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| Indian Wells Canyon |
Bob and I needed to get a bit of exercise, but due
to all the flooding and road closures, didn’t want to head to far
afield. So, we decided to fill an ebird gap and headed to Indian Wells
Canyon. Indian Wells is a well worked location, for an east side canyon
that is, with 135 species on its list. It has a diversity of habitats
ranging from the valley floor creosote, into Joshua trees, pinyon and
gray pines.
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| Canyon ridge below Owens Peak |
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| Clouds obscure the Sierra Crest |
We started our hike in
the Joshua trees and headed up to the BLM mining interpretive area.
Along the way we found Ladder-backed Woodpecker, but could not come up
with the other regular of the Joshua trees, Cactus Wren.
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| BLM interpretive site |
We
passed springs along the way, but it was cold and dark there and we
could only turn up Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Spotted Towhees, and
White-crowned Sparrows. At the Nadeau-Magnolia Mine we had high hopes
for Oak Titmouse, but the wind was up and the clouds were turning the
peaks into a fog bank. So, we decided to save the cross-county route to
the PCT for another day, and headed back down one of the washes. Our
one highlight in that area of the canyon was a couple of Pine Siskins,
which had been unrecorded on the Indian Wells Canyon eBird list. The
clear lowlight was the number of dead pinyon pines, up to 80% have died
in the last few years from too little rain and too many bark beetles.
Eventually
the sun found us again, and we found the birds - mainly White-crowned
Sparrows - but we did locate a pair of Le Conte’s Thrashers at 4000’, and
Purple Finch, new for the canyon.
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| Pinyon Pine forest |
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| Low elevation juniper holding on in wash. |
Our eBirding efforts put the Indian Wells Canyon list to 137.
6.5 miles
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