Because of our abundant late summer and winter rain, flowers bloomed early throughout the Morongo Basin this year. And with the flowers came the butterflies, moths, and skippers.1 We have several sweetbushes bursting with blooms, and butterflies of all kinds have been dancing around them. Dry years bring far fewer butterflies; a wet winter like this one can produce an explosion of wildflowers and wings.

To identify them, I pulled out my trusty copy of The Butterflies and Skippers of Joshua Tree National Park, but the pesky insects don’t hold still, and my photos of them are all terrible. Suffice it say that there are a lot of butterflies flitting around the sweetbush, and whatever they are, all are small, fluttery, and very pretty.

Abounding in Butterflies

Don’t take my word for it—experts have been at work! Retired park staff and dedicated citizen scientists Joe Zarki and Marilyn Lutz have organized formal butterfly counts like the much-better known Christmas bird count. For more than 25 years Marilyn and Joe have been counting and observing butterflies. They have found that Joshua Tree National Park is home to approximately 85 documented butterfly species, with 14 more found just outside the park boundaries.

Is this an unusual number of butterfly species? It is, actually. Because the park encompasses both the Mojave and Colorado deserts, the plants that support the butterflies are quite diverse. As we all know, the desert is far from barren and is bursting with life!

These butterflies, moths, and skippers live their marvelous life cycles feeding and laying eggs on plants. Caterpillars emerge from the eggs, and they are Very Hungry as Eric Carle’s beloved book tells us. Some caterpillars feed on many different kinds of plants, including the painted lady, orange sulphur, and gray hairstreak. Others are pickier, including the checkerspot butterfly, which depends almost completely on chuparosa, which is found in the lower reaches of the park and, because of its beautiful red flowers, in many local gardens.

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Caterpillars encase themselves in chrysalises (butterflies) or cocoons (moths) and in a few weeks emerge as butterflies. This metamorphosis doesn’t need to be a metaphor for rebirth or recovery to inspire amazement. It’s merely one of the many astonishing changes that take place in living creatures all over the planet.

The Monarch that Overshadows Them All

Metamorphosis isn’t the only wondrous butterfly phenomenon. Some of them also undertake incredible migrations. Of all the North American butterflies, monarchs get the most attention. The big reason is its migration. These tiny, fluttery creatures migrate over several generations for thousands of miles from Mexico into the central and eastern United States. Western monarchs don’t make a journey this epic, but they hug the Pacific Coast to overwintering sites from Santa Cruz to San Diego to Baja California. The Morongo Basin is not on the primary monarch migration corridor, but monarchs do pass through and there are some small overwintering sites in Death Valley.

For decades, researchers have been fixing tiny tags to monarch wings to track their migration. One of the most memorable moments in the park’s long butterfly-counting history came on October 9, 2016, when volunteers found a tagged monarch in the Smithwater Canyon area near Covington Flats. Only about 1% of tagged monarchs are ever found, so the odds of finding the monarch were low. This butterfly had been tagged in southeast Arizona on September 20 and had traveled approximately 350 miles west-northwest to reach the park in just 20 days.

This butterfly is part of a bigger story that researchers are still trying to understand.

Butterfly Brains

The monarch butterfly is likely the most studied butterfly on the planet, and for good reason. How does an animal navigate thousands of miles over several generations with a brain just a bit bigger than this period? → .

A New York Times article highlights research that shows that these butterflies use multiple internal compasses. They track the position of the sun and detect patterns of polarized daylight, with their navigational clocks located not in the brain but in their antennae. Researchers have recorded brain signals in real time while butterflies flap away in a flight simulator.2

Because humans don’t seem to have this magnetic sense, it’s not something we understand well. But we’re trying! Not only are scientists recording monarch brain signals, but they are using gene editing to identify where magnetic sensing is located.

Researchers have also been studying how monarchs use their brains in other ways. They have trained butterflies to associate colors and odors with food rewards and show they have more than 75 percent accuracy after less than 40 seconds of exposure. Monarchs can remember this information for at least seven days, which beats my wandering into the kitchen and then wondering what I was looking for. Probably a snack.

