It's always kind of fun to plan a getaway months in advance because you can spend so much time imagining how cool your trip will be whenever life gets boring or frustrating. When the trip is really just a long weekend, and you set it up five months in advance, it's entirely likely that the amount of time spent on vicarious vacation will exceed the actual number of hours in the destination.
You know, if this is the place you're anticipating, even imaginary visits are quality time. And best of all, it never rains during the imaginary visits.
(click on pic to get to full size version)
ps - thanks to matching mole for hosting last week while I was at Yosemite, and Julie Waters for covering the week before. Show 'em some love in the comments.
A group of us went up for one the Yosemite Conservancy's classes - this one was Hawks and Owls of Yosemite. I highly recommend the classes as a great way to see the park; I've done one or two a year for about a decade now. The price of the class includes park admission and camping (you can also stay at a lodge, but you pay the market rate for your room).
There aren't going to be many bird pix in this birdblog, so enjoy this Western Kingbird while you can. We saw him in Merced when we stopped for tacos.
The class ran Friday night through Sunday, but we decided to go up Thursday and camp at Wawona the first night. It's a lovely campground, but because it's so far from the valley many people aren't interested. We spent a very cold night there, but it was tempered by grilled shrimp, a campfire and the discovery that, damn... rye is pretty tasty straight up.
The next morning, we headed to Chilnualna Falls (above) for a few hours. Friend Nancy and I had hiked to the top last year, but the friend Walter had never been there. We were thinking to hike to the top of the lower cascades, but got distracted by dippers (a lifer for Walter) and ended up staying mostly at the bridge over the lower falls. No photos - sorry - the birds were little dark rockets flying just above the rapids.
From there, we headed to the valley to meet with a third friend (Stef) and camp for the class - but took a side trip up Glacier Point Road. In previous versions of the class, we'd gone out to Westfall Meadow and McGurk's Meadow at sunset to look for owl, sometimes sitting in our shirtsleeves while we waited, even though it's around 8,000' elevation. Walter has yet to see this stretch of road without snow, even though all of his visits have been late May or June. This trip had the deepest drifts yet.
Snow on Glacier Point, with camper for reference...
We went to Glacier Point, ate lunch in the car (we'd all been there before under better conditions), stopped for some scenic views and headed to the valley. Nature's scenic wonders are great, but temps above the 40s are even better. We wandered from the campground a bit, checking to see if the White-headed Woodpeckers were nesting in the snag in the middle of the river again - yes. No dippers in the valley - the water was too high. But we did have a nice sapsucker, and a good assortment of other birds as we walked through the campgrounds and nearby meadows. One bonus was that the dogwood was in full bloom everywhere. Usually, the bloom has peaked weeks before our class, but the cool spring had everything delayed.
The evening intro session for the class was fun - it was obvious that we had a great group this year, though two were AWOL for the evening, and the leaders (Sarah Stock and Joe Medley) were wonderful. And it's a damn good thing, too. (this is where it starts to sound like so many of my birding trips) You see, the weather wasn't really that cooperative.
So, the next morning, we're hanging out at the campsite having a totally awesome breakfast thanks to Nancy's innovation, Camp Jam. She's a fantastic camp chef, and starts mornings with hot fresh scones every day. She got the idea to make a sort of compote out of the strawberries (we bought a lot at a fruitstand in the valley) and blueberries (she bought a bunch from her CSA), which was perfection. And while we're sitting there, we see this couple walking through the campground, dragging a tent. Dragging it over to us, in fact.
It turns out that they're the people who were missing the night before. They weren't really birders, but a friend of theirs on a backpacking trip said that they should check out this class. They got in late, couldn't find their campsite (so they just threw down their tent) and couldn't find the meeting place. We had them follow us to the morning overview session, but once they got there he had to go off to find some coffee, which made them miss the whole discussion about the current peregrine studies in the park. The group headed out to do some nest observations just as the first raindrops fell.
So, seriously... there are three of them. One at the left, two at the right by the small rockpile.
The first of many, as it turned out. We checked on three peregrine aeries; two I'd seen before and one new site. At the first site (above) there were three nestlings, who were looking pretty close to fledging at this point. Lots of wing flapping going on. While we were there, one of the adults dropped off a meal and we watched the feeding frenzy. We also stopped to see a Golden Eagle aerie with two youngsters. These two were also getting close to taking their first flights, but on our cold wet day, they were content to huddle under the overhang. We never saw an adult.
Okay, eagles are a little easier to see...
We had a few hours off, then reconvened to go look for owls. (Except for the late arrivals... they'd had enough of standing in the cold rain looking at tiny bird dots on a canyon wall through a scope. The left to find a motel and never returned.) Before starting the quest for Great Grey, we walked out into a valley meadow for another owl... a great horned in a tree near the river. It was the first owl ever for one of our classmates. She was psyched, and that made all of us just that much happier. I went looking for pellets, and found something somewhat unexpected in one - the bill of a duck. Some feathers, too....
As I mentioned above, in previous years we'd gone to some of the high meadows along Glacier Point to look for Great Greys. Not possible this year - the meadows in question were under probably 8-10 feet of snow and the trails were completely buried in snow. And Glacier Point was the easy one... at least it was open, unlike Tioga Pass. Instead, we split into two groups (linked by radio) and checked out the meadows at Crane Flat... in the rain... after walking through ankle deep snow melt... sitting on logs amid the snow... for two hours... with no owls. But you know what? It was great. It was so serene, and though the owls weren't there many other birds were. The song was as constant as the rain. And then just as the sun was about to set, a patch of clear sky opened, and we saw all the colors through the trees and it was just plain gorgeous.
There was a little bit of rain while we enjoyed our scones and Camp Jam the next morning, but the skies rapidly cleared. With Tioga Road closed, we gave up on looking for goshawks and went to Foresta instead. We saw lots of great stuff out there - wildflowers, and caterpillars:
And butterflies (this one is a Spring Azure)
And even some birds like this Western Tanager:
Okay, that was kind of blurry and out of focus. Here, this one is much sharper:
Awesome. Okay, how about the Lazuli Bunting ... who was perched here until the nanosecond that I got him into focus:
So that's the reason there really aren't any bird photos in this bird blog. At some point, Walter will probably put some of his photos from the trip up on his website. As you can see, birds cooperate with him, so I'm thinking his might turn out better than mine.
Just a hunch.