Humming birds, deer and black birds, and awesome sand dunes!

Near the Great Sand Dune National Park in Colorado there is a wonderful lodge by the same name. It is just outside the national park. We were sitting outside and 5 deer passed by. They were so close I didn't even need binoculars to see them.

They walked casually by were we were sitting, probably no more than 50 yards away. Zoom on the camera helps!

There was a bumming bird feeding station just outside our patio door. If you stood very still you could be within 3 feet of the feeder and the humming birds would buzz by you and sometimes stop 2 feet in front of you as if to say "hello".

They were feeding until dark when I couldn't see them anymore and then came again.at dawn.

A juvenile yellow headed black bird posed on a nearby fence. The mature adults have a brilliant yellow head.

All of this wildlife was seen at the lodge near the entrance to the Great Sand Dune National Park near Alamosa, Colorado. As the sun rises over the mountains to the east of the dunes, the shadows race from the west to east and the sun rises over the mountains. These dunes are over 700 feet tall, the largest in the US. It was a long way from where you could park your car to the entrance to the trail to the dunes. People hiking up the dunes looked like tiny specks as they climbed up the ridges. It is hard to show just how enormous the dunes are.

Sunset was beautiful. For a while we could see Venus, but then the clouds covered the sky. By midnight the sky cleared and the Milky Way was visible as well as Neptune, Uranus, The Pleiades, the Big Dipper, the constellations of the Summer Triangle, the Great Square of Pegasus and lots more. By 4:30, yes I was up again, Orion, Taurus and Gemini were rising in the east. Jupiter was brilliant in Gemini. The waning moon was just above Orion to the left. Sorry I couldn't get pictures of this. By late autumn we will be able to see them early in the evening!

All in all it was an amazing day and night at the Great Sand Dune National Park in Colorado!