Speaking of Snacks

Monarchs are one of the species of butterfly that will only feed on one type of plant—milkweed. This is a lot like the kid you know who insists they’ll only eat chicken nuggets. Nine of the 14 milkweed species native to California grow in our region, and the Mojave Desert Land Trust actively cultivates and preserves these plants. People who are better gardeners than I am plant them and provide food for these colorful migrants.

Like so many species, monarchs are threatened by climate change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is expected to decide by September 2026 whether to list the monarch under the Endangered Species Act, a designation that could provide critical habitat protections along migration routes and at overwintering sites. (Here’s how to let the USFWS know what you think.)

Waiting on the Wash

For seven or eight years, we have been watching two patches of milkweed that grow in a nearby wash. In 2019 and 2020, which were much wetter than it has been lately, milkweed grew in abundance, and we found monarch caterpillars on those plants. They grew bigger every day and worked their way steadily through the leaves like the hungry caterpillars they were. We looked for chrysalises but never found any. Perhaps a lizard or a bird ate them, to their great regret. Alkaloids in milkweed make monarchs taste disgusting, and some animals learn not to eat them. Or maybe the butterflies completed their transformation in a place we couldn’t find, tested their wings, and moved on to the next stop in their journey.

A monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed in a nearby wash. (Video: Kat Talley-Jones)

This spring, the milkweed is thriving in the wash. We are watching and waiting for the monarchs to return.

2

This will of course make you think of the butterfly effect, in which a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo sets off a tiny atmospheric disturbance that, through a long and unpredictable chain of cause and effect, may ultimately influence whether a tornado forms in Texas.

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As my nephew and I drove through Yucca Valley, he pointed out of the truck’s window and asked, “Why is there a saber-toothed tiger statue over there?”

Having worked on exhibits at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits, I couldn’t help but correct him, and I went into pedantic auntie mode. “It’s a saber-toothed cat,” I said. “AKA Smilodon fatalis.” But his question stuck with me. Why is there a statue of a Pleistocene predator in the middle of Yucca?

It turns out the statue in Remembrance Park (at the corner of Apache Trail and Highway 62) was sculpted by Frank (Antone) Martin, the same artist who created the famous Desert Christ Park. He perhaps hoped it would skulk by the Lake Pit next to what is now the Tar Pits museum and LACMA but instead gave the statue to Yucca Valley in 1952. Today, it stands as a guardian for the Veterans Memorial Circle, a fierce protector of those we remember. But it also serves as a reminder that this desert used to be a very different place.

Smilodon: The Hi Desert’s Heavyweight Hunter

Smilodon is perhaps the most iconic animal of the Ice Age. While the statue in Yucca Valley is made of concrete, these powerful predators were once very real flesh-blood-and-toothed residents of what is now the Mojave.

About 11,000 years ago, the climate here was cooler and wettter. Instead of the dry brush we see today, the landscape was a mix of lush grasslands and woodlands. This was the perfect hunting ground for the Smilodon. Unlike modern lions or cheetahs that rely on long-distance chases, the saber-toothed cat was built for power, not for speed. It had a heavy, muscular frame and exceptionally strong front legs used to pin down large prey.

Its most famous feature, of course, was its teeth. Adult males had serrated canines that could grow up to seven inches long. (Kitten Smilodons had adorable saber milk teeth.) Paleontologists believe adults used these sabers to deliver a precise, fatal bite to the soft throat of their prey after the animal had been pinnd down.

They were the apex predators of their time, keeping the populations of ancient horses (we talked about them in last month’s Wildlife Wednesday) and bison in check. When the great herds disappeared at the end of the Ice Age, the Smilodon followed them into extinction, leaving only fossils and statues behind.

What do the La Brea Tar Pits, a lumbering Ice Age giant, and the spiky silhouette of Joshua Tree National Park all have in common? Read on.

The Joshua Tree’s Long-Lost Buddy

“Did you know,” Tim said as we hiked through Queen Valley in the park, “that Joshua trees evolved to have their seeds spread by giant ground sloths in their poop?” Tim has his stories, which we don’t always believe, but it turns out this one is true.

The Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis)—another one of my pals from the La Brea Tar Pits—was the size of a large bear. While modern sloths are small and live in trees in Central and South America, this sloth lumbered on the land, and one of its favorite snacks was the fruit of the Joshua tree.

