Florida

Mar 5  Introduction to the treasure coast. Driving up from Stuart to Fort Pierce on the outer barrier beach highway, I came on a crowd of Black and Turkey vultures cleaning up the remains of a roadkilled 'possum. Then another roadkill, a King rail being disappeared by tiny ants.

Otter tracks

Feb 28- Canada geese on the Rio Grande and....

FRESH OTTER TRACKS!

Gray Fox in a Russian Olive

Feb 24- Out at Buckman on the Rio Grande again, we came on the curious sight of this Gray fox high up in the spindly(and spiny!) branches of a Russian Olive tree on the bank of the Rio. It was eating olives about 20 feet up in the middle of the day.

Feb 16, Buckman/Caja del Rio

Granite Gap

Desert bighorn

Sandhill Crane mystery

When I was camped near the Gila River at Virden, NM, each morning hundreds of cranes flew up from further south, and in the evening they flew back south. I thought they were coming from the Lordsburg Playas, but when I went to investigate, I found no cranes there. So where were they coming from?

Tucson Fossil Show

At the end of January I skipped out on winter for a trip to the Tucson Gem and Fossil Show, which I've wanted to do for years. It was great. I went to see the fossils, and I was not disappointed. There were fantastic fossils from all over the world. Maybe the most surprising fossils I saw were a large pile of turtle or tortoise caprolites from Madagascar! Another surprise was the number of ice age mammal fossils that are coming out of the Rhine River, at Wurms. At one of the venues there was a courtyard full of orange trees! And it was great to see Saguaros again, not to mention the beautiful warm weather.