Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge
Rocky Mountain Arsenal, located just 10 minutes from downtown Denver, is home to more than 330 of the Front Range's plants and critters including red-tailed hawks, bald eagles, white-tailed deer and prickly poppy. On this field trip we will be looking for one of our favorite prairie residents: the burrowing owl. This field trip will shed light on some of the more interesting traits of this extraordinary bird (they are the only owl to live in underground burrows), and explore the relationship between the burrowing owl and other inhabitants of our native shortgrass prairie.

We will also have the opportunity to view the Arsenal's newest addition: a herd of bison!

Date: Sunday, August 5th Time: 8 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Location: Rocky Mountain Arsenal on 56th and Havana.
Please visit their website for more specific directions.

Front Range Wild Mushrooms
This field trip, lead by Vera Evenson, Curator of the Herbarium of Fungi at the Denver Botanic Gardens and author of Mushrooms of Colorado and the Southern Rocky Mountains, will highlight the incredibly unique and elusive nature of wild mushrooms along the Front Range. You will learn how to identify wild mushrooms and gain a general appreciation for fungi and their native habitat.

Vera will decide the exact location based on where the mushrooms are fruiting at the time of our trip. We will announce the meeting location to those who register for the trip, but it will be somewhere along the Front Range and we anticipate that light hiking will be involved.

Date: Saturday, September 8th Time: TBA Location: TBA

Soapstone Prairie Natural Area
The Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, recently acquired by the city of Ft. Collins, is a valuable natural area along the Front Range, with wild populations of swift fox, coyotes, mule deer, mountain lions, bobcats, black-tailed prairie dogs and American elk. There are more than 113 bird species at Soapstone Prairie including golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, and burrowing owls. The area is also home to 219 species of native plants, including Colorado butterfly plant, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

This is a driving tour of the City of Fort Collins' newest regional Natural Area, scheduled to open to the public in 2009. We will drive to the property in a 14-passenger van, and the tour includes short walks, a lunch break and driving over rough, unimproved ranch roads. You can visit their website where a streaming video about Soapstone Prairie is also available.

Adults 18 and over, please.

Date: Saturday, September 29th Time: 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Location: We'll meet at the Nix Farm offices of the City of Fort Collins Natural Areas Program, located at 1745 Hoffman Mill Road.
Contact us for more detailed driving directions. Please let us know if you would prefer to carpool from the Boulder/Denver area.