The critters

So the week I started back to work from vacation I caught the flu, and was out pretty sick with it. Luckily, my immune system was up to the challenge, so except for some difficulty getting a voice back, I'm well again. I'd like to know here I picked it up, though. I knew I shouldn't have done that last round of mall shopping.

I did say that I would post pictures of some of the small animals I saw on my vacation, not just bird pictures. This post is for that . . . to post a few pictures which are mostly of squirrels.

This first picture is of one of the small rock squirrels that were up on the top of Angel's Landing. Usually there are LOTS of tiny chipmunks up here, but this year they were not around, just the small rock squirrels.

Small animals are not much better at holding still than birds or small children, but I seem to have a little better luck with them. Or maybe I just try more pictures of animals, so I have a better chance of getting a few decent ones. Most of the animal pictures I have this year turned out to be of squirrels and lizards. We didn't really see any of the big animals this year except the ever-present mule deer and their fawns. No bighorn sheep, although I always keep an eye out for them. We did see a really pretty red fox alongside the road at Wolf Creek Pass, and I saw the coyote and roadrunner, but I didn't get pictures of those encounters.

The rock squirrels around the campground in Zion were generally larger than the ones up on Angel's Landing. This picture on the left above is a really fat one that was hanging around the campsite, and the picture to the right is a young one. They're kind of pretty with their spotted fur which shows up best on the little guy.

The other type of squirrel I took pictures of on this trip were the black Abert's squirrel. People also call them Ebert's squirrels, or tassel-eared squirrels. They come in different colors, but the one's around my sister's place are solid black. As can be seen by this picture on the left below, they like sugar water! This one was drinking from this hummingbird feeder about 30 minutes after we got it refilled and rehung one afternoon. They have long tails and tasseled ears and spend as much time around the bird feeders and drinking from the birdbath as the birds do. I was surprised to see them drinking from the hummingbird feeder, though.

The last picture is of a whiptail lizard. These things were all over the Zion campground area this year, especially a whole slew of little tiny ones everywhere. They have long blue tails and are all female. They reproduce by parthenogenesis. They're also very fast, so pictures are tough, but this little one liked this small patch of grassy sunlight enough that she hung out long enough for a shot. Of course this is taken from a considerable distance, but you can see her pretty well.

Vacation birds

This post is a little bit in honor of my bird-fanatic friend. I've only relatively recently started taking (attempting to take) pictures of birds, and I blame her. Birds are really hard to take pictures of with a digital camera. Kind of like my grand-niece now that she's walking. You get the perfect shot and by the time the camera takes it, she's across the room. Birds are like that ...no concept of 'hold still for the camera, please'. I do have a few pictures of the birds I saw this year on vacation, so I thought I'd post them.


The first picture is looking down off the side of the trail at Angel's Landing at a pair of peregrine falcons. This picture was actually taken in 2003 when we were out there, but I saw the falcons this year too. I just didn't get close enough to take a picture this year. It's cool that they nest around Angel's Landing. Pretty much the only year we haven't seen them was last year when we saw the condors.

Two birds that were kind enough to hold still for the camera were this green-tailed towhee from the campsite at Bryce and this young western bluebird in the campsite at Zion. Both birds were foraging around the campsites so I had time to take pictures. I will say that I have 'several' pictures of both birds, and these are the ones that came out best. Neither bird really wanted to pose for me in full sunlight so the pictures are darker than I would like, but I think you can see them. The towhee has a red crest and green back and tail, and the little bluebird has a red breast with blue wing and tail feathers. This young one still had some speckling on the head and down into the back and breast.


The rest of my bird pictures are from my sister's place in Colorado. She has bird feeders and birdbaths which attract a fairly nice variety of birds, including this downy woodpecker on the right and this white-breasted nuthatch on the left. The woodpecker was interesting. It kept flying back and forth from the bird feeder to the tree. I've never seen a woodpecker interested in seeds in a bird feeder, but this little guy kept going back and forth and back and forth. I actually have a picture of him flying between the two, and multiple pictures of him on the tree trunk, but this bird feeder picture came out the best.

My sister also hangs out thistle sacks so she has quite a crowd of finches that aggregate. They jockey for position on the thistle sacks and then visit the birdbath, where they have a nice bobbing and drinking session. These four little guys looked like they were doing an alternating dance routine since their bobbing was nicely timed.



Anyway this is it for my bird post. I'll try to post some critter pictures next.

Vacation .... end *sigh*

Hard to imagine that this vacation is almost over. Three weeks goes so fast when you're playing. I'm incredibly glad to be able to take three weeks at a time, though. I really have time to decompress from work. I wish I could say I don't think about work at all, but I still randomly check and clear emails from work. At 20-50 emails a day there, three weeks worth would take me days to wade through if I didn't clear them at least a few times while I'm away.

It has been a great vacation. This is us at the top of Angel's Landing. The picture was taken with my camera perched on the ground, the timer set and us at the cliff edge a little lower down. The timer gives you 12 seconds to get into place. My sister was a tad nervous about me running for the cliff edge after pushing the button, so she's got a hand out to stop me if necessary. *laughing* The image of her actually trying to prevent me from going over is a little scary though. It was cool, windy and gorgeous up there.

We didn't do quite as much hiking as usual this year, but we were also a little more laid back than usual. We actually didn't get up before dawn every day. That's pretty much unheard of for me. I'm usually dragging everyone out to get our hikes started early or to break camp and move to the next place early. The weather was cool this year though. In past years it's been necessary to start hikes that early or we bake during the day. Temps in Zion and Arches can be brutal. This time though, instead of 103-107 degrees, the temps in Zion peaked out at about 86! Nice. We had a small amount of rain in both Zion and Bryce, but we have a canopy that works great as protection from both rain and sun.

Of course, since it was cooler in Zion, it was also cooler in Bryce, so I was COLD. Usually I am a little cold in Bryce anyway because it's always significantly cooler than Zion due to it's elevation. This year, especially coming from the Texas heat, I was cold. This picture is me bundled in more layers than I usually am at Bryce. It didn't hit freezing at night, but the night temps were in the high 30s, low 40s, which is colder than I like it. So we slept in until after daybreak (snug, warm sleeping bags!) and hiked later than usual. The Bryce hike is down into the canyon, so of course coming out you have to climb back out of the canyon. It's often brutally hot on the climb out, steep with little shade. Even starting later this year, the climb out wasn't bad. It was still steep of course, but the lack of shade didn't cause us to feel like we'd have heat stroke before we made the top. It's amazing how much difference that temperature can make.

I continued to see lots of wildlife on the trip. We didn't see condors this year in Zion like we did last year, but we saw the peregrine falcons that nest around Angel's Landing. This picture is a small rock squirrel that was hanging around the top of the trail at Angel's. Many large relatives of his were hanging out around our campsite. We also had the usual assortment of lizards, including a whole bunch of small whiptails and a large collared lizard hanging out on the trees around the campsite.

Due to time constraints, we only hiked the Delicate Arch trail in Arches, and we skipped Capital Reef park this year. Both parks are totally awesome (well, all four are awesome, actually), but we just had to decide what we had time to do. We had time do shopping at each place, which is a "must". I am an avowed shopaholic, so it had to fit into the schedule.

At the end of the trip we went back to Denver and took my grand-niece and her parents to the Denver Zoo. It was great fun, as was staying with them in their new house. I'm not sure if I've ever been to the Denver Zoo before, but I must have been small if I have. It's very impressive and really needs a lot of time in order to see everything. We saw quite a bit and most importantly, we got to spend time with my nephew, niece and grand-niece. Waaaaaay fun.