Hiking at high altitude is hard work. Carrying a pack more than 1/4 of your body weight at high altitude is seriously hard work. Hiking uphill with said pack on your back at high altitude is not recommended unless you have a deep desire for hurt. So, when engaging in this unthinkable activity, I have to believe that feeling tired is just a state of mind…
which can be relieved in a number of ways when that tired feeling hits during a long, hard uphill climb.
Each day there is a new and beautiful place to sleep and rejuvenate.
We are alone in this vast wilderness…at least it feels like it. I love that feeling of smallness in this vast expanse.
There is a new vista to explore around every corner.
Below 9000 feet, we can have campfires. What a difference in your mood a campfire makes! (That’s me on the far right)
The pains of a hard hike are shared, and we keep each other going.
Remembering these antics around the fire keeps me going all the next day.
We made it! Shoes got wet, but we crossed another rushing river.
Backpacking in the wilderness yields a score of new sights and marvels, some of which make you stop and wonder — how they came to exist, or how they persist.
Landscapes like this view from 11,000+ foot Summit Pass, in the Hoover Wilderness in the eastern Sierras are a natural wonder to me.
Life exists and persists in the harshest of conditions at these high altitudes, making me appreciate what I see even more.
Wild flowers were especially vibrant this year after the mammoth snowfall in the mountains last winter. This year they will leave a lot of seed behind, which may take years to germinate depending on conditions in the next years.
Fireweed is a colorful pioneer in disturbed areas until other bushes and trees eventually outcompete them for light and water.
life growing on life — fruticose lichen on red fir
The lichen combination of Cyanobacteria and Fungi is also lush this year, after a banner year of snowfall.
You wonder how life can spring up in the middle of rocky dirt. But Pinedrops plants are parasitic and derive their energy and carbon from the mycorrhizae fungi that surround the roots of other plants.
Our hikes took us through lush meadows, over or through rushing creeks, dark pine forests, and occasionally along broad swaths of sheer granite, a place where it is easy to lose the trail. The trees here seem to be growing right out of the rock.
Small rock cairns mark the trail on exposed granite surfaces. In some areas the granite has been polished smooth by glacial movement of sand and rocks.
Our scouting trip to find a pass over a ridge between two sets of lakes was unsuccessful, but we encountered some gorgeous scenery on the almost 8 mile hike around Saddlebag Lake on the Tioga pass road over the Sierras of California.
The water is quite chilly, but the fishing seems to be good on Saddlebag Lake
Wild flowers are still in their full, blazing glory. It was a late summer this year because of all the snow. I think the purple flowers might be Monk’s Hood, a showy plant containing highly toxic alkaloids.
You couldn’t ask for a better trail. Unfortunately, it ended quite a ways before climbing into the pass over the ridge just below the pointed peak, and the way up looked much too rocky a traverse to take young hikers (or old grandparents, for that matter).
End of our good trail…these lakes are above 10,000 feet and only recently free of ice and snow.
What?! Pink snow?
Yes, it really is pink snow, colored not by leaching minerals but by the growth of the green alga (yes, it really is green under the microscope), Chlamydomonas nivalus. If there is one thing we have learned about life on earth, it’s that microbes can thrive just about anywhere, and here’s proof of life on the ice.
The algae are actually in a metabolically quiescent state, awaiting appropriate conditions, like lake water, to begin growing. But to protect themselves (and their chlorophyll) from the damage of intense radiation at high altitude, they synthesize a protective sunscreen of carotenoid pigments (yes, the same ones that make Cardinals a bright cheery red).
And so, these green, but appearing red due to carotenoids, algae slide down the snow banks toward fresh water to begin a new cycle of growth.
We are back in California about to embark on the annual family trek through the high Sierra back country. With all the snow the mountains received last winter and this spring, we were concerned about getting snow-bound in still frozen high meadows, so we are scouting some of the trail before the rest of the family joins us.
At Sonora pass, 9624 feet, it looks like most of the trails should be show free. Still plenty of it around though, and the creeks are running fast and full.
Late melting snows mean we get to enjoy a super abundance of gorgeous wild flowers.
It’s amazing how much you can see early in the morning before the cyclists and hikers have hit the trails around the local marsh. And it always amazes me to find such a diversity of wildlife inhabiting a small wild oasis in the urban landscape! I’m sure if I had spent more time on this hot, humid morning, I would have seen even more.
Dense mats of cattails float around the marsh propelled by the prevailing water flow. They attract a wide variety of wildlife that may hunt from their edges, nest in their stalks, and hide within small crevices from the peeping eyes of photographers.
Great Blue Herons are often found along the shoreline, usually obscured by the vegetation.
Another heron was making its way down toward the shoreline — perhaps the mate of the other one?
I can always count on seeing a Great Egret or two foraging near the edge of the marsh.
What else is hiding here in this vegetation near the shore? A Green Heron pops up to see if I’m a dangerous predator.
A less nervous juvenile Green Heron hunted in the shallows.
Out in the water, a Common Loon swam by.
Nearby, a double-crested Cormorant surfaced from its dive, and took a look around.
I spotted something white way out in the middle of the marsh, swimming quickly away from me, and grabbed a quick shot of a Trumpeter Swan family with their two, seemingly newly hatched, cygnets.
It’s a bit late to find these newly hatched chicks; perhaps the first nesting failed and these are result of a second nesting attempt. The chicks have a lot of growing to do before they reach the body size of the adults which can weigh more than 20 lb.
