Wow, it has been a really long time since I posted anything
here. But field work is now over for the
year, so now I am officially chained to my laptop, with hopes of a few
explorations every now and then!
On one of my favorite trips in the past several months, I
headed up to the Pine Forest Mountains with some friends, to camp and look at
birds. It was the middle of September,
so the aspen were starting to turn color, and migration was in full swing. It’s not the best of roads up in there, so we
had the mountain to ourselves at night, though we ran into the occasional
hunter, dirt biker or local ranchers riding their horses during the day.
We camped down at Onion Valley Reservoir, but on one of the
days we birded our way slowly up the couple of miles to get to Blue Lake. Blue Lake is GORGEOUS! A little jewel, surrounded by whitebark and
limber pines, aspen, and mahogany. There
were Clark’s Nutcrackers making a racket from the surrounding hillsides, and enormous
numbers of Audubon’s Warblers were “whit”-ing from all of the aspen we passed,
impersonating flycatchers.
We stopped for awhile there at the lake to enjoy the view,
listen to the birds, dip feet into cool water, and then began to make our way
back – stopping once on the promontory of a ridgelet overlooking the Thousand
Creek valley far below. It was hazy with
smoke from some unidentified fire, but still beautiful. And the enormous white boulders, shaded by
gnarled mahoganies invited us to sit down for a bit, where we were rewarded
with the sight of a Bald Eagle circling over the reservoir.
A wonderful trip!
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