Bob's Journal: Bighorn Canyon, Again (or SOS)

With the sale of Gail's mom's home complete, we lost no time in taking to the desert. We drove to the Anza Borrego Desert early Sunday morning to revisit Bighorn Canyon. We drove a ways on a jeep road until the sand became too soft to go further. This is where we car camped.

We began hiking across the desert to the mouth of Bighorn Canyon. On the way, Gail spotted this bird nest that was very well guarded in this cholla cactus.

She also took these photos of a blooming cholla.

The ocotillo were also blooming and had red berries. This one looked to have a lump of runaway growth maybe caused by some parasite or something.

There are no trails, so you pick a wash to follow as long as it seems to be going in the right direction. Our canyon is in those distant mountains, and not very obvious from a distance.

There are holes and burrows everywhere, but seeing animals in the daytime is rare. We did see jackrabbits, chipmunks, and a ground squirrel.

Our goal was to go back to Blue Spring where there are water tanks and a trough to help the small population of Bighorn Sheep in the area. When we were here last November, we saw many fresh bighorn tracks and scat, mountain lion tracks and the carcass above which was much fresher then. We wanted to place my trail camera at the water guzzler, leave it overnight, and come back the next day. Each trip was about 8 miles round trip.

I am attaching my camera to the post. Unfortunately, we were disappointed to see there were no fresh tracks or scat in the area this time. That is the water guzzler in the foreground.

The water system was installed in 1972, and still functions.

You can see the pipes that lead from the tanks up the canyon to the spring.

The agave blooms were spectacular against the sky. They appear to be at least 15 feet tall.

Mystery snake! I was totally excited to spot this snake which I could not identify until I got home. It lay frozen to the ground until I finally got too close. Then it raced into the bushes.

I was about 3 feet long, very slender, with large eyes. It turns out it is a Desert Patch-nosed Snake. If you look closely at its nose, below, you'll see a large triangular scale, presumably to help in burrowing for reptile eggs.

We were surprised to see Bullock's Orioles getting nectar from the agave blooms.

Back at base camp, we prepared dinner. Great to sit down!

As the sun set, I brought out my bat detector and we were rewarded by seeing a large bat fly back and forth a couple times. The detector changes the bat's sounds to a lower frequency that humans can hear. We heard the repeated sounds loud and clear as he made them to hunt insects by echolocation.

I sent away for the parts to solder together on a little circuit board. I had never soldered such tiny parts, and needed a magnifying glass just to identify them. It took me about 4 hours to put it together. I was shocked when it actually worked the first time I tried it.

Since it didn't come with any kind of a case, I used an old glasses case to mount the battery and circuit board into. It cost me about $23 for the kit, and $15 for the soldering iron and solder. Manufactured bat detectors start out around $150.

We started out early the next morning to hike back to the spring and retrieve the camera. Not far from our camp Gail spotted this lone coyote loping along.

The desert willows were blooming and swarming with bees and hummingbirds.

On the way we saw a few whiptail lizards like this one

...and even more Side-blotched lizards.

We finally arrived at Blue Spring to retrieve the camera. It turned out that the only video taken was of me walking away from the camera, and me walking to the camera the next day - bummer! If we do this again, we will do it in the fall when we know there were many animals this past year. There was a notepad stored in a sealed container for people to write in. It appears that about 2 or 3 parties a year make it here. We have never seen any human footprints in the area.

Well, the spring wasn't without life after all.