The Desert Year

[yuccahead]

As the river level lowers sandbars begin to appear and with the heat and slower flow ... it's canoe time.


Canoeing the Colorado River through these canyons is always great for birdwatching. Raven pairs, hawks, turkey vultures soar above while dozens of songbirds hide in the tamarisk along the shore, singing nonstop.
Several species of ducks and the ever present Canadian geese are nearly always on the water somewhere.



There are a couple of Great Blue Heron nests high above the river on a sandstone ledge. We were lucky enough on the last trip to find the herons sitting in their nests.



I was hoping this one would have been sharper, but I was bobbing down the river at the time.

[reptilist]

I'm sure glad ant lions aren't 6 feet long!

Those smooth sided potholes are hell on whiptail lizards! Poor things starve to death in there....I think the species you have there in the pics are tiger whiptails...Aspidosceles tigris.

[yuccahead]

I'm sure glad ant lions aren't 6 feet long!

Those smooth sided potholes are hell on whiptail lizards! Poor things starve to death in there....I think the species you have there in the pics are tiger whiptails...Aspidosceles tigris.

Thanks rep, I somehow missed this post, didn't mean to ignore you.

[yuccahead]

Canoe trips down the river are the norm on days off in July. Stopping on sand bars and islands to see which animals have been by recently.
Animal tracks are a fascination for me so anytime I find good clear prints in wet sand it's the best kind of entertainment.
A few recent finds-
River otter are not frequently seen but sometimes we will catch a glimpse of them swimming in the river leaving a V shaped wake with just the top of it's head exposed. Otter tracks are only a little more common.
River otter


The small, light track of a gray fox


Striped skunk tracks


On a recent raft trip we found a skull of a beaver along the shore.
It's about as big as a beaver skull can get at 6" long and the extremely long incisors suggest this was an old beaver that may have died of natural causes.

[yuccahead]

There seems to be an abundance of butterflies this year. Maybe it was the snowy winter, the wet spring and now that the summer monsoons are upon us it's really been a humid month. I don't know but it's not easy getting a good shot of them or any other insect for that matter. Here are a couple of lucky shots.





And a damsel fly that lit on a rope on a raft.

[yuccahead]

One of the best things to do in the middle of summer in the desert is to, of course, get the heck out of it. If you're lucky there's a mountain nearby. We've got the LaSal mountains a half hour drive away from town with the highest peak on the Colorado Plateau, Mt Peale, at over 12,000 ft. No need to go that high though, there are small lakes and creeks in the 8,000-9,000 ft range and the other day I took a walk up around Oowah Lake and Mill Creek. I came across muledeer on the drive up and 3 redtail hawks were circling above me as I pulled up to the lake. Numerous squirrels and chipmunks were diving for cover as I hiked the trail and I came across some fresh elk tracks. I'm hoping to get back up here when the aspens turn to fall colors.
Haystack Mtn in clouds


Mill Creek


There were a lot of mountain flowers blooming up there












And a few of these

[yuccahead]

There are so many insects along the river banks these days it's impossible to keep up with them all. They must be loving this summer...the humidity has been so high for several weeks it's hard to think of this place as a desert. A magnificent thunder/lightning storm came through last night dumping buckets of rain...flash floods must have been roaring through canyons everywhere.
A few of the local insects

Damselfly(Northern Bluet?)


A great website for southwest damselflies
http://southwestdragonflies.net/damsels ... lifornicus

Dragonfly


Butterfly


Vevet ant, not an ant at all, but a wasp with a painful sting


Unknown, possibly a wasp of some sort?


A couple of mammal photos near the river
Llamas in the shade


Muledeer watching from cover


Finally, datura is blooming everywhere right now

[Guz]

LLAMAS?!?!?

[Vulture]

Great photos from a great place. Good job.

[yuccahead]

Great photos from a great place. Good job.

Thanks Vulture

LLAMAS?!?!?

Yeah, they're not wild, exactly, there's a guy that has a few on some property near the river and I see them once in a while. But, who doesn't like a llama?