Yellowstone flowers

Here a few of the beautiful flowers of the Yellowstone trip. I think these are their names. I am very weak on flora names even though I am attracted to beautiful flowers.

Buttercup ??

Bracted Lousewort ??

Richardson's Geranium

Buckwheat??

Harebells

Rosy Pussytoes

Shining Penstemon

Prairie Smoke

Lewis' Monkey-flower

Indian Paintbrush

A Thimble berry blossom with a beetle enjoying it.

Osprey #1

I need to catch up on my blogs for this week. I have spent over six hours observing several osprey nests and their behavior. In the future I will write detailed article about ospreys, but for right now I will write about yesterdays observations of a nest I have been watching a photographing all year.

A week ago there were two chicks in the nest and now there is only one. It appears that three adults have joined forces to take care of this nest. A month ago I observed three adults building and maintaining the nest on the Henrys Fork of the Snake River near Ashton.

As I watched the nest, the female started calling and making a heck of a racket. Soon I saw two other osprey show up circling above the nest. They were beautiful to watch but then they too became very vocal.

Then I saw four cormorants flying up the river toward the nest. Even though cormorants are fish eaters, I have seen them eat ducklings and destroy nests of birds nesting near the water.

As the cormorants got closer, the two osprey circling the nest would take turns dive bombing them with one of the ospreys always staying between the cormorants and the nest. The female osprey stayed in the nest while the other two seemed to be protecting the nest from the cormorants.

The cormorants circled higher and higher with the osprey circling below them. Finally the four cormorants broke up with the osprey is hot pursuit of them.

What a show. I do not know if the cormorants posed any danger to the osprey nest, but it sure appeared to. After the cormorants left, the two osprey went back to searching for food on the Henrys Fork and I did not stay long enough to see if they brought food to the nest. I was late for work I had to get done.

There is just too much to observe and enjoy out there in the Wilds of Idaho and the rest of the world.

Tree swallows and woman's work

After fishing on Tuesday, July 21, I stopped to watch some Tree swallows as they worked their family responsibilities. Two hungry mouths kept polking out of the opening in the nest box as the young swallows wanted food and quickly.

Both parents were very busy bringing food for the hungry youngsters. Here one parent brings in two damsel flies for the young. Then that parent goes inside and stays there for some time while the other parent makes two trip to capture food and bring it back to the young demanding twerps.

Finally the parent emerges from the nest box with a mouth full of poop from the babies. I always wondered what happened to all the crap those babies manufacture from all the food they consume!!!!!! The answer is that they also have to have their disposals changed from time to time. What a nasty job!

After I get my wood loaded, I usually stop by the Henrys Fork at Macks Inn to eat, drink, relax and observe the families floating down the shallow water from Big Springs to Macks Inn.

This was a funny one to me - a woman's work is never done even on vacation. Here two women tow their partners down the river while the men lay back and relax. I hope they didn't have to do it all the way and there was a change of horses in mid stream.

Here two families float side by side down the river. They were having a great time splashing each other as the float neared the concusion.

Wood gathering and fishing

This morning I drove to Henrys Lake to do some fishing and found it very slow until about 10 when I found a pocket of fish just north of Duck Creek in 11 feet of water. The fish there made the trip worthwhile and as always, or almost always, I got a load of wood for heating next winter.

They say when you burn wood for heat it warms you twice - once when you get it and once when it burns. I disagree. Sawing and loading firewood does not warm you - it boils you over. You have to put on mosquito repellent twice or three times, because your cooling system washes it off.

On the way out of the woods, I stopped to take a picture of the load and there stood a doe Mule deer with a fawn. The doe stood motionless for several minutes and as soon as I moved to try to get a better picture of the fawn, they high-tailed it.

All while I was cutting wood, this Red (pine) squirrel chewed me out. I was hoping he would chew some wood for me to load.

A great day with a few added blessings. One of those blessing was that I missed a skunk that ran across the road in front of me at 4 a.m. while I was headed to Henrys Lake. Awesome.