Road Trip 2010: Day 67: Saturday in Colorado Springs (Part 3)

We had dinner at Joyce's house along the Front Range between the Air Force Academy and Monument.

We were not the only guests, two other couples along with Jerry (former husband) and Patti (his sister) were to be on hand. But we were outnumbered by the hummingbirds.








Joyce said that most of the adults that were feeding at her place during the summer have already headed south. What she has now are some of the young of the year and migrants from further north. Most of the hummers are Broad-tails (they look exactly like the Ruby-throated Hummers we have back east) but there were a few Calliopes mixed in. The only way to tell them apart is by the length of the tail: the Calliopes have short tails and their wings, when folded are just a hair longer than their tail. We did see a few but I got no pictures.

Joyce also said that the few Rufus hummingbirds she gets are migrants on their way south. They migrate north along the western side of the Rockies and south along the Front Range. We didn't see any of those on Saturday evening.

The foxes also didn't come in for their dinner but that may have been because of the large number of dinner guests (human) in attendance and the fact that they had gotten fed that morning when they ate like little pigs.

We had an enjoyable evening talking with everyone there.

Then we set up a date for hot air ballooning on Sunday morning at 5:45 AM at Safeway on Colorado Blvd.

With that early start looming ahead, we got back to our trailer and hit the sack.

Bolt Hole Report, January 22, 2010

The clear skies last night allowed the temperature to plummet to 8.6 degrees here at the Bolt Hole. Those same clear skies along with plenty of sunshine saw the thermometer rise to 33.4 degrees this afternoon. We'll have some high wispy clouds tonight so maybe it won't get quite so cold.

I relearned that linen sheets can be pretty damn cold when you first go to bed. They stay that way for a long while too. Sure they warm up right around your body but if you roll over you're going to learn what they mean by "as cold as the other side of the pillow" only in full body contact. It can be shocking. I've got flannel sheets but why bother for just a night or two.

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I took a couple of brief walks out and about this morning and after lunch. Lots of snowshoe hare tracks to be seen along with little mice trails on top of the inch or so of fresh snow that fell late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. Red squirrel tracks were abundant, also. I came across what look like cat tracks--domestic not big cougar type tracks. This must have been a very large cat, however, as they are spaced a little far apart compared to those I've seen made by strays at the Aerie. I thought they might be fox but there are no claws visible and they aren't on the straight line that foxes usually produce. Usually you can pretty much lay a ruler along a fox track to check how straight the ruler is. They could not be made by a fisher cat as there would have been signs of the critters belly rubbing between tracks. (They are low slung fellas.) Besides, they were too straight for a fisher which is also pretty wide slung. Nor were they in the paired format a weasel like critter like the fisher would produce. There was one set of tracks that might have been made by a coyote based upon the spacing but they were beneath the new snow so details weren't available for scrutiny. One set of grouse tracks found their way into the snowmobile trail just east of the cabin. Not one set of deer tracks did I spy, however. I guess they've headed for the open fields or swamps.

Except for a few chickadees, I didn't see one bird while I was out. Come to that, I didn't rile up any red squirrels either.

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Everything around the cabin is in good shape so, unless I want to shovel off some roof snow (nah!) I'm good to head back to the Aerie tomorrow.