Stayed at Black Rock Campground in Yucca Valley for a few days. Not sure when the next time I will be in the area during the prime winter, early spring time frame, so wanted to take advantage of it. This campground has great Verizon evdo coverage. Not sure when I’ve had a faster internet connection.

Ten miles south of the campground is Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. It is on an earthquake fault where a spring comes to the surface for a short distance. It is just beautiful and worth a visit. Their land borders on Joshua Tree National Park and is managed by the BLM. They have a goal of making a large corridor for wildlife, so they are not boxed into a small area surrounded by developed areas.

Talk about developed areas, houses have been built right up to Black Rock Campground. So glad Joshua Tree National Park has their land. Otherwise, you know houses would have been built all the way through the park and up to the hilltops.

An antelope ground squirrel.  Have wanted to get a picture of one of these small squirrels for a long time. This guy had a burrow under a yucca plant next to my campsite.

Black tailed jackrabbit.

Cactus wren

Male and female Gambel’s quail

Scrub jay. Also saw a large flock of pinyon jays. They are the only jay that travels in a flock. Didn’t get a picture. Drats!!

A titmouse, either a juniper or oak titmouse, not sure which.

Noticed that it became very quiet after around 3:00 pm most days. That must be predator time. A coyote walked through my camp one day during this time.

Stayed at Salt Creek Campground on the Salton Sea prior to coming to Joshua Tree National Park. Not many pelicans there yet. There is a 10-15 degree temperature difference between the Salton Sea area and Black Rock Campground at 4,000 feet elevation.

The Salineño Bird Refuge (aka USFWS Kepler Tract) is next to the Rio Grande River a few miles from Falcon Dam. There is a caretaker on site who puts out food for the birds. It is a place where you can see three different orioles at the same site.

Above, an male altamira oriole on the left, and a female hooded oriole on the right. The altamira orioles are the largest of the orioles.

Male hooded oriole

Male, juvenile hooded oriole.

Audubon’s oriole with a mealworm.

The altamira oriole on the left kept hissing at the great kiskadee on the right, until the kiskadee responded.

One green jay try’s a mealworm, while the other one sticks to peanuts. Mealworms have to be a rare treat. The kiskadees were really going after them. They have never seemed interested in the regular bird food I put out.

Random musings: The central Rio Grande Valley between the towns of Weslaco and Mission seems like a unique mix of people. You have a large population of winter Texans, mostly older and white, and a large population of young hispanics. A lot of the winter Texans come from midwest farming states. Many of the rv parks offer a lot of social activities. I talked to a man when I took my truck in for an oil change who has been coming here for 20 years. He and his wife love to dance, and there are lots of dances here. He also has a mobile home in Maine. They spend summers in Maine and winters in Texas and fly between the two sites.

The rv park I stayed at in Alamo charges around $2,000 for 6 months occupancy and 6 months storage. If you put a mobile home on the site, you are kind of stuck, as it is not easy to move a mobile home. The man I talked to said he owned the land his home is on, but that is probably rare.

Heard a lot of sirens this visit, at least one every 2 or 3 hours. All I saw were ambulances, no police cars. This may reflect on the large number of older people here and some large hospitals in the area.

Below, an orange-crowned warbler and a singing black-crested titmouse at the Frontera Audubon site.

I have been in Klamath, California for almost a week. An rv park along the Klamath River, not more than a mile east of the picture above, offers a great price for Escapee members, just for the month of May. I could not afford to stay here otherwise. Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, just a few miles south, has a maximum trailer length of 24 feet at their campground. So, I could not stay there even if I wanted to.

Young male Roosevelt Elk in the rain in the Elk Prairie area next to Prairie Creek Redwood State Park campground and picnic area. The Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway goes through the park with places to pull over to watch the elk. The parkway is a scenic alternative to the #101. You can get back on the #101 at both ends of it. Besides elk watching, there are parking areas for a lot of trails that go through the redwood groves.

Roosevelt elk heading for Gold Bluff Beach which is part of the park. The road to the beach, Davison Road, is similar to Howland Hill Road, in that it’s a rough one lane road. Trailers are not allowed on it. There are trails to the beach from the park campground.

Trail through the Lady Bird Johnson redwood grove.

Don’t make a good bird go bad is a campaign seen in a lot of the coastal redwood areas. The goal is to get people to stop feeding Steller’s Jay’s and ravens, either directly or by leaving trash that they can get food from. Marbled murrelets hunt for food in the ocean, but fly inland to nest in old-growth trees. Jays, ravens and crows flying through to get food from humans, fly over the murrelets nests and will eat the eggs while the murrelets are out hunting for food.

The jay below was going up to cars at The Big Tree parking lot. This is probably the most popular stopping place for people driving through the area.

Moved a little south to Bullards State Park in Bandon, Oregon. It is really nice staying at the Oregon coast state campgrounds this time of year—there are no crowds. The downside is, it’s cold! The temps are in the 50-60′s during the day, but the wind chill makes it feel a lot colder.

There are two chestnut-backed chickadees (bird shown above) working on enlarging a hole in a tree for a nest across from where I’m camped. For such a small bird with a small beak, they are really working hard.

Cranberries are the main crop grown in the area.

New River is managed by the BLM as an area of critical environmental concern. The river is “new” because it was formed around 120 years ago. It runs parallel to the ocean. There is a beautiful circular trail that takes you through woods, wetlands, and dunes. Dry sandy areas and the dunes are off limits in the summer to protect snowy plover nesting sites.

Saw the azalea below growing wild on the New River trail.

Below, Steller’s jay and a spotted tohee.