The sloth stood nine feet tall on its hind feet and could easily reach the fruit. It would mosey ten miles or more as it searched for food and deposit the seeds in a fresh piles of fertilizer. Because the sloth was so big and traveled such long distances, it helped the Joshua trees spread far and wide.

When the Shasta ground sloth went extinct about 11,000 years ago (likely due to the end of the Ice Ages and possibly the arrival of human hunters), the Joshua tree lost its best friend. Today, the trees rely on smaller rodents to move their seeds, which is why Joshua trees don’t spread as quickly or as far as they used to. When you look at a Joshua tree, you are looking at a plant that is still waiting for a giant sloth that is never coming back.

What About Dinosaurs?

Whenever we talk about fossils and extinct animals, the first question people usually ask is: “Where were the dinosaurs?”

It is a bit of a heartbreaking answer for local dinosaur fans: we don’t find many dinosaur fossils in California. To understand why, we have to look at the geology of the region. Most of the rocks we see in Joshua Tree National Park and the surrounding valleys are igneous (volcanic) or metamorphic. These rocks are formed under intense heat and pressure—conditions that would destroy any bone or shell long before it could become a fossil.

Dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era (252 to 66 million years ago), millions of years before the recent Ice Age of the Smilodon and the ground sloth. During much of the time dinosaurs were walking the earth, the land that would become most of California was either deep underwater or undergoing massive volcanic activity as plates shifted.

However, if you go just a bit further afield into the eastern Mojave, you can find evidence of even older life. Before the dinosaurs, the area was home to trilobites—small, armored sea creatures that scurried across the ocean floor more than 500 million years ago.1

A Landscape of Ghosts

The next time you are in the park, try to imagine the ghosts that inhabit the landscape. Imagine a Shasta ground sloth reaching up to grab a Joshua tree fruit, or a Smilodon crouching in the tall grass of a cooler, greener valley, stalking a wild horse. And when you see that unlikely Smilodon statue in Yucca Valley, look at it not just as a local landmark but a bridge to a past that still shapes the world we travel through.

1

You can hunt for trilobite fossils in the Trilobite Wilderness. It’s on BLM land, and you are allowed to keep the fossils you collect. It’s a very fun thing to do with kids; just observe the usual desert protocol—have plenty of water, keep track of everyone, and know when you are overheating.

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I Once Was Lost

In December, community members reported that a horse had been lost in Joshua Tree National Park. Something spooked Rupert while his owner prepared for a trail ride near (appropriately enough) Stirrup Tank Road, and he broke his bridle and cantered off.

Rupert’s predicament got me thinking both that the Year of the Horse is almost upon us and that the park has a history of lost horses.

In the Chinese zodiac, the horse stands for vitality, bold ideas, and success through effort. It’s a year said to favor those who take on challenges with courage and heart, which we could all use right now. The shadow side of this energy is restlessness, impulsivity, and volatility. Sounds like Rupert.

Johnny Lang and the Case of the Missing Horse

No horse story in Joshua Tree is complete without Johnny Lang and the Lost Horse Mine. Depending on who tells it, Lang either lost a horse, had it stolen, or followed it straight to the gold in them thar hills.

In one version, Lang sat down to fix his boot while searching for his wandering horse and spotted gold in the rock beneath him. In another, cattle rustlers known as the McHaney brothers took his horse at gunpoint. Either way, the mine that followed was named Lost Horse—and it eventually became the most productive mine in the area.

Gold poured out, but time and the desert took their toll. In his old age, Lang ran out of supplies. One by one, he ate his burros to survive. In 1925, he left a note on his cabin door:
“Gone for grub. Be back soon.”
He never returned.1

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Burros on the Loose

Horses and burros are not native to the desert or even North America, and feral equines can be very destructive to the environment. There are small herds of feral burros in Death Valley National Park and the Mojave Preserve, and although they damage vegetation and water sources, they are protected under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which makes it illegal to harass or remove them without authorization. There are no feral burros in Joshua Tree National Park, although a hiking friend tells me that in the 1970s, a few escaped from a corral and roamed parts of the park for years before being captured.

