The Rio that is no longer so Grande

The Rio Grande is the fourth-longest river in North America and runs almost 1900 miles from its origin in south-central Colorado through the cities of Albuquerque and El Paso across the Chihuahuan desert in northern and central Texas to its mouth near Brownsville, Texas, where it flows (or not) into the Gulf of Mexico. I visited that area near South Padre Island in January 2017, and was amazed at how little water there was in the “grand river”.

The narrow strip of water behind the white pelicans and gulls standing on the sand spit is the Rio Grande River emptying into the Gulf of Mexico! You can just barely see the waves of the Gulf waters where the river enters. The sandy hill beyond the river is, of course, Mexico. Photographed Jan, 2017.

Since the mid-20th century, only about 20% of the Rio Grande water reaches the Gulf of Mexico and in some years (e.g., 2000), no water flows to the Gulf at all. This is largely a result of water taken out for irrigation of farmland in Colorado and Texas and water supplied to large cities along its route, along with climate changes in the amount of precipitation.

According to my phone’s GPS, I am standing in the middle of the Rio Grande, right on the U.S.-Mexico border!

But in traveling through the arid landscape of the Chihuahuan desert in Texas in mid-winter this year, we were still able to see what the historic power of this river had carved along some of its routes in Big Bend National and State Parks.

Much of the river topography is rolling hills surrounding the river valley. In some areas, there is enough water to support a grove of cottonwoods.

In places, the river valley is surrounded by 1000-foot limestone cliffs. Grasses and willows line the sides of the river bank.

Typical topography along the Rio Grande in southern Texas

Side canyons with steep walls attest to the powerful action of the water cutting through the limestone.

A view into one of the narrow canyons along the river in the Big Bend Ranch State Park. Santa Elena Canyon is popular with canoers for its scenic beauty.

With so little water in the river and in such a drought-prone landscape, you might expect there would be little wildlife. However, Audubon’s bird inventories of the park show that more than 150 bird species spend the winter in some parts of the park. Much to our surprise, we saw at least one Roadrunner a day, (and an amazing seven of them one day) along with many other brilliantly-colored and new birds for the trip.

A pair of Roadrunners canvassed the grounds of the Cottonwood campground in the state park.

Vermillion flycatchers hunt for flying insects near water. Southern Texas is at the northern edge of their winter range.

Golden-fronted Woodpeckers, with their bright orange and red head feathers, can only be found in south and central Texas in the U.S., the northern edge of their range. Unlike most woodpeckers, these birds consume as much fruit and nuts as they do insects.

Black-tailed Gnatcatchers inhabit the driest desert scrubland in the southwestern U.S., finding enough insects there to sustain themselves without needing much water.

Rock Wrens are insect and spider specialists in the driest deserts of the southwestern U.S., finding enough food in the nooks and crannies of rocks to allow them to be completely independent of water.

Say’s Phoebes are flycatchers, hunting insects from a perch and darting out to catch them. South Texas is the northern extent of their winter range; they migrate as far north as central Canada to breed.

White-winged Doves spend the winter in Mexico and Central America, except for a small area of the Rio Grande Valley in Big Bend National Park. They can be found in brushy thickets in the desert, but are most fond of dining on the nectar, pollen, fruit, and seeds of the Saguaro cactus in the Sonoran desert.

A new bird for us was the Rufous-crowned Sparrow, a chunky-bodied sparrow with a long tail and a handsome face. The species has a very disjunct distribution, occurring along the coastal areas of California, central Texas, parts of southern Arizona and New Mexico, and the grassy slopes of the eastern and western sides of the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Hot, rocky hillsides are their preferred sites for foraging for seeds.

A walk in the canyon

We spent some time hiking in Ramsey Canyon, a Nature Conservancy preserve in southern Arizona near the city of Sierra Vista. This preserve is a unique and interesting place because it is located at the intersection of Sonoran and Chihuahan deserts and the junction of the Rocky Mountains with the Sierra Madre of Mexico. As a result, the preserve has representatives of all of these communities in one place.

The remains of a cabin of an early settler in the canyon.

The trees lining the creek bed shade the trail and provide a cool respite from summer heat. On this winter day after a recent snowfall here, the temperature was quite chilly.

