Southwest Boogie: Painted Desert/Petrified National Forest

This was a return visit for me, but a new site for Avi, who marveled at the beauty of the scenery. When I did this trip with Dan we spent most of our time in the Painted Desert. This time we stopped a few times along the Painted Desert, then drove (and hiked) down to the Petroglyphs before continuing onto the Petrified Forest part of the Park.

At the Petroglyph spot, we were greeted by a Common Raven (though we also saw some Chuhuahua Ravens in the park as well), hanging around the parking lot. We surmise it was looking for a handout.

The petroglyphs were abundant at this stop. But there were more at another stop called Newspaper Rock. Some samples from the initial trail are below (with others on my Facebook page and, eventually on my Picasa page as well).

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My favorite has to be the bird that appears to have a person in it’s bill. One has to wonder where the inspiration for this sort of drawing arose.

Then there’s the petrified wood.

The wood was originally washed downriver and buried in the silt to be mineralized over centuries. Silica and other minerals remained when the actual wood rotted away, resulting in beautifully colored logs and pieces of logs laying around appearing as though it used to be an actual forest.

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We didn’t see many birds while we were there (other than Ravens). However, upon leaving the park and driving back up to I-40 we saw a young Golden Eagle flying overhead, being mobbed by two Ravens.

We drove on, arriving at the Grand Canyon well after dark. May I say the Grand Canyon National Park is quite the maze to get around in the dark with no park map available to us, since the entry booth was closed when we arrived.

However, we were able to “sniff” our way to our lodging for the next couple of nights, the Maswik Lodge.

Southwest Boogie Acoma Pueblo

At the recommendation of a friend we set out to visit the Acoma Pueblo (Sky City). This is a village set high up on a mesa. The settlement dates back to the 12th century C.E., and has been continuously inhabited since then.

Today about a dozen families reside there, many of them working in pottery and beads, selling their wares along the tours.

The drive up to the Pueblo is incredibly dramatic, with rock formations on either side of the road. Scenery in the Southwest is both dramatic and ever-changing. This drive was no exception.

You can only visit the Pueblo on an organized tour. We paid $20 each, which covered the tour and camera permits.

The tour guide told us the residents live without running water or electricity, cooking and heating with wood. This is probably true for many of them. But we found a bit of anachronistic details in a couple of the homes. Can you find one in this photo?

(HINT: Look in the upper right corner of the photo.)

Avi and I, being creatures of detail, enjoyed the way of couple of the homes were set apart from the others through a little bit of decoration. One home even had a hummingbird feeder out, though we didn’t see any of the birds around, other than a few House Sparrows, masters of civilization everywhere.

The tour was interesting, the Pueblo was interesting, but, for me, the pottery was the MOST interesting. Inside the visitor center was a piece that will haunt me for years. It was a multi-piece Storyteller Doll – a Grandfather telling a story to many children.

The detailing is incredible. Every character has a Ladybug somewhere. The Grandfather has a small lizard on his foot and a butterfly on the bolo he wears around his neck.

The work is an enchanting piece of art. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the name of the artist. Shame on me!

I left the Pueblo richer by two pieces of pottery, beautifully and painstakingly decorated with natural slips created from the colored clays and sandstone in the area.

We took the tour bus down and continued on to the Painted Desert/Petrified National Forest.

Southwest Boogie, Oct. 23

We drove all afternoon yesterday and spent the night in Van Horn, TX. Woke up early in the morning, partook of our Holiday Inn Express "breakfast" and hit the road.

Our first stop was White Sands National Monument where we placed the very first stamp in our new National Parks Passport.

 

Unfortunately, it had rained heavily a couple of days prior so half the park was closed to traffic. But even access to half the park is pretty impressive! It's basically large white dunes made of gypsum. In fact, they're reputed to be the largest gypsum dune field in the world: 275 square acres. The National Park only uses part of the White Sands area. The rest is used by the US military for missile testing. In fact, the Trinity Site (where the first atomic bomb was detonated) lies at the northern end of the dune field.

Not much in the way of birds other than an easily identified Say's Phoebe. Any other birds we saw were small and flying away from us. So we spent our time looking at the vegetation and the way it interacted with the dunes in which it grew -- the sand giving these hardy plants a home and, in return, the plants giving the dunes some stability against the wind and rain.

After White Sands we drove back to Las Cruces, NM because we HAD to have a couple of #2 combination plates from Nellie's. It was the first time I've gone off my diet -- but it was necessary. If you've eaten at Nellie's you know. If you haven't eaten at Nellie's, get thee there ASAP!

