Search results for

Pollination is a game of give and take …insects visiting flowers for the reward of nectar and plants using insects to transport pollen for fertilization. They both benefit from the interaction. But that’s not always the case.

When it comes to butterfly migration in the United States, the species best known for making long distance treks is the Monarch. But there is another, much more globally widespread butterfly whose migration largely flies under the radar – the Painted Lady.

I was ahead of my husband when I spotted a bear standing in clear view, close by on the gentle slope that led away from the trail. I stopped and smiled as my brain tried to make sense of why the bear was so short and broad…and why were its legs and back darker than its tawny sides? My jaw dropped when the synapses connected. It wasn’t a bear. It was a wolverine!

Straightening the quilt on one of the cots, I glimpsed movement through a window and rushed - barefoot - to the narrow deck to see what it was: a herd of 200 elk galloping along each rise and dip of the valley below the treehouse.

For seven years, I pursued the jay-sized birds on Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana. That quest to observe a nesting pair turned out to be challenging. Belted kingfishers are loners, skittish, and fiendish to study. However, the rewards of a difficult journey are many—like finding something never recorded before.

The Capitol Talk team remembers a dear colleague. Rep. Rosendale keeps hanging out with some bad guys. The Legislature buckles down on budget work. And Sen. Steve Daines may back an unknown Bozeman businessman to challenge Jon Tester for his Senate seat.

Early in April, I had just spied a fox squirrel eating pine seeds from a ground cache when I felt a shadow gliding overhead on silent wings. I looked up yet saw nothing. When I looked back, there was an indistinct gray form, an apparition, in the shadows where the squirrel had been. The apparition turned its head toward me and peered with two large golden eyes. Tufted horns now held erect confirmed it was a Great Horned Owl.

One June about seven years ago, my husband brought home a bitterroot plant. It was stuck to his irrigation shovel by the clay soil from the hay fields near our house in the Helmville Valley. I marveled at the beautiful hot pink blooms and planted them in the flower bed, where they rarely reappeared.

The binoculars revealed a silver-gray owl close to two feet in height, with patches of brownish-gray barring throughout. Its facial disc was broad with a black patch under its muted yellow beak. Just below the black patch were two horizontal white patches, which looked like a butler’s bow tie. Two whitish feather mounds created an X pattern between its eyes.

Today, I stand in the same early morning sunlight but on dry ground, looking up and west at what the Blackfeet call the “Backbone of the World,” the Rocky Mountain Front. I tip my head all the way back to look way up at this reef, now transformed by time.