Another friend I explore with said she’d heard stories about prospectors traveling the desert at night with their burros. It is said that to protect themselves from rattlesnakes hunting in the dark, some miners wrapped tin from coffee cans around their legs. If a rattlesnake struck, the makeshift shin guards might stop the fangs. I imagine a warm desert night, the burros walking, hooves crunching on soft sand, nickering and blowing dust from their nostrils, along with the weird metallic rattle of a prospector stomping along under the stars.

Yes, Horses Once Thrived Here

Horses evolved in North America millions of years ago, and fossils found in remoter parts of the park show that extinct species of wild horses lived here long ago.

These were not saddle horses but sturdy wild grazers sharing the land with mammoths, camels, bison, giant ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats. When it was so foggy on New Year’s Day, I looked out the window and wondered what it would be like to see these beasts drifting past. I wish we had a little more of that charismatic megafauna around.

During the last Ice Age, however, climates shifted, grasslands changed, and humans arrived, and it’s thought that most of the continent’s large mammals might have been hunted to extinction. By about 10,000 years ago, North America’s horses were gone, and for thousands of years, the Mojave Desert knew horses only as fossils hidden in stone.2

But Now Am Found

Fortunately, the story of our friend Rupert the lost horse has a happy ending. Hikers searched. Friends shared updates. Rangers kept watch. After a day or so he was found halfway up a mountain about three miles from his last location on Stirrup Tank Road.3

“I once was lost, but now am found.”4 Horses have been lost here—extinct, stolen, wandering, and escaped. Some were found again. But others live on only in stone, stories, and place names like Jackass Trail on the western edge of Twentynine Palms, the Burro Trail, and the Lost Horse Mine.

The Year of the Horse asks us to reckon with motion and meaning, ignoring the temptation to bolt—and, if we do, engage with the harder work of returning. The Horse honors courage and vitality, but also reminds us how easily momentum becomes frenzy. As we step into this new cycle, may we move boldly without abandoning caution, and may we watch for one another on the trail. For in a place shaped by loss, finding becomes its own quiet act of (amazing) grace.

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If wildlife has a starter species, an animal most likely to introduce an unsuspecting human to the concept of sharing a home with nature, the mourning dove would win. Anyone with a patio, a hanging fern, or even the faint suggestion of a horizontal surface has probably hosted a dove nest in the most inconvenient place possible.

I avoid a particular door for the nesting season, which seems to be most of the spring, summer, and fall, so I don’t explode a dove from its pile of twigs balanced on a crossbeam. Although the nests appear flimsy and are regularly blown down by the wind, the doves construct them carefully. The male brings the female pine needles, grass stems, and sticks and passes them to her while standing on her back. She’ll lay two eggs and may have up to six broods a year—one reason it seems there always so many mourning doves around even though they are the favorite fast food of falcons, hawks, owls, and other predatory birds.

When Doves Fly

If you ask people what they love about doves, many will mention their soft, mournful call, so beautifully evoked by Caetano Veloso singing “Cucurucucú Paloma,” written by Mexican songwriter Tomás Méndez.

A scene from Pedro Almodóvar’s Habla con ella.

But doves also produce another sound, one far more distinctive and far less serene: the high-pitched wing whistle that accompanies every startled takeoff. However awkward they seem, doves can speed along at up to 55 mph, swooping and ascending. The real test comes as they dodge hawks, which they often but not inevitably evade.

Bird of Peace?

Doves have a reputation for being gentle but let me tell you, I have seen them hanging around gawking as a roadrunner murdered a cactus wren fledgling or gazing with interest as a red racer swallowed a quail chick. They will perch in flocks of 20 or 30 on a power line, apparently untroubled by the hawk patrolling the next pole over. Sometimes they seem less like gentle souls than like a mob attracted by murder and mayhem.

A Family Affair

One of the dove’s most endearing qualities is its devotion to family. Mourning doves often mate for life. I can’t tell individuals apart but one summer we watched Bill and Coo every night as they preened each other with delicate nibbles around the neck. They share parenting shifts for about two weeks: the female often takes the night shift incubating the eggs; the male covers the daylight hours.

When the chicks hatch, their parents feed them a remarkable substance known as crop milk, which their bodies manufacture from the seeds they eat. This pale yellow liquid resembles cottage cheese and is high in protein, fat, and antioxidants and helps nestling reach an age to leave the nest in 12 to 15 days.

