Disappointing…

We drove about an hour north of the Twin Cities to get a better view of the Aurora “light show”, but unfortunately, it was a cloudy overcast night and the colors never developed. So this is the best view I saw until we left at midnight. The colors were far better the night before — darn!

There was so little light at almost midnight, I had to focus the camera on the windows of the house.

Even the crescent moon was cloudy and opaque. Better luck next time…

Sonoran desert sights

The Sonoran desert in southwestern Arizona is hot, but amazingly diverse in plant life because it receives two periods of rainfall annually and it provides subtropical warmth in the winter. In fact, some of the cacti growing in Organ Pipe National Monument on the U.S.-Mexican border can’t survive freezing temperatures.

A landscape of cacti, palo verde trees, and creosote bushes — the plants are so closely spaced it looks like a thorny subtropical forest.

Mid-winter rain makes the desert green and lush looking.

The dominant cacti are the spiny cholla (left), the tall, columnar saguaro, and the multi-stemmed Organ Pipe, which only grows here, in the U.S, but is also found across the border in Mexico.

They are well-named since their bunched, stout columns resemble the pipes of an organ. The multiple columns arise from a common stem and each stem continues to elongate over time with some reaching heights of 20-30 feet.

Two new stems are growing from the base on this plant, but it will take them several decades to reach the height where they will have flowers. Organ Pipe cacti are very slow growing and typically mature and flower only after 100 years of growth.

An interesting feature of plant growth in the Sonoran desert is the role of “nurse” plants, which are well developed trees or cacti that provide shade and protection for other young plants. You can see an Organ Pipe Cactus growing up through the shade of a Palo Verde tree on the right side of the photo, and an Ocotillo plant growing up next to an Organ Pipe Cactus in the center of the image.

Even with all the diversity of plant life in the Sonoran desert, climate is a challenge for birds and other animals, especially during the hot summer. By far the most numerous birds we saw while driving through the desert in mid-winter were the Ravens, which seem to be able to tolerate the climate and seasonal food scarcity extremely well.

After the storms, a little sun…

And then more rain, but in the meantime, we took some walks along the beach in Cambria and at Morro Rock. When the sun comes out, so do the animals.

Morning light from the sunrise reflecting on the ocean clouds. The waves were much calmer than yesterday.

There is a nice boardwalk and trail along the beach in Cambria, great for early morning walkers.

The powerful surf yesterday might have deposited some of this driftwood, but I suspect the pile has been accumulating from several recent storms. The tide and surf was so high yesterday, it covered the sand and driftwood here.

A couple of dogs were chasing each other on the beach. It was fun to try to capture their frolicking.

I particularly like this image — from a biological point of view. Four-legged runners maximize their stride length by flexing their backs and coiling the four legs together (left dog), and then extending their backs for maximum spread of the front and back legs (right dog). The fastest runners have the greatest degree of flexion and extension in their stride, and cycle through the two maneuvers most rapidly — like cheetahs.

Morro Rock was free of fog on this day, and we took a short walk around one side to see if there were any birds.

A lone Turkey Vulture swooped back and forth over the rock face.

An Osprey caught a nice updraft and hovered over one spot on the top of the rock for several seconds. Looking for a nesting spot? Or just riding the breeze.

Between the storms

We began the drive east during a set of storms that dropped a lot of rain on the California coast. But we ventured out between the raindrops to find a few birds in the heavy fog, stiff winds, and raging surf. 

There was no beach on the shoreline at Moonstone beach in Cambria. CA. The tides and the waves were crashing among the rocks, instead of on the sand beach.

The crest of the waves just beyond the outermost rocks was at least 10 feet.

A flock of Western Gulls and some Brown Pelicans were huddling on the beach until some people and a dog or two wandered by, and then a mass of birds launched themselves in the air. This is not a black and white shot — it was really dark gray with the stormy weather right on top of us.

Masses of seabirds silhouetted in the dim light against the backdrop of heavy ocean surf.

More crashing waves coming into shore at Morro Bay, down the coast from Cambria.

High winds whipped spray from the crest of a wave high into the air.

A sea otter and her pup lounged in the calmer water near the pier at Morro Bay.

This Western Gull paid no attention to all the wind, surf, and spray of the furious weather, just standing calmly on a rock right in front of us.

Desert scenes

The Mojave Desert is a challenging environment for living things with its cold winters, extreme hot summers, and lack of water. But it is an interesting place to visit nevertheless because of its stark scenery, weird vegetation, and the odd formations found off the beaten path. We took a detour on a loop road through the Mojave National Preserve in southeastern California and found the following interesting scenes that really deserved a longer look — but unfortunately not this time.

One of the entrances to the “Hole in the Wall” trail, an area of gas-filled lava deposits that wind and water have carved into strange and fantastic formations. The trail winds around and drops into a narrow slot with “holey” walls. It’s called Banshee Canyon because of the noise the formations make when the wind blows through them. To exit the canyon, you climb the walls with the assistance of rings set into the stone. A fun activity for old people like us??

