Firsts, Cats, Close to Lasts

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First bloom purple crocus.
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First bloom yellow crocus.
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Mama owl sitting on her eggs.
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We should start seeing owlets in a couple of months.
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The not quite full moon had an interesting color just before sunset.
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Marble being silly.
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Spunk being handsome.
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Sasha being beautiful.
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Cottonwood in the bosque basking in the late afternoon sun.
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Maybe the last of the cranes.
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¡Hasta la vista!

Porcupine Promenade

We got out late last night for a walk under the stars after putting up our third sack of green chiles, making power bars, and doing various other chores that took up all of our daylight hours. A few hundred feet before the bridge that we use to cross the clearwater ditch, I saw what looked like a weed moving ahead of us. I shined my flashlight on it, and, as I suspected, it was Porky, a very large porcupine, waddling along on its way to cross the bridge ahead of us. I pulled out my phone to see if I could get a video, but by the time I got the phone convinced to take a video in the dark, Porky had crossed the bridged and headed down into the cottonwoods between the clearwater ditch and the irrigation ditch. I managed to get a short, 15 second video of Porky waddling into the undergrowth by a large cottonwood.  I assembled and arranged a short piece of music for Porky’s promenade.

The photos below are an assortment of critters and fall colors.

Clouded Colors

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The echinaceas are attracting the various colors of clouded sulfur butterflies: green, orange, yellow.

Green Clouded Sulfur (Colias philodice)

I was able to get the orange sulfur (Colias eurytheme), also known as the “alfalfa butterfly”, above with it’s wings open as it landed on an enchinacea. Clouded Sulfurs rarely open their wings to a flattened position when they are perched. The solid black around the edges of the wings indicate that this one is a male (females have dots on the black edges).

Backlit orange.

A male Orange fluttering around an unfazed female Green (the green has spots on the black edges of her wings).

Yellow Sulfer (Colias croceus).