Young doves imprint quickly and irrevocably, forming their understanding of “who I am” based on who feeds them. In the wild this works out nicely—dove parents raise dove babies who join dove flocks. But this explains why rescued chicks sometimes grow up believing humans are their flocks—an error that can make them easy prey.

Symbols of Peace and Resilience

Cultures across millennia have turned to doves as symbols of peace and renewal. From Noah’s ark to Greek mythology to contemporary art, the dove embodies gentleness and hope. I like to see them as a symbol of resilience, however. They adapt to deserts, farms, prairies, woodlands, and the edges of suburbs. They endure heat, cold, predators, high winds, and the occasional poorly timed garage door.

So on this last Wildlife Wednesday of the year, as doves line the power lines and coo from the eaves, may we take a small lesson from our feathery companions. May we find peace not in perfection but in persistence. May we welcome tranquility not as a rare visitor but as a familiar roost. And may we embody the quiet dignity of the dove, graceful in our missteps, loyal to our flock, whimsical in our nesting choices, and capable of sudden, astonishing flights.

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It’s Desert Tortoise Week! We celebrate our favorite charismatic mid-size reptile with a video Twentynine Palms resident Mary Kay sent us of two males jousting near her home. (She assures us the loser survived the encounter.)

Our own two tortoises Wez and Gilderoy (10 points to Gryffindor if you know who he was named for; 100 points if you can ID Wez) have spent the last month trying to annihilate each other. Wez has climbed over the barrier between them, shoved it down, and dug under it to get at Gilderoy.

Now that it’s cooler, thankfully, all they want to do is snooze in the sun and eat desert willow flowers and nopales.

Jousting tortoises (video: Mary Kay Sherry)

It’s an enormous treat to spot a tortoise on a desert walk or watch one amble by your house. This year [2023], with abundant spring rain and the soaking we got from the hurricane, has been a very good year for wild tortoises, with plenty of flowers and greenery for them to eat. Ensuring habitat for these intriguing beasts is the reason we protect the desert.

They are very long-lived, even in the wild, because they spent most of their time sleeping, an idea some of us can get behind. If they survive ravens when they are hatchlings, they can live to be 80 years old, per the US Fish & Wildlife Service. The Marines have taken protecting tortoises very seriously—here’s a fairly recent report on their efforts to raise and release youngsters.

This week the park will host a Tortoise Table at the visitor center in 29, with talks at 7 pm on October 5 and 7 at campsite 40 in Indian Cove [note - this refers to 2023]. Check out Gary Daigneault’s talk with park biologist Michael Vamstead to learn more about our local tortoises. U.S. Fish & Wildlife has an overview of tortoise events in the region; be sure to invite your favorite reptile. And check out Saving Slowpoke, which “spreads love and information about the Mojave desert tortoise.”

If you look closely, you can see a very young tortoise pooping.

R.I.P. Mika (~1975-2025)

Just a few weeks after we moved into our house in 2019, a wild female desert tortoise swung by, thrilling us and our two male tortoises. We had treated Wez and Gilderoy in the past for respiratory infections, so we understood not to let them interact—but the boys knew she was there.

Mika stopping by on her walkabout. Usually indifferent, sometimes she was curious about me—and once nipped my thumb.

Mika would wander by every few weeks, and she brightened the pandemic year by digging a burrow under a creosote behind the house and spending the winter. She’d come and go, and when it rained, she’d stump off to scrapes and hollows she sensed would collect water.

I’d run into her on rambles around the undeveloped land near us, lounging beneath ephedra or trundling across a wash, eating tiny poppies that appeared after winter rain. Mostly she ignored me, but if it was a warm day, she might take cover in the shadow I cast. Humans can be useful!

She lived on her own terms. I picked her up on Memorial Day this year, though, when she crossed the road in front of one of the three vacation home rentals around us. I worried visitors might run over her and placed her away from houses. She felt heavy and strong.

But maybe she wasn’t healthy. Sadly, the very dry spring and summer were too much for her.

She showed up a few weeks ago and followed the shade and sun around the south side of the house, moving just a few feet at a time. I worried about her and asked a local tortoise scientist to take a look, which he kindly did. He explained she was dehydrated and in poor condition, and although we took her to a vet and tried to rehydrate her, she died on Sunday.

