weekend birding & camping in Joshua Tree National Park

Who knew looking at birds could be so much fun? It's the perfect pasttime for me - I get to walk around outside and learn lots.

I noticed I didn't take a single picture of a bird. I took hardly any pics at all, but not a single bird? Well, I'll blame my lack of telephoto.

Here's the weekend. Drove into camp at Black Rock Campground on Friday evening, had a couple hours to explore a bit, then met up with the instructor and the group at 6 pm. He immediately took us out looking for birds and we saw lots. Then we looked at slides and saw even more.

He is really a great instructor. In fact, I'm taking another class with him next weekend. I may become a groupie, so I'm glad his wife will be there, just to keep me in line.

Camping that night was ok - it only got down to about 50 degrees in my tent (I used the rain flap to keep heat in). I was pretty comfortable and slept well, except for some obnoxious neighbors who got in late and kept talking and talking. Families, so not partying, but just talking loudly far too late. The next morning as they shuffled down the hill to the restrooms decked out in fuzzy bathrobes over sheep pajamas, I almost backed over the lot of them because they thought they had the right of way over my truck. Anyway, I cursed car campers and swore my future camping will be backpacking or driving in where NOBODY else is.

The next morning we met at 7:30 at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, which was AWESOME, and I am SO going back. Birds, birds, birds - everywhere! We saw SO MANY THINGS. Like what? I'm so glad you asked. Hummingbirds, especially Anna's and Costas. Lesser Goldfinch, Black-headed Grosbeaks, house wrens, Towhees (California and Spotted), Bewick's Wren, Western Scrub Jay, American Kestrel, Orange-crowned Warbler, Song Sparrow, Cedar Waxwing, Nashville Warbler, Western Tanager, Ladder-back Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse, Lazuli Bunting, Western Kingbird, Blue Grosbeaks. And that's just what I saw - and I don't have a great eye. (And no, I cannot identify all those by myself!)

Then we went to a park where there were some beautiful Vermilion Flycatchers and Scarlet Tanagers, along with Black Phoebes and Coopers Hawks - but then we were chased out because they were trying to have a wedding. (Yeah, we are those obnoxious birders busting in people's lives.)

Then we drove into Barker Dam and saw lots more birds including Say's Phoebe, coot, mallard, white-throated swifts, and a Hermit warbler.

I drove to the Belle and White Tanks campgrounds because I wanted to camp there, but they were full like I'd been told. So, I got the map to the BLM overflow camping ground.

Camping? It looked a lot more like the setting of the book/movie Holes.

But, I got my kitchen all set up and ate some yummy freeze-dried beef stroganoff with green beans and canned peaches with cocoa for desert (I LOVE MY JETBOIL!!), and then I set up my tent and it was all fine. Some people came driving past during the night but they pitched far away and it was a lovely, quiet evening. Inside my tent, it's all good.

Today we started at 7 am and met at Oasis of Mara where we saw many more birds - the same, plus Wilson's warblers, Berdin, Black-Throated Sparrow, lots of Gambell's Quail, Black-tailed gnatcatcher, Cactus Wren. We went over to a park and saw lots of grackel, horned lark, Eurasian collared doves, House Finch, Kildeer, Brewer's Blackbird, American Robin, and starlings (boo,hiss). Then we drove into the Cholla Garden in the park (this is low desert - the Sonoran/Colorado, rather than the Mojave of the joshua trees) and the Ocotillo Patch and saw some more Western Tanagers, Scott's Orioe, Ash-throated flycatcher - and lots of lizards (including huge chuckwallas) and plants.

I think birds are cool and I probably want to definitely pursue this hobby, but it's plants that get my heart pumping, so I'll attach a couple pics below.

Creosote sniffing. This is the smell of rain in the desert, which we were simulating.

Ocotillo - one of my very favorite plants. Blooms even without the leaves.

Cholla cactus. Teddy Bear Cactus. Jumping Cactus. Opuntia bigelovii. Ouch!

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Perhaps what's most interesting to me is that despite sleeping on the ground outside and having to get up literally at the crack of dawn - I'm at least as well-rested as when I sleep all night at home. Next weekend I have a room to stay in, but I told the instructor that I want to sleep outside. He thinks I'm a freak, but he's like, "OK, well, bring your tent and I'll be sure you can do that." But I don't think I'm a freak. I can stay in a dormitory on a lumpy mattress with other people's cooties - or I can sleep outside in my beautiful Sierra Designs tent on my clean new generic-brand Thermarest in my washed sleeping bag. The only problem I have is that my bag is too warm for here, so I'll take a different one. We don't have a backyard, or I'd be sleeping out there tonight. It's always really hard for me to come back inside. I remember when I lived with roommate Todd and we'd go canoe camping, after we got back I always had to spend a couple nights down at the boat launch in the tent before I could come back inside. But, at least in his mind, the only thing that made me a freak was insisting on using a tent rather than sleeping out in the open (I don't like being mosquito Cheetos). This is why I think I would so love a 3-week trip in Mongolia sleeping in yurts. Oh, instructor man is taking a class to East Africa where I want to go - he gave me the info but it's too expensive. But it would be fun to go there with him (he was a Peace Corps volunteer there and goes back regularly).