The canyon is an elongate creek bed lined with shady sycamores, oaks, and maples and steep hillsides lined with pines, cacti, and yucca. And it has the added attraction of a very nice bed and breakfast right next door to the preserve.

The canyon hillsides can be quite dry and hot with full sun exposure.

Picturesque scenes along the creek are everywhere on the trail up the canyon.

When the creek is running, there are small waterfalls.

Birds are common all along the canyon trail in the spring and summer, but it was quiet on this cool, wintry day. Everyone’s favorite spring and summer inhabitant of the canyons of southern Arizona — the Elegant Trogon from Cave Creek Canyon.

Coatis (raccoon relatives), like many other visitors to and inhabitants of the canyons of southern Arizona, have expanded their range northward from central and South America into similar habitats in the brushy slopes and wooded areas of the Arizona canyons. (Photo by Debbie Reynolds.)

A delightful place to visit, and to support the work of The Nature Conservancy: “Together, we find a way” to preserve our world.

A Crane-derful morning

A return visit to Whitewater Draw in the Sulfur Springs valley of southern Arizona was just as exciting as the first time we visited. Once again several thousand cranes were bunched in groups around lagoons of the Rio de Agua Prieta. It’s a photographer’s dream just to stand and watch as groups of cranes break off from one area, circle in the sky, and drop down into another area, while croaking their unmistakable, prehistoric rattling bugle.

A unique formation for the fly-in.

We watched the cranes fly around for a couple of hours in the morning, then took a break for a picnic lunch, and when we returned to the lagoons, the cranes were having a mid-day break. Most of them were gathered around one edge of the lagoon in a long line. Some were sipping water, some were grooming, some were standing still as statues, but the scene was entirely different than the early morning.

Mid-day gathering at the waterhole…

Crane statues

Like most birds, cranes dip their beaks and fill their mouths with water, then tip their heads back to let the water run down their throats.

And there was very little vocalization, unlike during the morning hours. But here is one bird making some sort of announcement.

Weather drama in the grasslands

On our first visit to Buenos Aires national wildlife refuge in southern Arizona last February, we saw lots of wildlife with little effort. But the weather this year could not have been more different than last year. Cold wind kept most of the birds from appearing, and even after driving every road open to the public we never found the pronghorn antelope that are so commonly observed near the public roads.

Where are all the ducks? Where are the deer and antelope that come to this pond to drink?

At least one little bird didn’t mind the change in weather. We’ve been lucky to find Soras, members of the rail family, in this little marshy pond near the entrance of the refuge, both times we’ve visited here. These small marsh inhabitants are usually quite secretive as they probe for seeds, insects, and vegetation among the tall stems of marsh plants.

On this cold, windy day, animals were scarce. The scenery was beautiful, if a little stark with just grass and distant mountains.

A stately adult Red-tailed Hawk patiently perched on a snag, buffeted at times by wind, and really didn’t want to leave its perch.

A female Northern Harrier, as always, flew away from us.

As it turns out, the wildlife at the refuge were good predictors of the coming stormy weather, because it snowed overnight, and morning temperatures the next day were in the low 30s F. Although the dirt roads were soft and slippery, we drove back to the refuge anyway, and finally found the antelope and the deer, as well as some dramatic winter landscapes.

Snowy peaks and storm clouds made dramatic landscapes.

We found a few white-tailed deer late in the afternoon near the road.

A little sun broke through the thick storm clouds and lit up the grassy area where the pronghorn were foraging.

But the weather wasn’t done with us yet. The atmospheric river that hit Southern California in early February was probably responsible for the snowy, stormy weather that followed us in Arizona.

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.

Birds in the desert

Actually, we’re not seeing a lot of birds in the desert on this trip: it’s winter (food is scarce), and it’s cold! Cold enough to snow—I.e., it’s warmer in Minnesota than in Arizona right now. We have braved walking around in the rain, sleet, snow, and strong winds trying to find the birds, but they are too smart to come out to greet us in this weather. 

The Mojave desert is an intimidating place — extreme heat in the summer and extreme cold in the winter. What a challenge for a small, warm-blooded animal to exist there. How do birds manage?

The variety of plants in the Mojave desert provide many different hiding and roosting spots for small animals, and their leaves and fruits are a source of food for many birds and small mammals.

