Landscape

The Highlands is a place to experience.  It is a beautiful, peaceful place to be in nature.  Old abandoned homesteads dot the landscape, reminding us of earlier times. Wide vistas of grass covered rolling hills undulate across the horizon, interrupted with craggy buttes.  Fingers of forest tumble down a hill side, in search of a ravine or gully, where water might be found.  Hay fields intermingle with open grassland, providing grazing for cattle.   It is a rugged country, creator of hardy souls, maybe it is that combination that is appealing.  People love this place. It holds a sense of magic for many.

   During the warmer months, you may enjoy sitting around the bonfire and watch the sun as it slips behind the buttes, in a glorious sunset.  As the coolness of our mountain evening descends around you, the stars twinkle in a clear sky, sometimes northern lights can be seen.

Country life provides many pleasures. Here we are closely tied to the seasons.   Winter is a fairyland, when the earth is blanketed by diamond studded snow.  Spring brings luxuriant green to the hills. They appear as great green oceans when the breezes shift from one direction to another.  Wildflowers dot the landscape.  Summer bares warm sunny days, cool mountainous nights, flowers, migrating birds, deer and coyotes.  Fall changes the grasses to gold, amber and russet colored strands.  Seed heads form as the grasses gather their waning energies of the season.  Gold and red colored aspens shimmer in the wind, set with the backdrop of the stately pines and firs.  Whether it is the birds, a gorgeous sky, snow coverd trees, garden bounty, the smell of sping, or the sound of wind in the trees.  We feel priviledged to live here and want to share the joy of this experience with you.

More about the Birds

We live on a grassland bird flyway.  Birds are a pleasurable part of our daily lives.   Mid-January brings the arrival of male red wing and tri-colored blackbirds, scouting for their spring homes in the reeds of our pond.  More males arrive daily, shortly their numbers rise to over a hundred.  They join the chickadees and woodpeckers who have wintered over. The birdfeeder outside the dining room windows is a busy place as winter comes to an end.  Once the yellow headed blackbirds arrive, one can see a blur of yellow in the feeder as they join jays, magpies, camp robbers, crows and other locals in eating.

As the mating season begins, the blackbirds break into a cacophony of sound that fills the air until fall, when the birds begin their migration south.  Then the air seems empty, it is stunningly quiet.  It takes us a while to get used to their songs ending.

Spring brings cliff and tree swallows.  They busy themselves building mud nests, under the roof overhang.  It takes many a trip with tiny mouth fulls of mud to build the nest.  Meanwhile the tree swallows have settled into most of our fifty bird boxes.  Soon the eggs are laid and hatched.  The air is full, as they swoop for bugs to feed their young.  Thoughout the house and yard we hear them sing and chatter amongst themselves as they tend the young.  We witness early flight lessons and encouragement as the babies take to the air.

Grosbeaks, finches, flickers, hummingbirds, wrens, mountain bluebirds, meadow larks, nuthatches, along with red tailed, sharp shinned, and coopers hawks, plus several species of falcons join us spring and summer.  Also we enjoy watching a pair of golden eagles, who return to their nest, high in the trees across the road, to raise their fledglings each year.

An interesting side note, birds vary greatly from the valley floor of 900' to hilltops of some 4800'.