Boulder Backyard has visitors of all types. The incoming winter brings a party of animals to the back yard. Keeping water, food, and shelter in the back yard makes for a welcoming animal environment for these local fauna. Boulder Backyard: Fattening For Winter Do I have a favorite in our Boulder Backyard? Definitely. ALL of […]

Young immature birds are referred to as “pinheads” for some types of birds. The Eastern Blue Jay, who appears in great numbers in our Lafayette yard, is a great example of  a “pinhead” when they are young and immature. This visitor is especially cute. You can see why they have the name “pinheads.” Their “jay […]

You read that title right! I stumbled on a picture I took yesterday of a winking Rocky Mountain Goat. Both eyes, as the second picture shows, are perfectly good eyes. This goat and I shared a moment. My new best friend, the winking  goat, has two perfectly good eyes. What I captured was in fact […]

Boulder’s near neighbor, the Denver Zoo, is always a treat. Today the fun was happening between a pair of Northern Ground Horn Bills. These two really liked each other! They are also known as Abyssinian ground horn bills. Listen, Do You Want To Know A Secret? Do You Promise Not To Tell…     Lenny […]

I have written on the benefits and importance of planting flowers in the yard. Here are some astonishing photos adding to my original list of the benefits of planting annuals in the yard. Biff Warren, a fellow member of the bar, had the presence of mind to take all of these bear pics on a […]

Butterflies present special focus challenges. They sometimes hang out posing for a  long time. More typically they do not stop moving. Put a moving flying butterfly on a flower and you have an autofocus challenge beyond compare. The depth of the flower and the parts of the flower confuse the autofocus on the camera. They […]

This visit to Boulder’s neighbor, the Broomfield Butterfly Pavilion, offered more variety and more sheer numbers of butterflies than I’ve seen before. Papilio memnon may be a Chinese Windmill butterfly Zebra Longwing Butterfly, Heliconius charithonia Probiscus in profile on the Zebra Long Wing The proboscis on a butterfly serves as its feeding tube. It is […]

Every trip to the Butterfly Pavilion in neighboring Broomfield rewards us with a unique experience. This most recent visit presented the most butterflies I’ve seen so far in my many visits. It also offered butterflies intent on posing for the camera when they were not sitting on the flash hot shoe on the top of […]

In the mists of the multiple Boulder deadly fires, there has been a baby boom in the back yard!  While the raccoon family grows daily in size and weight, a tiny rabbit scampers around, along with his also tiny buddies, seemingly everywhere.   An American Finch admires me pondering the statue of Buddha. A rufus-sided […]

This Papilio, a Two Tailed Swallowtail, or perhaps a Western Tiger Swallowtail, flitted from flower to flower fascinated by the pollen and the Beatles. I was playing guitar on the deck, switching between the Fender guitar tuner app and the phone camera. The Butterfly seemed fascinated (anthropomorphizing perhaps on my part?) by the Rolling Stones […]