A Drive in the Western Pawnee

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We took a drive yesterday around the western part of the Pawnee National Grasslands. It was a beautiful Spring day on the prairie: sunny, warm and breezy. It's a wondrous part of the world in any season, but our favorite time to visit is in mid-to-late June, when flowers are blooming, bugs and birds are plentiful, and everything seems especially vibrant, active and alive. We were a little early for many of the flowers in the part of the grasslands we drove through, but the prickly pear blooms were in their prime, most of the grasses were flowering, and wildlife was busy, busy busy everywhere. It was a gorgeous day, we saw few other people on our travels, and we had a great time.

enjoying the perfect day

We wandered around with no particular destination in mind, stopping to hike around a bit and take pictures whenever something caught our eye. Here are a few that illustrate the beauty of the Pawnee in all its mid-June glory.

I'll start with a few pictures of the many grasses we saw, after all, it is a National Grassland...

most of the grasses are in bloom

a close up of one of the grasses, showing how the seed heads are connected to the main stalks

a wide variety of grasses and ground cover

what a beautiful plant!

upon closer examination of this picture at a high resolution, I discovered a small worm and some eggs neatly laid along a small branch in the area enclosed in the orange circle

here they are, the worm (transparent) is on the left of the branch, the eggs to the right...did the worm lay the eggs?

Here is a piece of antique farm equipment parked on the side of one of the roads we wandered along. No idea what it was used for, but it sure is an interesting piece of the past

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Everywhere we went we saw lots of birds. Morning doves, lark bunting, meadowlarks, starlings, curlews, hawks, falcons: plenty of the birds we could identify, and plenty we couldn't. We had the good fortune to see not one, but 2 owls on our drive. The first one was perched on a fence post running out from a cattle guard, and both of us noticed the owl and had the thought that it was a strange silhouette--what kind of bird is that? A few feet past the guard it struck Joe that it sure looked like an owl, so we backed up for a closer look. Sure enough, he was right. We took a picture from the car, here is the grainy enlargement I was able to pull from it, still clear enough to confirm Joe's ID:

this is a burrowing owl, looked it up when we got home

The owl appeared to be sleeping, but snapped to attention as we backed up, eying us warily and swiveling its head 180 degrees to take a look at us with each eye. We took a couple of pictures and grabbed the binoculars for closer inspection. After awhile we started wondering if it would be possible to get a closer picture, so I eased out of the car and very slowly walked behind the car which offered a much better vantage. Well, as I was easing and walking, the owl turned into the wind and took off--what a magnificent sight it was!! Later in our drive we saw another owl, also perched on a fence post, and we felt more confident with the ID after seeing the first one. We also saw a very large brownish-red and white hawk perched on a power line running along the roadside. We slowed to get a better look and just as we got close we were treated to watching the huge bird take off and fly across a field. It was a spectacular sight!

the lack of fences in part of the grasslands make it easier to imagine how this area looked in days gone by

Another thing we saw plenty of, as we do year round, were cattle. Ranchers lease the grazing rights, and many of the areas in the grasslands are open range. Yesterday we encountered this pair standing in the middle of the road. They didn't seem motivated to move when we pulled up, so after a few minutes I pulled out the camera, stuck it out the window and took a picture. To our astonishment, that action got 'em moving. Yeah!

And now, the flower pictures. As I mentioned earlier, the prickly pear (also known as the desert rose) were covered in blooms, but there were plenty of other flowers blooming as well.

prickly pear flower, just about to open

prickly pear flowers have a "waxy" look to them, and the insides powdery with pollen

this flower has red stamen filaments

while the ones on these are yellow

what beautiful shades of peachy-pink

the flowers bloom atop the cactus leaves, and a new leaf is growing out of the right side


here is a leaf bud

leaf bud close-up, with fly

The vast majority of the prickly pear flowers in the parts of the Pawnee we drove through were yellow or peachy pink, but Joe spotted a patch of pink as we were driving through a rather large meadow, so we stopped to investigate.


so glad we stopped, closer inspection revealed a small stand of pink prickly pear blooms

Here is a flower that I would yank immediately if I were to see it sprouting in my yard, long before it had a chance to bloom: weed! These flowers develop into big puff ball seed heads and are very invasive. This one though, growing along the roadside, projected a beauty I rarely appreciate. And, as Joe pointed out, such plants are most likely introduced to the environment via the road...

Here is one of the few Rocky Mountain Bee flowers we saw in bloom, most were still budding out and look as if they will be opening up in a few days:

with 2 ants, busily gathering pollen

And now, to one of my favorites: the thistles. Another invasive species that I would not want to live around, despite their beauty. Big ol' thorns, and the purple flowered Canada thistle is considered an noxious weed that is illegal to grow in Colorado. Not that there aren't plenty of them around Loveland, but there is also plenty of reason to strive for eradication. Not sure what variety of thistle this is, but there are lots and lots of them blooming in the Pawnee at the moment.

thistle flower bud

just starting to open up

a little further along...

what a spectacularly beautiful flower, so geometric

I believe this one is just about done blooming

We also saw a few of this type of thistle blooming, but most of this type were still covered in buds

notice the flower buds covered in stickers, which are also distributed along the leaf edges and along the stalks: a mean plant...

...with such beautiful flowers, the petals look as if they are made of tissue paper

We had a great time on our drive through the western section of the Pawnee National Grasslands. June brings unbelievable beauty to the short grass prairie, and I hope you have enjoyed my attempts to convey a bit of this spectacular and special part of the world.