We drove farther north and spent the afternoon checking things out at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in San Antonio, NM. This refuge is famous for its wintering flocks of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese. Although the bulk of the populations hadn't yet arrived, there were sufficient numbers to have brought out over a dozen photographers. In fact, I DO believe we were the only "just plain birders" there.

While we were watching, a small flock of Ross' Geese also flew in, landing near the larger Snow Geese and giving us a nice contrasting view of the two species.

We drove around the area for a while to see what else was around. We came across a field filled with American Crows, a few smaller birds scattered in different trees, and two falcons: an American Kestrel and a Merlin (photo below).





As the sun began going down, we decided not to complete the Marsh loop. Avi was reluctant to drive too much after dark in rural areas. So, we continued north and marveled at an incredibly beautiful sunset with luminescent clouds, followed by a bright full moon over the New Mexico desert.

We're staying in Albuquerque tonight and tomorrow hope to have time to get in everything we have optimistically planned.

Rather than post a bird list at the end of each day, fighting exhaustion, I'm just going to break it down in a final post after I've arrived home.

So, I'll leave you with our sunset and moonshine photos.

Doin' the Southwest Boogie

Today Avi and I will embark on what I'm calling our "Southwest Boogie". Translated, this means we are going to put the top down on the Mazda Miata and hit the road. Our itinerary is a wonderful combination of nature, culture, and scenery. We've even purchased a National Parks Pass for the occasion.

A quick rundown of our anticipated visits:
White Sands National Monument, NM
Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, NM
Acoma Pueblo, NM
Painted Desert/Petrified National Forest, AZ
Grand Canyon, AZ
Bryce Canyon, UT
Avi's medical school roommate in Scottsdale, AZ
Chiricahua National Monument, AZ
Big Bend National Park, TX

Yes, it's ambitious, especially for a mere 10 days. But it will be a taste of many different things. And, speaking of taste, I've yelped and roadfooded several of our stops (along with memories of the best places Dan and I ate on some of the same route during our drive to Seattle). So food will be an added component to the trip. I KNOW we'll be stopping at Nellie's in Las Cruces, NM and The Frontier in Albuquerque, NM. But I'm hoping we'll find a few other "gems" as well.

So, stay tuned for some amazing scenery, interesting stories, and maybe even some birds!

Quiet Summer

It's been a quiet summer -- at least birdwise. Because we've been busy with our adult children, who are now located on opposite corners of the country (Seattle, WA and Hollywood, FL), we've been doing quite a bit of non-birding travel, although there's always some birding involved in any place we go and anything we do.

We did travel over to Hollywood to visit our daughter for a few days and, in between, caught a ride to the John Lloyd State Park, just a few miles away from her apt. A friend of my daughter's gave us a ride and dropped us off at the entrance. Unfortunately, we miscalculated distances and wound up walking much farther into the park to get to the nature trail than we had originally thought. It was hot and humid and we also didn't bring water, assuming our walk would be minimal.

Luckily, there were restrooms with vending machines near the nature trail, so we corrected our mistake (one which I plan to never make again) and checked out what their trail had to offer. The trail took us through various habitats, including mangroves, beachside, intracoastal waterway, and forest. Though it wasn't very birdy, we thoroughly enjoyed the local Agriope Spiders and their enormous webs. We approximated one to be about 6 feet from top to bottom.

I think we also saw Horseshoe Crab nests with distinctive trails leading to and from the sandy areas in which they were located.

We're both looking forward to going back and, instead of helping our daughter get settled, getting in some quality birding time.

Also in the nearer future: a road trip through part of the Southwest. On the itinerary during our West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah travels:
White Sands National Monument, Bosque del Apache, possibly Sandia National Forest, Acoma Pueblo, Painted Desert/Petrified National Forest, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, a visit to Phoenix (to see my husband's medical school roommate), and a couple of other stops which are yet to be determined. If you have any suggestions, especially between Phoenix, AZ and Las Cruces, NM, please be sure to let me know in the comments section.

Finally, in the more distant future, we'll be going on a birding survey in Cuba with the Ct. Audubon Society's Ecotravel divisition and the Caribbean Conservation Trust (just got word of this year's license approval). With all the talk of allowing Americans to, once again, travel to Cuba, I'm happy we'll be seeing it before the influx of American development.

Apparently Nature just had a special on what Cuba has to offer for someone interested in nature. You can watch it here. I haven't seen it yet, but will be watching it within the next couple of days.

So, stay tuned. I'm hoping our time in the field will increase, as will the birding posts here.

