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This female Great Blue Heron got up from her nest on the island in Tabor Lake, flew to the trail beside me and carefully picked up a stick from a bush, flew back and placed it on her nest. Meanwhile, the male stood beside the nest among sleeping Northern Shovlers.

Male. This male and a female were chasing each other up the river and across the lake. The male landed on this tree overhanging the lake and made quiet rattles and was soon joined by the female, who responded with quiet rattles of her own.

Male. Thanks to @jimjohnson for your ID on this Emerald two days ago. Thanks to @rahopko for coming to confirm this and finding more including mating pairs. Thanks for Bill Prather for coming and netting the male in the first two photos and IDing more flying around. Bill told me that this is the first documented Plains Emerald in Colorado in over a hundred and twenty years. The third photo is of a mating pair

Female. Thanks to @rahopko for coming to confirm this and finding this female. Thanks to Bill Prather for coming and netting a male and for IDing more flying around. Bill told me that this is the first documented Plains Emerald in Colorado in over a hundred and twenty years.

This snake refused to leave the main road into Picketwire Canyon and instead performed its best Rattlesnake imitation by hissing and striking at me. When I walked toward it, instead of peacefully sliding off the road, it would coil and strike. I finally used my camera strap and holding on to the camera, I lowered the strap over its upheld coils and carried it to the safety of the roadside. Its Rattlesnake performance was impressive, and for that I would like to nominate it for best actor in the role of a pit viper.

This woodpecker drilled a hole in one of two large Pachypappa sacculi galls built from Aspen leaves and then pulled out something to eat. For more on this gall see: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/86920325

I observed a single Pied-billed Grebe coming toward me and saw it dive near the shoreline covered in cattails then never saw it resurface. A minute later a second Pied-billed Grebe came around a corner of the pond and followed the same route as the first and dove in the same spot. Neither Grebe ever resurfaced! The only explanation I can think of is that each made their way underwater into the cattails where they surfaced, probably at their nest site!

The first two photos are of one of the local breeding pairs of Great-horned Owls seen at dusk. The sound file was recorded at 9:18 PM when the two owls were dueting in cottonwood trees in my back yard and the neighbor's back yard. This is a continuous recording for the first 43 seconds. I then cropped two sections to delete barking dogs and excess traffic noise. The background noise throughout the audio is from traffic on a major street about 2 blocks away.