Archive for the Nature Category

Female Cottonwood Tree – The little green balls in this photo are parts of a female cottonwood tree.  Surprised?  Cottonwood trees are either boys or girls. These round growths are called catkins.  The catkin is a group of small flowers arranged around a stem in the center,

Praying Mantis Egg Sack – Praying Mantis mating usually happens during the fall.  After the female has her eggs fertilized by a male she lays between 10 to 400 of them.  The eggs are laid in frothy pile on a secure structure like a tree or a

Great Horned Owl – An owl with horns, that is about as cool as it gets.  Except that they aren’t horns, of course, just tufts of feathers.  But the whole package of huge predatory bird and large yellow eyes and ‘horns’ makes for a great animal.  Their

Wildfire – Wildfire is a constant fear in ranch country.  Many times it is started by accident, like a cigarette butt thrown out the window of a car.  The huge grass fires that you hear about on the news are generally accidental.  They can burn through thousands

Bird Dog in Snow – This is Huck.  He is a yellow Labrador Retriever, named after the book Huckleberry Finn.  We go quail and dove and pheasant hunting in the fall and winter.  He loves it.  He is just a pet most of the year, but when he

Ice Storms – Ice Storms shut everything down.  Roads and black-outs are the biggest fear.  Some roads become impossible to drive on and electric lines and poles break from the ice load they accumulate.  Sometimes you can’t open gates or doors because they are completely iced over.