An Early April

After a cold and snowy start to winter, April has made an early appearance in the American Midwest. Strong southerly winds, ahead of the ne...

Winter & the Elderly

In nature, winter is the culling season. Wild creatures that are old, sick, injured or malnourished often succumb to the harsh conditions; ...

Unnoticed Visitors

Novice birders, focusing on common, local, avian residents, often overlook migrants and seasonal visitors that resemble those birds. One su...

Unaweep Canyon Mystery

While the field of plate tectonics has solved many geologic mysteries, others remain. One of these is Unaweep Canyon in the northern portio...

The Davis Mountains

Looking at a satellite map of the U.S., one notices a dark smudge in West Texas, north of the Big Bend area and just south of I-10. This da...

Red-Shouldered Hawks

Though less conspicuous and somewhat smaller than their red-tailed cousins, red-shouldered hawks are fairly common throughout the eastern ha...

White Christmas

Caught between high pressure over the Northern Plains and low pressure over the Texas Panhandle, we are getting our Christmas snow here in M...

The Pineapple Express

Produced by an atmospheric trough over the eastern Pacific, the Pineapple Express is a plume of deep, tropical moisture that is swept into t...

Merry Consumption!

It's the most wonderful time of the year....especially for retailers. Pressured by tradition and expectations, Christians of all kind, ...

A Morning of Raptors

Venus gleamed brightly in the eastern sky as I drove to our meeting site for the annual Christmas Bird Count. Our group, as usual, was assi...

The Scent of Skunk

In winter, cold, dry air and frozen ground suppress most of nature's fragrance. One potent exception is the scent of skunk musk, which ...

Great Gray Owls

One of the least conspicuous birds in North America, the great gray owl inhabits the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada and the mountain fo...

Winter Farmlands

Yesterday afternoon, the farmlands east of Columbia presented a bleak winter landscape; snow covered the ground, dead corn stubble and dry, ...

Mourning Dove Sit-In

Faced with snow-covered ground and an invasion of Arctic air, mourning doves have gathered in our large magnolia over the past two days; sin...

Night of the Geminids

While not as famous as the Perseids of August or the Leonids of November, the Geminid meteors of December offer the most reliable display of...

Backside Blizzard

In the Northern Hemisphere, as storm systems track from west to east, the winds around their center of low pressure move counterclockwise. ...

Cheshire Moon

Stepping onto the deck last evening, I caught sight of the crescent moon, turned on its back in the western sky. Catching the orange glow o...

Life, Dinosaurs & Time

Life first appeared in Earth's primordial seas some 3.6 billion years ago and evolved into a wide diversity of marine and terrestrial cr...

Eastern White Pines

It is during the winter, when the deciduous trees are bare, that we pay most attention to the conifers. But, since I park by pickup beneath...

Evolution of the Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert of the Southwest U.S. and Northwest Mexico is a product of its latitude, the global climate and the regional topography. ...

Madagascar and its Primates

As Pangea continued to break apart, Madagascar split from Africa, some 160 million years ago. Drifting to the south, it merged with the rem...

The Voice of Winter

Winter is the quiet season. Compared with the rest of the year, there are relatively few natural sounds that greet us on our excursions thr...

The Benefits of Aging

Aging has its disadvantages. Our physical strength and stamina tend to deteriorate, we are more prone to a variety of illnesses and, for so...

December

A northwest wind developed yesterday afternoon, behind the latest cold front, and, overnight, ushered in the coldest air and lowest wind chi...

South of Town

North of Columbia, the landscape soon gives way to the relatively flat terrain of the Glacial Plain that covers much of the Midwest, from ce...

Swans over the South Platte

Not inclined to join the mob scene at area malls and presented with another mild, sunny morning along the Front Range, my wife and I decided...

A Global Thanksgiving

On this American holiday of Thanksgiving, most of us will give thanks for our human possessions and relationships. But our lives, our healt...

The Colorado Piedmont

When the Rocky Mountains first crumpled skyward, 70 million years ago, the adjacent plains rose with them, producing a gradual rise from the...

Canadian Sunsets

As the sun sets behind the Colorado Front Range, lines and Vs of Canada geese take to the skies. Common across the urban corridor throughou...

Snows in the Clouds

Heading to Colorado for the Thanksgiving Holiday, we left Columbia shrouded in moist, balmy air, courtesy of a stiff southerly wind; the lat...

Marriage: an Unnatural Union

Marriage is not a natural human relationship. Rather, our society has collectively decided (and most of us would agree) that children are b...

Winter's Assault

As of this morning, a potent winter storm was spinning over the Great Basin and its associated cold front stretched from San Francisco to Ma...

Ringing in the Season

On this first cold evening of the season, I was surrounded by the tinkling song of juncos as I walked home in the fading twilight of dusk. ...

Autumn Rain

Unlike recent cold fronts, our current trough has tapped a fetch of Gulf moisture and cold rain is falling across central Missouri. Though ...

