America's Lucrative Pheasant

Native to Asia, ring-necked pheasants were introduced to North America in 1881; initially bred in captivity and released on private hunting ...

06:04

River of Floods

Near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, as the last of the Continental Ice Sheets was retreating into Canada, a massive lake of meltwater for...

17:42

Orange is the new Green

Crossing the Great Plains in mid October, one finds that the verdant grasslands and cropfields have given way to a scenic landscape of orang...

18:40

A Damp August Chill

With plenty of monsoon moisture in place, a cold front dropped through Colorado overnight and its low pressure center moved into the High Pl...

14:46

A Day for Dust Devils

As I crossed the Great Plains yesterday, intense heat, bright sunshine and calm conditions set the stage for dust devil formation and I enco...

12:28

Sorghum Season

Driving across the Great Plains today, I noticed that sorghum covered most of the crop fields, especially in central Kansas.  Native to nort...

17:55

A Kansan Deluge

Heading back to Missouri today, I left Denver under sunny skies and enveloped in cool, dry air.  East of Oakley, Kansas, the air acquired a ...

19:09

Blast Furnace on the Plains

As I traveled back to Colorado today, strong southerly winds raked the Great Plains, sweeping hot air into the Heartland and fueling tornadi...

19:09

Mountain Plovers

The only thing "mountain" about mountain plovers is that they summer and breed in the Mountain Time Zone.  Preferring short-grass ...

06:29

Southern Plains Monsoon

The annual Southwest Monsoon, which develops during the summer months, results from low pressure over the northern Baja and high pressure ov...

10:04

Rivers of the Flint Hills

The scenic Flint Hills of eastern Kansas are composed of Permian strata, lifted and carved into a maze of ridges and valleys by numerous str...

14:26

Westward into Winter

Heading back to our Colorado farm yesterday morning, we left Columbia under hazy skies; the temperature at dawn was 71 degrees F and the dew...

05:16

Grass Plovers at Eagle Bluffs

Thanks to a heads-up from a friend and fellow birder who was arriving at Eagle Bluffs as I was leaving, I was fortunate to observe four upla...

12:34

Spring Fires & Global Warming

Driving back to Missouri yesterday, I crossed the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas.  Most of those grass-covered ridges were charred from recen...

06:03

April on the Great Plains

Driving west on I-70, I entered the Great Plains of North America several miles west of Topeka, Kansas; there, the rolling, wooded terrain o...

17:47