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Friday, March 20, 2015

Bureaucratic Crawl

Up in the foothills
The blog title refers to the information contained in the last two captions here.

Becca and I took a very long hike around Tortugas Mountain this morning, and we had the good fortune of bumping into two Roadrunners who were out looking for breakfast.  We offered them an Egg McMuffin, but they declined.  They'd rather eat lizards, small birds and even rattlesnakes.  That's right--a couple of Roadrunners can hunt and kill a rattler.  One jumps up and down distracting the snake while the other grabs its neck and bashes its head on a rock.
Roadrunner

Roadunners are members of the Cuckoo family

A second Roadrunner on the desert floor

Roadrunners often hunt in tandem

A Torrey Yucca at least 20' tall

Same Yucca from the other side (four flower stalks)

Down into a huge arroyo

Looking back at the Tortoise

This photo and the next show how wide this arroyo is

Soaptree Yuccas growing in the middle of the arroyo

An enormous old Ocotillo

The red dot (center) shows how far we've come from the 20' Yucca

On the outer loop road

Flowering Yucca and Organ Mountains

Torrey Yucca in bloom

A few days ago a sign was finally erected on the road to the monument

It took the government almost a year to get the sign up

1 comment:

Dr. K said...

That's fascinating about the roadrunners teaming up to kill a rattlesnake. Eerie, too.

Tolerable Temps

Prickly Pear cactus in the left branch arroyo 58F when Dr. K, Willow and I started our hike this morning; and while it warmed fairly rapidly...