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Nick Mustoe

@nickmustoe.bsky.social

930 followers 770 following 400 posts

Interested in all things public lands and forestry. Avid reader on the topic of wildfire. Wildlife observer. Liverpool fan. Opinions I present here are in a personal capacity. 🎯 Dolores, CO

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 1h

Yes!

Reposted by Nick Mustoe

The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 7h

At first, Susan Orlean was hesitant to sign on to “Adaptation.” Then she changed her mind. “I began to feel as if I had been offered a ticket for a very strange amusement-park ride, one that I might later regret not taking,” she writes.

The Making of “Adaptation”

When your quirky book becomes a quirkier movie.

www.newyorker.com

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 4h

I love how the entire town of Dolores is getting their dog walking in before the next round of storms.

Paintbrush next to willows and the Dolores River.

Reposted by Nick Mustoe

Dr Susannah Lydon @susieoftraken.bsky.social · 1d

A 300 million year old Sigillaria tree trunk, in front of a mural depicting those steamy Carboniferous coal swamp forests.

On display in Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid.

#FossilFriday ⚒🌏🌱🧪🌿🔬

A Sigillaria tree trunk, in front of a mural depicting the Carboniferous swamp forest. About 1.75 m tall

On display in Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 20h

Sentinel satellite images of the San Juans. The color of the peaks is something else. Historical maps of the areas for the map nerds.

Ice Lake Basin with recent snow on the mountain tops. A small cloud to the far right of the image.

La Plata mountain satellite photo showing fall color on the left side of the image.

Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 1d

Near Mancos, western side of the La Platas.

Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 1d

We're seeing deer and elk leave the high country and move into lower elevations this week.

A doe mule deer looks back surrounded by dry grass and brush.

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Reposted by Nick Mustoe

Travis Mason-Bushman @snarkranger.bsky.social · 2d

The greatest of basins.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 1d

This article is sticking to my ribs like a Thanksgiving meal. What is love if not sharing food and watching each other age?

Orion Magazine @orionmagazine.bsky.social · 2d

In praise of the pumpkins, the sweet potatoes, the squashes—the patron vegetables of soup season, of cold weather, of hard times.

On Cold-Weather Vegetables

Andre Dubus describes the meals between married couples as not mere eating but a “pausing in the march to perform an act together."

orionmagazine.org

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 1d

As someone who spent a good part of the summer working on evacuation planning for a wildfire, I strongly recommend planning for and practicing evacuations. Well done Ashland. A lot of communities and counties should follow this lead.

OPB @opb.org · 2d

Ashland is offering residents and businesses the chance to practice their wildfire evacuation plans this Saturday.

Ashland plans practice wildfire evacuation drill for Saturday

Ashland is holding a wildfire evacuation drill for people and businesses to rehearse what they would do in a real evacuation, from gathering their belongings to practicing their evacuation route.

www.opb.org

Reposted by Nick Mustoe

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 2d

The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*.

Instead, they DROPPED exponentially.

Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.

Change in distribution and abundance of southern right whales. (A) Shows historical and contemporary wintering distributions (Figure 1 from Carroll et al., 2018), and (B) shows decline in abundance and subsequent recovery (solid line is the mean, dashed line shows upper and lower 95% CI). Modified Figure 1 from Jackson et al. (2008). Contemporary sightings are divided into regions where large aggregations are seen during winter: Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BZL), South Africa (SAF), southwest Australia (SWA), south central Australia (SCA), and New Zealand sub-Antarctic (NZSA) and regions where sightings are typically of small numbers of individuals per year. The large aggregations are IWC management units and correspond to historical whaling grounds, although another 5 whaling grounds show little sign of recovery. Summer feeding areas are poorly described and so not shown.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 3d

It is raining gold on the San Juans. Probably peak color for the season as rain moves in this weekend.

Golden aspen and Engelmann spruce surround a dirt road.

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Reposted by Nick Mustoe

Dr. Michelle I. Turner @chaco-arch.bsky.social · 5d

Some memories of fall in southwest Colorado.