Exorcism 2010

Born of fear and scientific ignorance, religions have retained significant influence thoughout the course of human history. Early man, faci...

Red-tail Highway

Red-tailed hawks are common on the farmlands of the Midwest and are especially conspicuous during the colder months of the year. It is then...

A Polarized Nation

As if our political polarization was not bad enough, the jet stream has now divided our country. This afternoon, a broad dip in the jet has...

Jurassic Parks

The Colorado Plateau of the Western U.S. harbors one of the most extensive exposures of Jurassic strata on our planet. Stretching from 200 t...

Summer takes a Round

After a week of frosty mornings and the sense that winter was taking control, summer got off the mat and reclaimed mid Missouri today. Its ...

The Great Oceanic Plates

When Earth's Continents merged into Pangea, some 250 million years ago, the vast intervening ocean stretched across two oceanic plates, ...

Morning Chill at Eagle Bluffs

Arriving at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area this morning, it was clear that winter had taken charge of the refuge. Flocks of horned larks and...

Claron Lake

When the Rocky Mountain chain began to rise, some 70 million years ago, the crust to its west was stretched, producing a mosaic of ridges an...

Tardy Canadians

Perhaps our balmy October weather kept them at bay. Or perhaps they arrived under the radar and I've been too busy to notice their prese...

The Nature of Politics

The elections are over. The Republicans control the House, the Democrats will likely retain the Senate and, in the end, nothing will change....

The Heart of Volcanism

The great majority of Earth's volcanoes are found along subduction zones, where one tectonic plate is dipping beneath another; the lower...

The March of Autumn

November, like March, can be a fickle month in the American Heartland; though known for blustery weather and gray skies, both months offer a...

Day of Fear

Today, the rituals of Halloween will unfold, man's effort to express and illuminate the fears that pervade our lives. The greatest of th...

The Ural Mountains

Extending north to south through western Russia, the Ural Mountains formed from the collision of two proto-continents, some 250-300 million ...

First Freeze

For the first time this season, winter has poked a finger into central Missouri; this morning, the temperature hovered just below 32 degrees...

Control & Happiness

We humans, having the capacity to make plans and set goals, strive to be happy. While we are carefree as children, we come to realize that o...

Wind Storm

Produced by a ripple in the high energy jet stream, a potent storm has developed over the Northern Plains and, as of this morning, is center...

Fox in the Mulch

Since we bought our Littleton, Colorado, farm in 1990, a large pile of mulch has been accumulating and compacting in a back corner of the pr...

Crossing the Storm

As I left Denver this morning, a large storm system was centered over northeastern Colorado. A cool north breeze was flowing southward along...

Flowing Back in Time

West of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the Colorado River passes through the Grand Hogback and enters the Colorado Plateau, a vast geophysical ...

Into the Wilderness

Needing a break from the farm work and granted another sunny, mild day, I opted for a hike in the mountains and headed for the Deer Creek Tr...

Colorado Junipers

Favoring sunshine and semi-arid soil, junipers are found throughout Colorado, from High Plains escarpments to the canyon walls of the Colora...

The Nature of Homophobia

As the political season heats up, gay rights have once again become fodder for conservative talk show hosts, politicians and religious leade...

Pheasant of the Plains

This was a beautiful day for traveling across the Great Plains of North America. Under partly cloudy skies and a mild air mass, the grasslan...

A Motley Crowd

Those of us who regularly observe birds at the backyard feeder come to appreciate the varied personalities of our avian visitors. House spar...

Sphinx Moths

Returning home yesterday afternoon, I found a large, attractive moth on the wall of our front porch. It was a white-lined sphinx moth, a me...

Man & Mountains

Having evolved in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, man has long been enchanted with mountains. We, and perhaps our immediate hominid predecessors,...

The Miners & Humanity

Scenes of joy were beamed across the globe over the past two days as 33 Chilean miners were rescued from their ten week ordeal, entombed wit...

Jack-o-Lantern Mushrooms

Mushrooms, the spore-producing fruit of fungi, generally prefer cool, moist conditions and are thus rarely encountered during the heat of su...

Isolated Peaks & Monoliths

There are few natural landscapes more inspiring than a lone peak or isolated cluster of mountains that tower above the surrounding terrain. ...

Birding without Binos

Binoculars are an essential tool for beginning birdwatchers, who learn to distinguish the individual species by close attention to their plu...

The Chuska Mountains

Forming a topographic wall across northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico, the Chuska Mountains are the remnants of an elongated, s...

Summer Billows Back

After getting shoved to the Gulf Coast by a series of cold fronts, summer has returned in the form of a broad atmospheric ridge that covers ...

Back in the Dark

Two weeks after the autumn equinox, I am shrouded in darkness on my walks to work. From now until early March, there will be no sunlight to ...

Chickadee Gifts

Hang a new feeder in the backyard or fill an old one for the first time in the fall and, in almost every case, chickadees will be the first ...