Sunday, September 25, 2016

Mile High and Beyond

So I basically jumped off that boat at 6 PM on Sunday, went home, packed and jumped on an airplane on Monday morning. By 6 PM Monday, I went from being at sea level to being a mile high in Denver. I dragged my coworker out to a nearby park to do some birding. We basically busted on the birds but did get to see some interesting wildlife. Lots of Black-billed Magpies were around.

Black-billed Magpie
We found this Gopher Snake along the path. Sadly, another one was run over by a pickup truck.

Gopher Snake
We also found this little mouse in the middle of the path. He was alive but didn't look very good. We moved him off into the grass where he scampered away.

Mouse
Our big mistake was thinking that we could Uber to the park and back to the hotel. Getting there was easy. Getting out proved to be a little tricky. We ended up walking about 6 miles in order to get back to the park entrance so that the Uber driver could pick us up.

Of course, that didn't deter me. The next day, I headed out to a different park in search of some life birds. Once again, I busted on the birds and ended up walking another 8 miles or so to get out of the park.
Red-tailed Hawk
Juvenile Black-crowned Nightheron

White-tailed Deer
I am learning that it is very difficult to go birding on a work trip if you don't have a rental car. Here is a screenshot of my iPhone "Health" app. You can see that on Sept 18th, I was on the boat so not much walking. On the 19th, I walked all through the airport and then all over the park in Denver. The rest are from Las Vegas which deserves its own blog post.




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