Bees

By Tina Mitchell Enjoy cantaloupe or watermelon? The crunch of a crisp apple? That avocado in your guacamole? You might want to thank a bee. Super-pollinators of the flowering world, Colorado’s bees emerge, starting in April, from their hives or their nests underground, in hollow stems, or in tree cavities. More than 20,000 species of …

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Scorpions

By Tina Mitchell

The dog stood still as a statue, nose to the floor. Maybe he was watching an insect. But usually he’d just check it out and move on or else snarf it down. This behavior was different. Curious, I walked over. Uh, oh – the boy had zeroed in on a scorpion. A first for us both. But over our 15 years in that house, we found a number of scorpions inside, especially in the winter. We eventually realized that most arrived on the firewood we stacked near the woodstove. When we moved the stack to the garage, the number of winter-visiting scorpions dropped.

Scorpions fall in the class Arachnida, making them distant cousins of spiders. Some people think that arachnids are insects – not so. Insects have six legs and three body segments (head, thorax, abdomen) while arachnids have eight legs and two body segments (cephalothorax – a combined head and thorax – and abdomen). Three species of scorpions call Colorado home; the most common one in central Colorado is the striped bark scorpion (Centruroides vittatus). In fact, the striped bark scorpion is the most common species in the U.S. It grows to 2.75 inches long, with two dark stripes down the length of its back. A scorpion has an elongated abdomen that ends with its signature stinger, often curled over its back. Its enlarged appendage-like pedipalps on the cephalothorax form claws for grasping prey. Also on the cephalothorax is a pair of simple eyes at the midline and 2–5 pairs along each side. Its light tan or yellow color suits its environment well, providing natural camouflage from both prey and predators. C. vittatus has a very dynamic diet, including fast-moving insects and smaller arachnids. In turn, it finds itself on the menus of birds, reptiles, some mammals, and even larger arachnids. 

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December Sunlight

THE NATURAL WORLD

By Tina Mitchell

The sun rises later every morning. Night falls earlier each day. You walk the dog before work in pitch black, hoping that the local coyotes aren’t prowling the darkness a few feet behind you. After work, what’s left of the daylight fades fast and you do outdoor tasks in twilight. You stare into the seemingly interminable darkness, morosely remembering the long, lazy, languid evenings of summer. Is that what’s troublin’ ya, friend?

The approaching winter solstice, this year on Dec. 21, brings the shortest day of the year because it features the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset. Right? Well, actually – no. After the winter solstice, total daylight does increase a minute or two every few days. But those of us who mourn the waning sunlight can look to an earlier milepost. In early December – this year, around December 2 in Central Colorado – we’ll experience the earliest sunset of the year. On that date, sunset holds around 4:43 p.m. for almost two weeks; after that, it inches back a minute later every few days. 

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The Natural World – WIld Turkeys

By Tina Mitchell

Okay, I’ll show my age. Anyone else remember the 1980s situation comedy WKRP in Cincinnati? One episode highlighted an ill-fated Thanksgiving advertising campaign featuring domesticated turkeys dropped from a helicopter flying over the city – and plummeting straight to the ground. Covering the event on the ground, reporter Les Nessman wailed, “Oh, the humanity!” If only they had known just a bit about domesticated turkeys, especially in contrast to their wild cousins …

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The Natural World

By Tina Mitchell

The alarm buzzer slices through the darkness – 5:15 on a mid-December morning. Take a quick shower, pull on layer after layer of warm clothes, gulp down some breakfast and head out by 6:30. At U.S. Hwy. 50, we point ourselves west to Salida. Along the 18-mile drive, the Arkansas River and Bighorn Sheep Canyon slowly emerge in the pre-dawn light. Off to the annual Salida Christmas Bird Count!

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The Natural World

By Tina Mitchell

Every year, I greet autumn with mixed feelings. The crisp days and cool nights seem to sing after the hot days and much-warmer-than-I’d-like nights of late summer. But these wondrous days get noticeably shorter as each passes. Now that the exhausting tasks of breeding season have ended, the birds have gone silent, and many species have headed out for their wintering grounds. But winter species start to reappear, including the high-flying, raucous flocks of Sandhill Cranes heading over the Sangres to stopover spots in the San Luis Valley. Snow provides an occasional ephemeral dusting on the peaks, offering a lovely contrast to the evergreens below treeline. But I also keep a sharp eye on the weather forecasts, dreading the first meaningful snowfall down here. Actually, snow arrives with its own love/hate relationship for me – but that’s a topic for another time.

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