The deer really like my backyard: they eat my plants, they bed down in the wildflower garden leaving big depressions in the vegetation, they rest right under the bird feeder, and believe it or not, the half-grown fawns chase the foxes right out of the yard. But I enjoy watching them parade through, so I just keep replanting the garden.
Make yourself comfortable…
By all means, help yourself to the garden perennials. This shrub rose may not recover, but oh well…
Yes, please do eat the buckthorn. I didn’t want that to spread in the backyard.
And where do these two learn where the best places to forage are?
Six years, almost 1200 posts, lots of photos, and it seems that each year about this time, I write something about the same critter — the dreaded Japanese beetle.
Japanese Beetles make their appearance every year in the backyard (and in the front yard as well) in late June, and eat their way through my plants and flowers for the next 6 weeks.
Once again, they have made swiss cheese out of my raspberry plants, sometimes even mating and/or feeding on the fruit as well.
They’re pretty as insects go, but I hate seeing them on my fruit-producing plants.
But this year, thousands of beetles descended on my Honeycrisp apple trees, and have decimated more than 50% of the leaves. Ugh! It’s easy enough to pick them off the raspberries or spray the plants with soapy water, but apple tree leaves are out of reach. Instead of spraying the trees with some bee-killing insecticide, we used a bacteriocidal solution, combined with an oil spray. End result — it didn’t work.
Thanks to the drenching the raspberries received from a few thunderstorms this summer, there were plenty of extra leaves for the beetles to consume, and I still got a nice crop of raspberries from the plants for my annual jam-making. But the fate of the apple crop is yet to be determined.
Some bird mothers go to great lengths to distract predators away from their nest and/or fledgling chicks. They feign injury, flapping like they are wounded but can’t fly, chirping loudly to attract attention to themselves and away from their chicks. I’ve seen Kildeer do this many times, as they lead me on a merry chase away from their nest. For example…
But I’ve never heard of small songbirds using this strategy, until I saw it in action today when a female Indigo Bunting led me all over the backyard as I tried to find her nest and her chirping chicks.
“Here I am, look at me, I’m helpless with my broken wings.”
Wings fluttering, hopping sort of helplessly through the grass, chirping continuously, and flying weakly from spot to spot, this female Indigo Bunting put on quite a show.
Moving around in the underbrush of the wildflower garden, I discovered two of her chicks, also chirping loudly, but hidden from view until one of them tried to cross a patch of grass.
Bunting chicks may fledge (leave the nest) after only 8 days, and can hardly fly more than 10 feet, so they tend to stay hidden in low, dense vegetation.
Not a very adept flyer yet…
The chick is not even fully feathered yet, has short stubby wing feathers, and no tail. It would be easy prey for a wandering cat…
Meanwhile, its mother is still chirping away at me, from all over the garden.
first here…
then here… (see that faint tinge of blue on her shoulder?)
and finally right out in front of me. Older females may be much bluer than this, with streaky blue patches on their shoulders, back, and tail. But their overall drab plumage helps camouflage them while they care for the chicks.
A brightly colored male Indigo Bunting would attract way too much attention if he were feeding chicks in the nest.
Fun facts:
although Indigo Buntings are about the size of a Goldfinch and the female sort of resembles a female Goldfinch (but lacks those distinctive wingbars), they are actually members of the Cardinal family.
the blue color (especially evident in males) does not come from a blue pigment, but is due to special reflective particles in the feathers that scatter light and reflect blue wavelengths. Read more about blue coloration in animals by clicking here.
A blackish oblong shape moved slowly across the road toward my front lawn the other day. I had no idea what it was until it got much closer.
A rather large snapping turtle was moving from the lake across the street from my front yard to the ponds beyond my backyard.
Large, widely spaced eyes help them see a wide range of view, but not when their head is pulled back into their shell.
snapping turtle mimicking a cobra?
Is this how it sees what’s ahead?
finally on the move again….
Snapping Turtles are fearsome predators, with powerful jaw muscles that can close the mouth with such force and velocity they can bite a small pineapple in half, or amputate human fingers. Needless to say, I left this one alone. They are at or near the top of the aquatic food chain as adults, but take 15-20 years to mature to reproductive age. Few snapping turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood, but adults are very long-lived.
A common sight in lakes and ponds this time of year is a brood of little ducklings paddling very close to their mother.
A mallard hen escorts her newly hatched brood across the pond to better foraging habitat.
Wood duck hatchlings have to paddle fast to keep up with their mom.
Mother Duck’s large body moving around the nest was the first thing the newly hatched ducklings saw, and within a day’s time, they imprinted on her, meaning their brains became wired to follow that object faithfully until they mature to full independence.
Whatever mom does, the ducklings do. When it’s time to rest after hunting for bugs, the ducklings take a break with their mom.
There is a critical period for this type of “filial imprinting” to occur — usually within 24-48 hours of hatching. Whatever large, mobile object the hatchling sees, it follows — even if it is a human. This type of imprinting is of obvious survival value to precocial birds, those that are mobile immediately after hatching, as they learn survival skills and are protected by at least one parent.
Konrad Lorenz, an early 20th century behavioral biologist, studied imprinting in Greylag Geese by attending to them immediately after hatching. From then on, they followed him faithfully wherever he went.
You might wonder if imprinting only occurs in birds. The answer is NO, but there are different types of imprinting, even in birds. Social and sexual imprinting are key to making sure an individual associates with members of its own species. Keith Kendrick* cross-fostered sheep and goats immediately after birth (i.e., goats mothered the lambs and sheep mothered the kids), and found that male offspring (but not females) were subsequently irreversibly attracted both socially and sexually to their foster mom’s species more than their own.
