snow falls in big fat globs of collected flakes. Wet and sticky, it is collecting rapidly on trees, shrubs and what few perennial herbaceous plants have had the nerve to put forth new shoots already.

It is May, and one would expect to see May flowers blooming, but alas, they are not. At least they are not blooming in any numbers. This is our seventh month of winter, and I am not happy to see more snow falling. However, such weather is expected in springtime Colorado where cold arctic air bumps into warm Gulf Coast air fairly regularly.