Spring has officially been in the air for the last couple of weeks!

I noticed the first Spring Beauties blooming from patches of lush moss and sprouting prairie grass on my usual hike through Ken Caryl Valley last week. I, of course, equipped my camera with a macro-lens and lied in a prone position in the red dirt, to get up-close photos of the tiny springtime flowers.

As I was taking pictures of flowers, a mud-brown grasshopper landed a couple inches from the flowers and stayed put, as though he was posing for me. So I carefully shifted my camera his way and also got some up-close pictures of the grasshopper. So up-close, in fact, that I could count the individual setae on his face (which are very small hairs found on all insects, which they use to sense the world around them). 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to stick around as much as I wanted to. It was Colorado’s first 70-degree-day, with a warm sun and clear skies. But, I had to return home before lunch to torture myself with precalculus. Oh well… after that Easter Sunday morning’s hike, I felt refreshed, energetic, and ready to take that precalculus bull by the horns!

That night, a cold front blew in. By Tuesday, the weather had gone from sunny and warm to cold and blustery, which was typical Colorado weather for the time of year. Thankfully, not much snow fell, but it was enough to blanket the grass and trees in a couple inches of light, fluffy snow. 

Since I didn’t have class that day, I decided to spend my “class time” outdoors, taking pictures in the Valley as usual. But, the lighting was harsh due to how the sun reflected the morning sun’s light. Even with sunglasses and my hat’s bill pulled down, I struggled to see without squinting my eyes. Seeing my camera’s screen was damn near impossible. Still, I took pictures of the snowy, sandstone hogback to my east. Not very good ones, but they turned out okay for the conditions. 

Aside from some faraway starlings and blue jays, there wasn’t much wildlife to be seen. All of the Valley mule deer were congregated in people’s yards, and while I did find fresh bobcat tracks in the snow, I didn’t dare follow them across the creek. Instead, I equipped my camera with the macro-lens yet again and took pictures of fresh, green watercress growing just beneath the clear water’s surface. 

As I was taking pictures of the bright green underwater leaves, I began to hear a distant, growing droning noise. I looked up just in time to see a well-known Cessna plane flying overhead; the plane that belongs to an amateur pilot who lives at the end of North Ranch Road. Every other day, the guy’s circling the valley in his plane, taking ariel photos for the Ken Caryl neighborhood newspaper. 

At first, I found him annoying, but my ears eventually stopped listening for the plane. Instead, I was distracted by the strange sounds of an invasive European Starling in a cottonwood by the creek. Evidently, the bird had figured out how to mimic the sound of a chainsaw.