I will miss looking out the window and seeing her under the creosote, and I think the land will miss her too. The tortoise expert wrote me:

I am glad that you were able to provide it care, and hope that another female tortoise brings joy to you at your home, and life. They are near and dear to our hearts, and we must continue to conserve them. Let’s make a significant difference.

My young neighbors Willy and Avery love the wild tortoises they see. I hope they can experience encounters with these wise and beautiful animals for the rest of their lives. Right now, heart-broken, I’m not optimistic.

Mika’s squiggly tracks.

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Following on Wednesday’s dispatch on those Shimmering Autumn Immigrants, hummingbirds, we thought we’d republish last August’s Wildlife Wednesday on our other, somewhat larger, fall visitors.

I keep looking for signs of fall. These include spotting Orion, a winter constellation in the northern hemisphere, while watching the Perseid meteor shower from the driveway, and the recent lovely run of cooler days made me wonder where my favorite sweater is.

Late one recent afternoon at Barker Dam in Joshua National Park, I watched a dozen turkey vultures gather around the rock formations, gliding in lazy circles. Were these local vultures hanging out and enjoying some late in the day thermals? Or was this the leading edge of the fall migration of these big birds?

I’m jumping the gun a bit—it’s warmed up again, and it is still officially summer for a few more weeks. And according to BirdCast, a bird migration dashboard, the fall migration has barely started, and vultures are not yet among the hundreds of thousands of birds starting to cross our skies, mostly at night. (This dashboard is insanely awesome, and you’ve got to take a look.)

According to my notes and others’ observations, vultures usually start coming through in big groups the third week in September. I want you to keep an eye out for them because if you haven’t seen a kettle of 50 or more turkey vultures spiraling past, you are in for a treat.

This vortex of vultures moves lazily but purposefully along the ridges of the little San Bernardino Mountains and very close to Highway 62. If you look closely, you’ll see that some migrating hawks join them. For a few weeks in September and October, turkey vultures are going to Central America and perhaps as far away as Ecuador.

Turkey vultures smell better than almost any other animal (although they don’t smell good—they projectile vomit when they are alarmed and pee on their legs to cool off). They can detect just a few parts per trillion of dead animal smells. Ken Stager, who worked at the Natural History Museum in LA, showed that vultures have such a keen sense of smell that oil companies added a gas (ethyl mercaptan) that smells like dead animals and looked for circling vultures to track leaks in their pipelines.

Turkey vultures roost in local trees for the evening as they migrate and are often seen hanging out in the California fan palms at the Oasis of Mara. Their gliding flight is very efficient, and they seldom stop for a snack—but sometimes they can’t resist a dead animal that has gotten good and rotten. One afternoon I watched a half dozen gathered around a dead jackrabbit1; it was the kind of windy day that sends your lawn chairs into the neighbors’ yard, and the turkey vultures were having trouble taking flight. It made me laugh as they tumbled claws over beaks a few feet off the ground. Finally, in a calm moment, they were able to take off.

Turkey vultures and other migrating birds will be here soon. Keep watching the skies!

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The grand spectacle of bird migration is taking place, and we are lucky to witness swirling flocks (called kettles) of turkey vultures as they pass through the Morongo Basin. Then there are the tinier travelers. Now that it’s fall, several hummingbird species flash through on their way south, taking advantage of hummingbird feeders and—this year—our delirious autumn superbloom.

Keep an eye out if you have a feeder or a fountain with flowing water and you might see black-chinned, calliope, rufous, and Allen’s hummingbirds joining our resident Anna’s and Costa’s hummingbirds.

Do these migrating hummingbirds travel in tiny flocks, in wee sparkling kettles?1

No. These plucky little fuzzies, who weigh no more than a ping-pong ball, fly solo—even young birds making their first flight. Before they fly south from their winter homes or north to spend the summer, they double their weight, transforming into tiny flying butterballs. Before they leave, the males start to get Zugenruhe, a German word means restless and itchy to travel. (We looked in this handy term when we celebrated white-crowned sparrows, who are due back in about two weeks.) The females follow a month or so later.

Hummingbirds fly low, just above treetops, desert shrubs, and water. This flight path lets them see fueling stations along the way and good places to rest. They are experts at catching tail winds, and I imagine these birds, who travel light, find themselves tumbling in the wind with a high-pitched “wheeeeeee!”

