Late night at the observatory
Apr. 14th, 2011 03:25 amThe drive home from the observatory tonight was interesting. First, it was late: I left it around 2:15am. Second, the critter count and distribution was unusual. The driveway from the observatory to the nearest road is about a mile, and there was an unusual amount of elk by it. I turned on to the next road and there was a good-sized owl sitting there, it must have been 12-18” tall, a good sized one. It had what appeared to be very pretty mottling, but that's had to say conclusively at night with only headlights, not to mention being somewhat brain-dead.
That's the second owl that I've seen up here that was just sitting in the road at night. Russet saw one once that looked like a rock in the middle of the road, then as she got closer it turned its head around and you could see the eyes reflecting in the headlights and it flew away.
The elk continued intermittently along the road back in to town, including a gaggle of them in a little grassy area where I turn off to go up the final stretch to our house. The final ascent begins with a Y, one fork goes back into Cloudcroft's main street, the other ascends sharply to a point where you do probably a good 150 degree turn. Last week I was coming home and as I began that ascent up the Y, an elk bounded across the road. I did the 150 as a car was coming down that road, startling the elk, which then ran back down the path it had just come up.
It's nice living in a national forest!
Sadly, we had a fairly dry winter, and the wind has been pretty strong for the last week or so, today the fire danger was upgraded from High to Very High. A few years ago it got to the point that we were on a five minute evacuation notice, that's about the worst it can get short of an actual forest fire. They're testing emergency sprinklers and such at the observatory in case it needs to be defended.
That's the second owl that I've seen up here that was just sitting in the road at night. Russet saw one once that looked like a rock in the middle of the road, then as she got closer it turned its head around and you could see the eyes reflecting in the headlights and it flew away.
The elk continued intermittently along the road back in to town, including a gaggle of them in a little grassy area where I turn off to go up the final stretch to our house. The final ascent begins with a Y, one fork goes back into Cloudcroft's main street, the other ascends sharply to a point where you do probably a good 150 degree turn. Last week I was coming home and as I began that ascent up the Y, an elk bounded across the road. I did the 150 as a car was coming down that road, startling the elk, which then ran back down the path it had just come up.
It's nice living in a national forest!
Sadly, we had a fairly dry winter, and the wind has been pretty strong for the last week or so, today the fire danger was upgraded from High to Very High. A few years ago it got to the point that we were on a five minute evacuation notice, that's about the worst it can get short of an actual forest fire. They're testing emergency sprinklers and such at the observatory in case it needs to be defended.