The twisted, spiky, asymmetrical Joshua trees aren’t really trees. They are very tall yuccas, members of the Agave plant family. Their tough exterior and complex arrangement of leaves make good nesting and roosting sites for many animals.

A unique site in the desert landscape in the Mojave are the Kelso dunes which formed from the wind-blown sediments of former lake bottoms in this area. Although the dunes don’t look big or expansive in this photo, they are 600 feet high and cover 45 square miles. A unique community of animals and plants inhabit the dunes.

Who would imagine finding a big railroad depot in the middle of the Mojave desert? The Union Pacific railroad built the depot in early 1900s to serve trains running to and from Los Angeles ports. Kelso was at a point in the line where the trains needed supplies and helper engines added to the train to get it over the steep grade. Now the 120 year old building is a Visitor Center. The palms are the original trees planted here when the depot was built.

Granite boulders along the road were an excuse to stop for a snack and a quick hike. In other areas the granite was much more rugged, with fractured slabs, spires, and upturned blocks.

Another view of the granitic formations in the Mojave Preserve.

So many places to explore in what looks from the highway like just more boring desert, but driving the back roads reveals a wonderland of places to see.

From “Bad Country” to Big Nose Rock

South of Interstate 40 in western New Mexico are a series of reservations and scattered National Monuments, inviting us to do a little off-road exploring.

Four distinct volcanic eruptions from around 1500 BC to around 900 AD have left a landscape of rocky, cracked lava fields in the Malpais (literally “bad country”) area. Nevertheless, a trail over the lava fields allowed people of the Acoma, Laguna, Navajo, and Zuni tribes to navigate routes for trade and social gatherings for hundreds of years. Spanish explorers that came later to this area usually skirted it to avoid traversing the lava fields.

Difficult walking, to say the least!

Then park Service has paved portions of the trail to allow visitors to walk through the area.

Ponderosa pines seem to be able to grow in the lava fields, where sufficient erosion has occurred and soil has been deposited.

Further down the road was another interesting geological feature, a set of giant sandstone cliffs, one of which was named El Morro (the nose). This monument was closed when we visited, but what is of interest to tourists here is the history of the visitors to the rock. Names of visitors are carved into the base of the sandstone cliff, so that, like the pages of a history book, the rock reveals the succession of early Puebloan people, the Spanish explorers, the U.S. military, and then its designation in 1906 as a national monument by Theodore Roosevelt.

View of El Morro from the road

This side of the rock bears the carvings of visitors since about 1100 AD. You can just barely make out some etchings from this distance.

Happy New Year!

Here’s to another new year, filled with promise, and a chance to do it better than we did this year. 

Greetings from Mr. Capercaillie of Finland

A happy holiday to all

From Backyard Biology to my dear readers:

A re-look at “the truth about Santa’s reindeer”

A FB friend reminded me of a blog post I wrote in December 2021 that is worth a repeat for those of you readers that have recently joined the blog. I hope you enjoy this little essay on “girl power”. And it might be fun to talk about at the holiday dinner table…

[click on the title of the post in the box below to get to the original post on Dec. 16, 2021]

The truth about Santa’s reindeer

the Finale to the Scandinavian adventure

Driving back into Finland from Nordic Fjordland, we passed a couple of stands of medium sized birch and pines where we found some Hawk Owls vigorously defending their territories. By vigorous, I mean flying over us close enough to make us duck!

Our savvy bird guides (Ruth and Alan) spotted this pair of Hawk Owls perched by the roadside. The male then made several passes at us to scare us off, and gave us some great looks at its acrobatic and powerful flight.

With an aggressive owl flying back and forth we got great opportunities for flight shots

A Hawk Owl dive-bombing Steve, flying almost too fast to capture in the photo. (Photo by Ruth Miller). This is the same type of gliding dive the bird uses to attack its prey, small mammals or birds.

Hawk Owls are resident throughout the year in the northern taiga (birch and coniferous forests) of North America, Europe, and Siberia. Since they are hunters primarily of small mammals, like voles and mice, they might move south in the winter to find more food. But in Minnesota, they rarely come further south than the northern spruce forests and bogs, like the Sax-Zim area.

Hawk Owls are sit and wait predators, using both visual and auditory cues to locate prey. Like other, northern owls, they can hear mice moving under the snow.

Later, we stopped by the roadside where another guide had heard or seen a pair of Hawk Owls in a dwarfed stand of birch, and we enjoyed a few more photo opportunities of one of the owls of the pair as it flew over us to land in a tall pine.

Long, slender wings make this little owl a fast flyer.

Hawk Owl letting us know that our presence is not appreciated! It doesn’t get any better than this!

What a grand finale to our amazing adventures in the wilds of the Scandinavian arctic. Bears, amazing birds, incredible scenery, fantastic donuts, and who could forget reindeer mash, the traditional meal of the north.

Sautéed, roasted and shredded reindeer in a bed of mashed potatoes with lingonberry jam and pickle relish.