Among desert migrants, the rufous hummingbird is legendary. Barely heavier than a penny, it travels up to 4,000 miles from central Mexico to Alaska, farther than any bird its size. Its path cuts directly through the Mojave desert each spring and fall. Each stop in our desert is brief, but essential.

Surviving Our Summers

How do our local hummingbirds survive summer in the desert? Even at its most brutal, there’s always something blooming, and hummers also eat aphids, gnats, and spiders. They become torpid and slow their racing hearts as they hang out in the shade.2

We can give hummingbirds a hand by planting a pollinator garden. We’ve all seen that hummingbirds love red flowers like ocotillo blooms, penstemon, and chuparosa, named after one of the Spanish words3 for “hummingbird.” The Mojave Desert Land Trust provides some useful tips. (Maybe you’ll have better luck than I do, because I kill virtually every bloom I plant.) A plant nursery in Nevada gives advice on how to keep your feeder clean and safe for hummingbirds.

Backyard Evolution

I’ll tax your patience with one more excellent factoid about hummingbirds before I dive into our locals in the future. In May of this year a study in Science showed that the beaks of Anna’s hummingbirds evolved to fit backyard feeders, which became common in the 1950s. In just ten generations, their beaks have grown larger and longer. Their range has also expanded to follow human gardens. Once confined to southern California, Anna’s hummingbirds now thrive from Vancouver to Baja.

¡Viva las chuparosas!

The first sign was scat. Too big to be coyote poop. It sat loose and scattered near the Hidden Valley parking lot. I’ve seen bear scat before, not often, but enough to know.

Nearby, between two boulders, something had made itself comfortable. It dug a scrape and luxuriated in a roll of toilet paper.1 I stood there and asked myself: could a bear really be here, deep in the dry heart of Joshua Tree National Park?

Reading the News on the Ground

Summer hikes in Joshua Tree divide themselves. We get out early, beat the heat, rack up miles before the blast furnace flips to 11. Or they’re slow hikes reading the dispatches, letting the desert speak. News here comes in tracks, scat, seed husks, and subtle smells.

On slow hikes we stop to notice how ants cope, how a lizard flashes its tail like a warning flag, how the granite radiates heat sharp enough to scald a hand. Juniper berries cook on the branch until their gin-rich scent rises, pungent and spicy.2

One July, on a slow walk near Queen Mountain, we found more droppings. A bear had camped by a juniper exuberantly blue with berries, leaving copious plops in the sand wash. It had managed a feast, despite the month being drier than usual.

Video of a visitor sighting of a bear near Quail Mountain; starts at around 2:20

Bears live west of us, up in the San Bernardinos, where water and oaks and pine forests give them a steadier life. They range down toward Pioneertown and Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. They’re listed on the Joshua Tree National Park website as “uncommon migrants.” Still, uncommon doesn’t mean impossible.

I thought of the Eureka Fire that burned in May and June, the way flames and smoke push animals into strange directions. Maybe this bear, confused or driven by hunger, had come east, deeper into desert than usual. Bears can cover fifty miles in a week, following their noses, which are seven times more sensitive than a dog’s. A line of junipers, a trickle of wash, the faint smell of water or fruit, could pull a bear farther than we’d expect.

Waiting for Rain

But what struck me most wasn’t the surprise of the scat—it was the timing. July had passed dry as bone. No monsoon. I worried: how would a bear survive here?

Then, in August, cumulus clouds began to pile up on the eastern horizon. They looked like a line of fat, slow bears, reluctant to march this way. Day after day, they lingered. Teasing. Holding back their cargo of rain.

And then, one afternoon, they broke.

The first monsoon storms pelted Twentynine Palms. Flash floods scoured washes. Roads turned to rivers. Rushing water stranded drivers. The desert does not take rain gently.

But oh, the renewal. Creosote leaves brightened. Ocotillo greened up. The air itself smelled electric, sharp with ozone, sweet with that desert rain smell of tar, cinnamon, and rock.

I imagined the bear, wherever it had wandered, standing in the downpour, fur slicked flat, lapping rain pooled in granite hollows. A creature both out of place and perfectly at home.

