Signs of Summer 6: The High Plains Environmental Center

Photo by D. Sillman

Audio-High Plains Environmental Center

Deborah, Marian and Ari and I drove to the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland a few weeks ago. It was a sunny, hot, late May afternoon, and we had arranged to pick up an assortment of plants from the Center’s greenhouse to put out in our front yard planting rings (pictured to the left).  The sale of plants is a major source of funding for the Center, and the quality of the species (all native!) and the incredible diversity of available varieties make it an irresistible draw for anyone interested in native landscaping or gardening.

Previously, we had come out to the Center back in February when all the vegetation was in deep, winter stasis. It was cold the day we were here, and as we walked around on the wind-blown trails both Deborah and I wished that we had worn warmer jackets! We saw lots of small, soil level signs indicating the presence of milkweed, rudbeckia, coneflowers, blanket flowers, columbines and penstemons (and more!). The only plant biomass above ground, though, were the sharp, spiny leaves of the yuccas and the brittle, woody stems of the leafless shrubs.

Photo by D. Sillman

By the end of May, even in northern Colorado, the winter is well behind us (or so we hope!). In fact, the transition from winter to summer happened so quickly that it seemed to completely bypass spring! We were well into growing season, wildflowers, cultivated flowers and the trees were all leafed out and were currently or had been recently in flower, so we expected to see lots of plants at the Center.

The Center specializes in plant species that can grow in the very dry, very difficult conditions of northern Colorado. There are extensive pathways through the Center lined with hardy plants and areas full of greenery that are never watered. The ability of some plant species to root deep into the soil profile to find water, or to spread dense networks of shallow roots to catch whatever water might fall are two possible adaptive strategies that enable these plants to survive extremely dry conditions. After they gather up their rainwater or soil moisture, though, the plants then have to hang on to that water. They can’t transpire it out in the dry air or let it seep out of their tissues. Heavy, waxy leaves and stems, carefully timed openings of their leaf stomata, and complex partitioning of the parts of their cells that carry out photosynthesis are just some of the anatomical and physiological ways that plants have adapted to life in arid grasslands and deserts.

Photo by D. Sillman

The native plant garden was thick with plants and alive with pollinators. The gravel path through the area was lined on both sides with plants that were all fully leafed out. Many of them were also in flower. There was a Mason bee colony at the starting end of the path. It looked as though it had peaked some weeks before. Its nesting tubes were mostly sealed up and all were quiet. The Mason bees had used their month or so of activity to pack their tubes with pollen and nectar into which they lay their eggs. They then sealed the tubes up for the long, summer, fall and winter incubation of their 2022 brood! Back in Pennsylvania my Mason bees emerged in early March and gathered nectar and pollen from the early blooming hellebores, crocuses and forsythia and red maples around my front yard. These Colorado Mason bees probably emerged in April along with our first blooming wildflowers and trees.

Back in February, the dense stand of cottonwood trees at the start of the lake trail had been full of Brewer’s blackbirds! Today there were no blackbirds, they must have moved on and dispersed out into their breeding habitats. The shade of the fully leafed-out cottonwoods, though, was a pleasant refuge from the intense sunshine and heat. As I stood there in the shade I heard one bird singing up in the branches. The song was fuzzy-sounding and delivered in short, rising and falling bursts. The bird was not easy to spot in the leafy branches, but I did get two quick glimpses of a goldfinch colored body and black wings with white stripes. The song, though, was not a goldfinch song and the bird was bigger than a goldfinch. I didn’t get a look at its head, but I assume that it was red. It was a western tanager!

Photo by K. Fleming, Wikimedia Commons

Deborah had seen a western tanager perched in our backyard Ponderosa pine the week before. This one was flitting about the cottonwood branches, hunting insects. It was almost like he was absent-mindedly singing to himself while he flew about gathering food.

I walked down to a nearby bench and sat down even though it was out in the full sun. The heat of the day was building rapidly. I kept the sun at my back and tried to pretend that there was a cooling, lake-breeze blowing across my face. In a few minutes Deborah and Marian came back along the trail pushing Ari in his stroller.

We talked for a minute when suddenly a bird with pointy wings and a long, square-ended tail swooped into the top of one of the cottonwoods. It clung to one of the high, upright branches and flipped his head from side to side in a tense, nervous manner. I could see its sharp, down-turned beak profiled against the clear sky. It was, from the wings and the beak, a falcon of some kind. It was too big for a kestrel, although there is a kestrel house (and live, nest camera) here at the Center. Late May seemed too late in the our season for it to be a merlin: merlins should have migrated on north by now. We were too far from any cliffs or mountains for it to likely be a peregrine falcon. Also I could see the bird’s head clearly enough in profile to note that it did not have the distinctive black “sideburns” of a peregrine.  By process of elimination, then, I came to conclusion that the bird was a prairie falcon. I have heard the prairie falcons nest extensively in the foothills just to the west of here. It is often hard to estimate a bird’s size, but this one looked a little bit smaller than a crow. Therefore, I assumed that it was a male (male prairie falcons are smaller than females, and a crow is a good “in between” size for comparing them).

Photo by B. Bouton, Wikimedia Commons

Many years ago I saw a prairie falcon when I was at Texas Tech University. We had had a big, early spring snow storm and the bird must have been driven into the shelter of spruces that were growing on campus just behind the English Building. I was out for a walk in the fresh snow and saw some movement in the trees. The falcon was perched on a middle branch of one of the spruces. He was golden and shimmering in the sunlight. He seemed very unconcerned by my presence, and we stared at each other for several minutes. I was memorizing his colors and shape, and he was probably wishing that I was something smaller and, ideally, edible.