Cholla is a scary-looking plant. Its small, jointed lobes can easily break off and adhere to a careless passer-by, but it offers protection from predation to birds that nest in it, like Cactus Wrens and Thrashers. Fruit ripening on the tips of the branches are a food source for some animals.

Bladderpod is a medium-large shrub that offers some shade from desert heat. The leaves emit a pungent odor to deter herbivores from munching on it, but the flowers have lots of nectar.

On a warmer, sunnier day, we might have seen quite a variety of birds in the Mojave desert. These desert species are champions of water conservation, using scanty water resources, finding food, and building or finding protection from heat and/or cold.

Gambel Quail eat primarily seeds, but seek out succulent green vegetation and dewy leaves in the early morning hours as a source of water. They can fly to distant water holes to replenish their body water, when they get heat stressed or dehydrated.

Black-throated Sparrows can survive without access to standing water on just a seed diet. Fat-rich seeds provide a gram of water for every gram of fat metabolized, and they excrete a dry paste which also saves them some water. They supplement their seed diet with juicy insects when they are available.

Cactus wrens can also live in areas without free water available, but they eat mostly insects, fruits, and succulent vegetation to obtain enough water daily.

Verdins are tiny, distant relatives of chickadees and are primarily insectivorous, but they supplement their diet with fruit and nectar when it’s available. Verdins build a globular nest of thorns and dry leaves in thorny shrubs that they use for both raising their chicks and for a retreat from the hot midday sun in the summer or the cold days in winter.

Curve-billed Thrashers are not fussy eaters. They eat insects when available, and consume fruit and nectar or succulent vegetation and new leaves to balance their water budget. Almost all Curve-billed Thrashers build their nests in Cholla cacti, where the spines of the plant offer both protection from predators and shade in the middle of the day.

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.

a walk through the redwoods

On a sunny day between storms, we had a delightful downhill walk through the Reinhardt regional park in Oakland, CA, where we marveled at the tall trees as well as the thousands of overwintering (and breeding) native ladybugs.

These are 2nd to 3rd generation replacement trees of the redwoods harvested for lumber more than 100 years ago.

The trees are draped with lichen and moss. It’s amazing how humid it feels under the redwood canopy, and completely different in the sun-lit light gaps in the forest.

Part of the beautiful trail…

A stream crossing..

Some of the thousands! of ladybugs amassed on the low, sun-lit vegetation…

Even the bridge is covered with moss.

Younger daughter’ family gets to hike in these beautiful hills every weekend.

Prairie birds and National Grasslands

On our way west, we visited Quivira national wildlife refuge in south central Kansas and Cimarron national grasslands on the border of Colorado, Oklahoma, and southwestern Kansas. There were no wildflowers out, no mammals grazing the prairie, and few birds active.

A Northern Harrier coursing over a grassy area in Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.

A female Harrier getting right down on the tops of the grass stems to hear or see mice moving through the grass.

A small Sharp-shinned Hawk rested on a tangle of cottonwood branches in Cimarron national grassland, waiting for the unsuspecting sparrows to fly by,

While overhead, the “sharpy’s” much larger relative, a Cooper’s Hawk, circled the same patch of downed branches.

But we did learn about the importance of the Sante Fe trail, 23 miles of which runs through the Cimarron grasslands. This was a main route of commerce in the early 1800s, especially after Mexico won its independence from Spain, so that goods could be brought from Mexico all the way east to Independence, MO, and vice versa. 

The Sante Fe trail arcs around the base of the high promontory called Point of Rocks. In the distance the Cimarron River is bordered by cottonwoods, and the Cimarron grasslands stretch off into the distance.

Travelers on the route were always looking for good spots to stop for water and trading, and Native Americans showed them the landmark (Point of Rocks — literally, exactly what it still is today) that marked a set of natural springs nearby. 

A different view of the Santa Fe trail, the Cimarron River lined with trees, and the rocky promontory. The river water often dried up in the summer, but the springs had water all year-round.

We did see a few small birds, in addition to dozens of Harriers and other hawks, and the Lapland Longspur was a new species for us. 

Lapland Longspurs are striking even in their winter “dull” plumage. We should have been able to see this species in Finland and Norway last summer. They are the only North American Longspur species to breed all across the Arctic in the summer, where they gobble up thousands of seeds and hundreds of insects daily. They spend the winter in the lower 48, hunting for seeds along roadsides, which is where we found this bird.