And Now for a Word from: Seattle

June 12-19, 2010

Avie and I visited our son in Seattle. In addition to good coffee, good food, and gorgeous landscapes, we also got in a bit of good birding – even if that was a secondary (or even tertiary) activity.

Dan, our son, has been there a year. As a result, he has a feel for the different areas in and around the city. He made sure we had a good introduction to several of them, both urban and rural.

The biggest thing in our favor was how cooperative the weather was during our week there. It only sprinkled a couple of times, neither of them during critical moments in the trip.

Rather than give a blow by blow recounting of the entire trip, I’ll simply give a synopsis of the highlight places and birds.

Greenlake Park is only a couple of blocks away from my son’s house. (Yeah – he really lucked out as a poor graduate student!). We spent a couple of afternoons there, wandering around the lake. It was always busy with families, dogs, joggers, bikers, roller bladers, and the ever-present petition solicitor. In spite of its business, we were able to score a couple of good life birds: Bushtit and Glaucous-winged Gull.

The Bushtits make for the more amusing story. I heard a flock of boisterous birds in one of the conifers at the park and managed to get my binoculars on them. Avie was a bit of distance away. I got his attention and loudly whispered “Bushtits!”

He didn’t hear me. But I was reluctant to say such a potentially misinterpreted word much louder. Once again, creeping above a whisper this time, I repeated, “Bushtits!!”

Again, he failed to understand while a woman, with a young child in tow, gave me a funny look.

I finally walked over to Avie and pointed out the flock. He giggled, telling me he didn’t previously know why I wouldn’t just call out the name. His subsequent enlightenment amused us for quite a while after.

We also birded around the Mineral Springs disc golf course, which was a couple of blocks from our hotel. (My daughter’s boyfriend plays.) There were plenty of Crows around, and it didn’t take us long to hear the differences in their calls’ pitches. We concluded we were hearing two different species: American Crow and Northwestern Crow, the latter being another life bird for our list.

In addition to the Crows, one of the noisier birds in Mineral Springs Park was a beautiful Spotted Towhee sitting in the sunlight.

We also visited Golden Gardens Park a couple of times. I had been there on my last visit and thought it would be a great spot for some birding while Dan and Alana (both my adult children) took their dogs to play at the dog park there. It was, indeed, a good stop.

First of all, the trail down from the dog park area is spectacular with towering conifers (I believe they’re sequoias) all around. As far as life birds, we picked up several Chestnut-backed Chickadees.

While we were getting back into the car I saw a flash of white and red. Instinctively I knew it was a Pileated Woodpecker. But let me go to a backstory.

When the kids were younger (16 and 14) we went up to Maine for a vacation. Our purpose was to see Atlantic Puffins. The kids? Although they enjoyed the Puffins and a whale-watching tour, the rest of the time they were pretty much bored out of their skulls.

One day we were driving the small road from the rental cottage to the main road. Two Pileated Woodpeckers flew overhead. Avie swerved as we both shouted, “Pileated, pileated!!” The kids refer to this as “the time we almost died because Mom and Dad saw a stupid woodpecker.”

Well, this was their opportunity to actually see a Pileated Woodpecker in person. They were duly impressed, but still didn’t believe the bird was worth dying for!

 

We had decided we were going to take the Ferry out of Mukilteo to Whidbey Island (pronounced Woodbee) one day. When that day arrived it was raining and the forecast didn’t look good.

We decided to take a chance and go anyway. Even if we were forced to remain in the car for the day, we’d still see spectacular scenery. And, of course, where weather is concerned, one never knows.

We got onto the ferry and had to remain on the car deck because we brought the two dogs with us. But it was still open and we were able to scan the water during our time on board. We picked up a Pigeon Guillemot from the deck, along with a Double-crested Cormorant.

We arrived at Whidbey Island, pulled off the ferry and started driving. As we drove the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun shone for the rest of the day.

We stopped at Coupville for lunch and ate outside on a patio overlooking the waters of the Puget Sound. During the right times of the year you can observe whales migrating through. We were lucky enough to see a total of 18 Bald Eagles flying over our heads and soaring over the ridge by the beach across the water.

You can see above how busy I was checking on birds!

After lunch we hiked down to the dock and crossed over to a small building. The building didn’t have much to offer. But it was amusing to watch the Gulls. they would pick up an oyster from the enormous biomass on the beach, fly high up into the air, and drop it, hoping it would split open, giving them access to the food inside.

The following photo will give you a feel for what I mean by “biomass”:

We also spent a little while wandering around Coupville, visiting a couple of the galleries before driving north to Deception Pass to do a bit of hiking.

