Desert Birds
The black-throated sparrow is my favorite sparrow, and the first place I ever saw one was at Big Bend National Park, Texas. They are also common in Southern California, too.
This one’s bushy “eyebrows” look quote comical.
Read the rest of this entry »Coachella Valley Wildflowers
Coachella Valley
Blue skies and sunshine are nice, but often lack mood and character. Leftover fog and showers from an overnight rainstorm in the California desert a couple weeks ago gave me a surprising landscape.
I had visited the Coachella Valley Preserve’s Thousand Palms Oasis about 25 years ago, and remembered it as being a shady forest of native California fan palms with the old, brown leaves folded down around their trunks.
Read the rest of this entry »More Superbloom
I discovered a very pretty hillside two weeks ago when I exited the southern end of Soda Lake Road in Carrizo Plain National Monument, and took a short drive to explore.
I love the soft curves of the grassy hills in Central Coast California, and am still wowed by the brilliant greens which we hardly saw last year. But add in the vivid yellow hillside daisies, and the goldfields belly flowers, and I’m in loooooovvvveeee with the landscape.
Read the rest of this entry »Carrizo Plain Wildflower Feast
For some reason, people seem to think the purple wildflowers are the most desirable, or at least the best colors to set off the sunshine yellows of the goldfields and hillside daisies at Carrizo Plain National Monument.
Me, I’m a fan of yellow. Lemon yellow. The most brilliant yellow that has carpeted the hills and fields of this area. I do love it when a smattering of purple shows up, however. Yellow, green, purple. Sometimes goldenrod where there are the fiddlenecks. If I could get orange California poppies added to the quilt I’d be in wildflower heaven.
Read the rest of this entry »A Wildflower Adventure – Part 3
At the risk of having repeats, I’m going to extol the virtues of a wildflower bloom in the Anza-Borrego desert, mainly by letting the photos speak for themselves.
Read the rest of this entry »A Wildflower Adventure-Part 2
Rather than wait for all of my Anza-Borrego photos to be edited, I’m putting up a sampler, starting with the last image I made in the 2-1/2 days I was there.
These images were made alongside the S-22 road between mile markers 30 and 31. This immense flower field is dominated by the lovely sand verbena.
Read the rest of this entry »Salton Sea Birds
One of the great joys of living in California four years ago was discovering the burrowing owls at the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge on the Salton Sea in Southern California’s Imperial Valley.
On my trip to view the wildflower bloom in the desert, I stopped by specifically to look for them. I was not disappointed.
Read the rest of this entry »A Wildflower Adventure – Part 1
I missed out on the 2017 California “superbloom” because I was living in Oklahoma, but it’s always been a dream of mine to see and photograph the desert in crazy bloom.
However, there is a very spectacular area in Southern California that is chockablock full of orange California poppies, and I made a stressful detour to see it.
Read the rest of this entry »Carrizo Plain Wildflowers-March 3
It only took a week and a little more rain and cool weather, and the yellow splashes on a few hillsides spread like wet paint splattered on the landscape. While most of the wild color occurs just outside the Carrizo Plain National Monument, it is clearly visible from Soda Lake and Seven Mile Roads.
I love clouds that add depth and an ever-changing light show, and because the plain is skirted by two rows of hills, the clouds were held back just enough to allow sunlight to dapple the soft hills.
Read the rest of this entry »Carrizo Plain Winter Birds
Last week’s visit to Carrizo Plain National Monument yielded some nice birds as well as a herd of at least 100 Tule elk about a half mile in the distance.
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