Outdoors

May has had its usual fling of one last snowstorm. Fortunately, this year it was just about four inches, not the four feet it brought us a few years ago. Now that it has succeeded in ruining Mother’s Day for a good many people, it seems to be clearing up and the coming week’s forecast looks like we will be having not just spring, but summer weather.

Last week, Loie Evans phoned to tell me there was a Virginia rail at Evergreen Lake. They have been seen and heard at the lake before, but they are not as regularly seen as the sora.
Rails are difficult to see for they live among the reeds and grasses in marshes and seldom come out in the open where you can have a good look at them. They are not particularly shy or afraid of people; they just like to stay in their marsh where they find the food they need.

March has been an interesting month with weather zig-zagging between record highs, record lows, exceptional spring-like weather along with exceptional drought with which came a serious forest fire near Conifer. All of this brought a great deal of uncertainty.
April has already greeted us with a rain and a snowstorm, and we can’t help but wonder what else it will bring before the month is up. April has a reputation of being unable to make up its mind as to whether she will spring or put on her parka and dive back into winter.

What a remarkable day this has been. It is only March, but the temperature soared to 72 degrees in Denver, and it feels like spring.
The sky is mostly blue, and the willows along Bear Creek area dressed in their brilliant spring orange-yellow. The buds of the narrow-leaf cottonwood are swelling. The sticky bud scales are giving color to the otherwise bare crown. As the buds swell, the crown appears to start to fill in or thicken even though there is not yet a true leaf in sight.