First we walked a short ways onto the bridge overlooking the water. Unfortunately, the walkway is very narrow, so you’re not far from the traffic, whizzing by you at top speed.

Then we hiked down a trail to the small beach. The kids and their dogs made fast work of the hike down. Avie and I took a much more leisurely pace, hoping to see some birds. We heard more than we saw. There’s still one complex, long song we haven’t identified, though we surmise it was from a Wren.

From the beach we saw several Sea Lions and a new life bird, a Marbled Murrelet.

On the hike back up the kids were a bit more intrigued with life on the trail. My daughter even found a Banana Slug tucked into a piece of fallen wood.

We also found a colony of LARGE ants living inside another fallen log:

Our last full day in the city we took a late afternoon trip to the Marymoor Park (dog park, to be precise) in Redmond. The dog park is incredibly extensive and runs by water. As a result, there were plenty of birds AND mosquitoes. Probably the best bird of that particular stop were female Hooded Mergansers. But we also picked up some Cedar Waxwings and a Yellow Warbler.

For those of you who ask if we did any of the typical touristy things Seattle has to offer, may I also present the following two photos:

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Avie and I are looking forward to a return visit during a better birding season. Since Dan has just finished his first year in a PhD program, I think there will be several trips in the future. But this trip was a good introduction to the incredible beauty of the Pacific Northwest and some of the birds it has to offer.

The list of birds (that I remember – sloppy documentation on this trip):

 

Canada Goose

Mallard

Hooded Merganser

Red-tailed Hawk

Bald Eagle

Merlin

Glaucous-winged gull

Pigeon Guillemot

Marbled Murrelet

Rock Pigeon

Mourning dove

Common Nighthawk

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker

American Crow

Northwestern Crow

Violet-green Swallow

Tree Swallow

Barn Swallow

Black-capped Chickadee

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Bushtit

House Wren

American Robin

European Starling

Cedar Waxwing

Yellow Warbler

Spotted Towhee

Savannah Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Red-winged Blackbird

House Finch

American Goldfinch

House Sparrow

Technorati Tags: birdwatching,birding,travel,Seattle,Washington,Whidbey Island

Last Morning on the Galapagos Islands

April 18, 2010

Before writing about the last day, allow me to back up a bit to the last evening.

Avie had a rough go the late afternoon and early evening. His seasickness patch, which had worked so well through the entire trip, peeled off, the result of heavy sweating while on Española.

While he thought it wouldn’t make a big difference, it did. He was sick through dinner and retired to the cabin immediately after (first applying a new patch to try and alleviate the nausea).

I remained for the final evening’s “ceremony”, which turned out to be an award ceremony, of sorts.

The Captain, naturalists Ivan and Fatima, and the rest of the crew, put on their dress uniforms and we were all given cocktails. They went called each passenger, giving us our new, “Galapagos names” as certified by Imperium Neptuni Regis (Imperial King Neptune) and our own Captain Victor. Before giving each name either Ivan or Fatima would give clues so we could guess what our new name would be.

I accepted Avie’s certificate on his behalf. He was renamed “Waved Albatross”. When it was my turn they didn’t even have to give clues. We all knew my new “Galapagos name” would have to be “Darwin’s Finches”; and so it was!

 

Happily, Avie recuperated shortly after the awards ceremony ended, but was significantly less impressed with his certificate than I had been. I guess he needed that cocktail!

The following morning we finished up the last bits of packing and placed our bags outside our cabin for pickup and transport to the airport. Ivan would be taking care of checking the bags (a very nice touch) while we went to the Galapagos Interpretation Center, a museum teaching about human exploration, immigration, integration, and its past and continuing effects on these special islands.

We spent about an hour or so exploring the museum (and studying more finches around the buildings). Then we were on our own to walk down the hill to the town of Puerto Baqueriyo Moreno. There were some very nice shops and galleries on the way, and we made a few more purchases before rendezvousing with our airport tranportation.

We had fun looking at the street signs, each different, each having one of the Galapagos species.

We had an uneventful flight back to Quito. On the way back to the San Jorge Lodge, we stopped at a pharmacy to get a splint for one of the women who had fallen and injured her wrist on Española.

At San Jorge we had a final dinner with our Galapagos family, along with a French couple who had just arrived in Ecuador from Switzerland.

On our way back to the room we got our last “creature” of the trip: a very handsome, but sizeable tarantula.

As for sleep – not so much. We had to get up at 3:45 a.m. for our ride to the airport and our early morning flight back to the U.S.

We had set foot on nine of the Islands and seen virtually all of their endemic birds. I think what I experienced will remain with me for the rest of my life.