Trail Log 1995-1997 - Lamar at Colorado State University

entering his trailer park. After dark, seen in headlights. It ran across the road, and then turned
around and ran back. Quite red, long bushy tail straight out as it ran.
September 29, 1997. Jane saw three racoons on the street near the house, in the dark, coming
home in the car.
October 19, 1997. Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge with Jerry Freeman and Jim Gilmore, and
Jane. I spoke there the afternoon and evening before for Jerry Freeman. Jim Gilmore is wildlife
sculptor, former rancher there. Birding on the refuge for a couple hours. Gadwalls, many of them.
Canada geese, a few. Widgeon, flicker, loggerhead shrike, blubird, kestral, marsh hark, kinglet,
migrating in shrubs, mountain chickadee, meadowlark, pied-billed grebe, lesser yellowlegs, greater
yellowlegs, snipe, great horned owl, goldlen eagle - nice flew up over road, magpie, redwings,
prairie falcon. Then back into town and drove north of town to find some sandhill cranes, found
about two dozen of them, also calling. Two cottontails.
Half a dozen deer. One beaver seen nicely swimming in a wetland pond. Freeman is a co-author
of the Colorado Bats book, leads an annual tour here to watch Mexican free tailed bats coming out
of a mine north of the Great Sand Dunes. Shrub common in dry fields here they call chico, which
is greasewood, Sarcobatus vermiculatus (Chenopodiaceae), abundant on alkaline flats, poisonous
containing calcium oxalate, nevertheless a useful forage plant if the diet is mixed and sheep do not
graze in pure stands. Also much Atriplex.