Many of you know that Flash was born a black-and-white pinto. He’s greying and losing some of his “flashiness.”
With the mud he found somewhere, though, he almost looks like his former pinto self!
Flash was named by David Temple … because he and Pati had had a black-and-white cat named Flash. 🙂
Warm days? Here’s another one. With the warm days have come a lot of wind. It’s already dry; why the drying wind?!
But you know the horses don’t mind, and they don’t look ahead and worry. So for them, some warm days in the middle of winter probably feel pretty nice.
Mysterium and her band surely seemed to be enjoying the sunny, warm grazing, and I mostly lounged along with them as they grazed.
Mysterium was born in 2011, the year of the last roundup. Her mother was Kootenai, one of the mares introduced in 2008. We didn’t know the timing of her due date, so I decided to have a blog-wide “guess “contest” about it. People submitted guesses, and I think there were two that were closest – one on either side of her August birthday. I wrote the names on slips of paper and then had a friend draw one out of a hat. The winner was a 14-year-old girl from Canada who was a reader at the time! The prize was to name the foal, and she chose Mysterium because of the mystery around her timing of her birth. (We were able to talk to both BLM and the contractor about the month-old foal at the time of the roundup, and he avoided targeting them, which was good because I think at least two of the three mares were still together, and they wouldn’t have been removed anyway.)
Sleepy Sundance enjoys a nap in the warm sunshine, with his band nearby, and I do mean warm. The temp has been in the 60s since about Sunday, I think. Terribly unseasonable. And very unreasonable for February in Colorado! I mean, it’s nice to see the ice melting on the ponds that have water and letting go of the water in the arroyos at the seeps … but it’s also too early, and what we really need is snow.
I read today that “Colorado is experiencing one of the driest winters of last 30 years” this winter.
Usually, articles about Colorado weather leave out Southwest Colorado entirely (hello, we ARE part of Colorado), but this one gives us a mention: “Southwest Colorado lags behind the typical snowpack for the date the most, at just 69 percent of what’s normal for February 4.” Ugh. When we’re finally mentioned, it would be nice if it was something positive.
Snow dances all welcome. 🙂
Oh, and Sundance’s name (it was a good suggestion, and I’m trying to keep up with it!): I named him and his “brother” (I’m not sure, but they seemed to be brothers) when I first starting documenting the Spring Creek Basin herd in 2007. They were very “pink” as youngsters (likely born sorrel, which is interesting because we don’t have many even actual sorrels anymore), and initially, I thought one or both of them might have been a filly or fillies because they were so *pretty*! Then I realized they were both colts/young stallions, maybe still with their family band, and I called them “the pink brothers” before I named them: Butch and Sundance. And I’m sure you all know the “wild bunch” outlaws behind those names. 🙂
A little bit of a throwback, as the recent wind (for the last few days?!) was reminding me of the day the wind brought snow. No snow since then, but Seneca always looks beautiful waiting for it!
Looking south, that’s snow coming over the southern ridges of Disappointment Valley.
Seneca was named by me, but it was a name Pati Temple liked and wanted to use as a foal name. She was from New York state, and “the Seneca were the largest of six Native American nations which comprised the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations, a democratic government that pre-dates the United States Constitution. The historical Seneca occupied territory throughout the Finger Lakes area in Central New York, and in the Genesee Valley in Western New York, living in longhouses on the riversides.“
The horses of a band rarely get far enough away from each other to be out of sight, so you’ll rarely hear them whinnying for each other.
But it so happened the other day that while Madison and her band were grazing, about half the band meandered away from the other half in search of water, and they ended up not only fairly far away from each other but out of sight of each other. As it turned out, the bachelor with them was upset about the separation, so he stood between them, where *he* could see each group, and started whinnying.
Eventually, Temple seemed to realize that she and two others were cut off from the others, and she couldn’t see them!
After a few calls back and forth (I’d love to be able to translate, but I imagine the conversation went something like this: “Where are you?” “We’re here!” “I don’t see you!” “I don’t see you, either!” “Come here!” “You come here!”), Temple and her pals (which included the band stallion) joined their lieutenant and followed him to the rest of the band, where I later found them (after I visited with another nearby band), all together and content. 🙂
Flash and his mares in the wind at last lovely light.
Days are getting noticeably longer. We could do without the ultra-drying wind.
Oh, and the temp when I took this, yesterday, was at least 61 degrees Fahrenheit. In January. In Colorado.
We could do with a lot more snow. 🙂
Switching gears – and hair for feathers – this morning, please enjoy this juvenile bald eagle that was hanging out in some cottonwood trees near (dry) Disappointment Creek.
S/he looks like s/he dipped her/his head in some of the seeps that are producing mud-water currently, but based on this illustration, I believe s/he’s a juvenile, about 4 years old.
There were no other birds around – eagles or otherwise. I was incredibly happy that the eagle was “sticky” and allowed me a few minutes to photograph him/her from my truck.
You may not have known (I didn’t!), but before Christmas Eve, the bald eagle, while a definitive symbol of the United States of America, was not, in fact, its national bird. “On Christmas Eve, President Biden signed the legislation declaring the bald eagle the official national bird.”
We don’t have a lot of bald eagles in Disappointment Valley anymore, though I’ve been seeing them all winter between Disappointment and Dry Creek Basin (on the way to Naturita and/or Norwood). (And I’ve kicked myself a million times for not having my camera those times … though it’s harder to stop in the middle of the highway than on lonely Disappointment Road!) A generation or so ago, there must have been many, as evidenced by the title of “Where Eagles Winter: History and Legend of the Disappointment Country” by Wilma Crisp Bankston, the late mother of an up-valley resident (whose brother and sister also still own land nearby).
While we have golden eagles year ’round in the Disappointment Country, bald eagles are mostly winter visitors. It’s always a treat to see any of these magnificent birds.
This was toward the end of the 15 or 20 minutes I spent with Buckeye’s band while it snowed. There’s a fair bit of snow cover on the ground – and on the horses!
I thought the horses would likely turn their butts to the strong wind that was sending the snow straight at them broadside, but they grazed around as though it wasn’t windy at all. I kept *my* back to the wind and the snow because I didn’t want the flakes hitting my lens inside the lens hood and making it even harder for the camera to find focus on the horses (as opposed to the flakes in the air)… but the tradeoff was that the snow was hitting the eye piece of the camera, which meant I couldn’t see anything but watery blobs! So I was trusting that my camera’s focus beeps indicated that it really was finding focus on the horses and just sort of guessing at composition. Amazingly, it did a great job at finding focus on the horses through the air that was THICK with fat flakes blowing crazily past us. The wind and snow started out of the southeast, and by the time I left the horses, it had shifted a bit and was coming more from straight east.
The horses were getting pretty coated in snow by the time I left them – maybe 15 or 20 minutes after the snow reached us? – and I didn’t think about it until I was brushing myself off for the trip home, but I also was covered in snow. Ha! It’s like not noticing the biting cold when I’m with the ponies … but only later. Their magical bubble encompasses me and blocks out any adverse conditions (heat or cold, snow or sharp sunshine). 🙂 I’m completely sure that my presence doesn’t act in the reverse, for *them* … but I wish it did!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 