A valley view of yellow aspen and green pine trees

Looking up at the crowns of the aspen trees

A dark and magical path covered with yellow aspen leaves among the white trunks of the trees

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 6d

Aspen brought the fireworks on the Cumbres Toltec railroad line this weekend.

A partly cloudy sky highlights a rock face covered in conifer and bright yellow aspen.

A steam train changes ahead surrounded by yellow aspen.

The Los Pinos River flows through a canyon with dramatic clouds above.

Sheer rock wall serves as backdrop for orange-tipped aspen.

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Reposted by Nick Mustoe

Eladio Bobadilla @eladiobobadilla.com · 8d

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 7d

For whatever reason, it took this tweet for me to realize that people looking for ivory-billed woodpeckers and those looking for bigfoots are searching for the same thing.

Alexander Lees @alexanderlees.bsky.social · 8d

I had missed this well written rebuttal on the purported Ivory-billed Woodpecker rediscoveries; these passages in particular are gold:🪶
academic.oup.com/bioscience/a... #Ornithology

They are reported not by random, casual observers but typically by select enthusiasts deeply committed and emotionally attached to the idea of the ivory-billed woodpecker's survival against all odds. These individuals have often dedicated years to the hopeful pursuit of clues supporting the species' continuing existence. Therefore, as one of the former searchers admitted in hindsight, “many searchers may have been subconsciously biased and, as a result, not sufficiently cautious in their identifications under field conditions” (Sykes 2016).

The purported sightings invariably occur in flooded southern swamp forests deemed by the dedicated enthusiasts as the ideal habitat for the species and less often, if at all, frequented by other observers (Hill 2007, Collins 2019). The vastness and inaccessibility in the descriptions tend to be exaggerated: “Alligators, wild boars, and venomous snakes are abundant, and there is a danger of heat stroke during the summer and hypothermia during the winter” (Collins 2019), being a description of an area of less than 100 km2, a mere 40 kilometers (km) away from New Orleans, the most populous city in Louisiana. The LSU Museum of Natural Science in Baton Rouge, historically one of the most vibrant ornithological centers in the Unites States, is about 145 km away. An area of 100 km2 would by no means be vast enough even for a single ivory-billed woodpecker, let alone a breeding population, to hide in for long. Meanwhile, there are abundant eBird reports of other bird species from the same area (Pearl River swamp), with the widest gap between adjacent observations of pileated woodpeckers, as an example, being less than 5 km (figure 3).

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 8d

I take entirely too many chipmunk photos.

A chipmunk with a nut in its mouth this time.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 8d

It was a colorful weekend in Utah. I'm excited to get outside and see more fall color in Colorado.

Fish Lake Basin full of yellow and green color.

A brilliant orange surrounded by green and yellow aspen.

Bright yellow aspen among conifer neighbors.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 8d

I love the second one because it is like "you almost made it!" But, you didn't.

Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 8d

I live for these photos.

An RV taking up the whole road trying to turn around on a back road in Sedona.

An at least 30 foot long trailer stuck on rocks after trying to get around a MINING ROAD switchback.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 13d

I happily spent some time with a red-tailed hawk yesterday.

A red-tailed hawk sits in an aspen tree on an overcast cloudy day in central Utah.

A close up of a red-tailed hawk sitting in an aspen tree on an overcast cloudy day in central Utah.

Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 14d

It has been such a moody weekend in the mountains. Love it!

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Reposted by Nick Mustoe

Ben Goldfarb @bengoldfarb.bsky.social · 14d

Here in Colorado, aspen fills a number of important roles in beavers’ lives — notably, it’s a source of food, construction material, and aesthetic enhancement for autumnal pond backdrops.

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Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 15d

Like any good silviculturist, I'm spending the weekend tracking my old forestry treatments. Happy to see aspen regeneration taking off all over the place.

A forest full of golden aspen sprouts following a thin from below, pile, and burn treatment in 2019.

Douglas-fir and aspen canopy with significant aspen regeneration.

Nick Mustoe @nickmustoe.bsky.social · 17d

Being a Liverpool fan is never boring.

Men in Blazers Media Network @meninblazers.bsky.social · 18d

Ekitike's red card surely means Isak's first PL start is coming this Sunday against unbeaten Crystal Palace👀

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