Here in the Morongo Basin, sightings aren’t as rare as they once were. Just this summer, social media brimmed with stories and security camera videos: bears raiding trailers, pawing at backyard fruit trees, tipping trash cans, even breaking into cars. One hiker near Mission Creek Preserve fled after a close encounter and had to be rescued.

But black bears, despite their size, don’t want trouble. They want calories.

The Bigger Picture: Roads and Corridors

Whether this summer’s bear stays or moves on, the larger story is about movement. Animals cross landscapes constantly, and our highways are often the deadliest barriers.

On State Route 62, the Mojave Desert Land Trust documented 232 wildlife deaths in just over a year: mule deer, bighorn sheep, bobcat, coyote, fox, mountain lion, and yes, black bear.

Traffic on SR-62 has soared alongside park visitation and Basin population. Wildlife crossings—dedicated overpasses or underpasses—can cut these collisions by up to 90%.

The Land Trust, with partners like Caltrans, the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission, and others, is now applying for funding to plan two crossings at the Morongo and Yucca grades. These stretches are complete barriers; no safe passages exist for wildlife.

They’ll also knit together the habitats of Joshua Tree National Park, Sand to Snow National Monument, and the San Bernardinos. For bears, it could mean safer wanderings, fewer roadside carcasses, more nights spent under junipers with bellies full of berries.

Cloud Bears

When the desert sky builds clouds, it’s like watching mountains form. They darken, flash with lightning, and break open with water that can both destroy and restore.

The bear scat we’ve seen in the park is a reminder that other lives move through this landscape, quietly, mostly unseen.

Clouds carry stories of how animals like bears thread their way across ranges, down canyons, through highways and fire scars, seeking food and shelter.

Rain is their reprieve. Rain is ours, too.

Wherever that bear is now—back toward the mountains, or lingering among the junipers—I hope it found relief in the monsoon rain. I hope it stays elusive. And I hope we keep learning how to live alongside creatures who remind us that the desert still holds surprises.

A newspaper article in the 2010s mentions a bear sighting in Twentynine Palms, and if you know about this, please drop a note in the comments!

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“Where can I see mountain goats?”

It’s a question I hear often as a volunteer on the Barker Dam and Hidden Valley trails. The craggy ridgelines and dry washes of Joshua Tree National Park certainly feel like mountain goat territory. But out here in the Mojave, it’s not goats you’ll spot. It’s sheep—desert bighorn sheep.

No judgment, of course. I’m always happy to gently separate the goats from the sheep and share what I know about one of the park’s most elusive and awe-inspiring creatures. I tell visitors they probably won’t see bighorn, but they might try Barker Dam in the early hours and Ryan Mountain or the 49 Palms Oasis trails if they are up to more strenuous hikes. But wherever the bighorn are, water—or the hope of water—is usually nearby.

Born to Bound

There’s something magical about seeing bighorn sheep in the wild. One moment you’re alone among sun-baked rocks, and the next, a ram materializes from the boulders like a desert mirage. Their tan coats blend almost perfectly with the weathered granite, although sometimes their white butts give them away. When they move, it’s with the confidence of an animal born to scale cliffs. What looks to us like a sheer wall is, to them, just another path.

Around 200 bighorn live in the vast sprawl of Joshua Tree National Park, divided into at least three loosely defined populations: one group ranges around the Wonderland of Rocks, Queen Mountain, 49 Palms, and Pine City; another near Cottonwood and its life-sustaining oases; and a third in the far west around Keys View. Still more roam remote sections of the Marine base.

Once, these sheep likely roamed far and wide, connecting with other herds across what is now the California desert. Today, Highway 62 and its corridor of development act as barriers, cutting off potential exchanges between the park’s herds and those on the base.

And yet they persist. They adapt. They endure.

Water Is Life

Unlike their relatives in wetter regions, desert bighorns can go for days—or even weeks—without drinking, especially in cooler months. Instead, they derive moisture from their food: grasses, desert willow, and barrel cactus, among other plants. Their bodies are adapted to minimize water loss, their kidneys concentrating urine, and their blood regulating temperature to avoid overheating.

But water is still a necessity—especially for nursing ewes and young lambs. During drought years, which are now more common thanks to climate change, bighorns must travel long distances between feeding grounds and the few remaining seeps and springs. Natural oases like 49 Palms, Cottonwood, and isolated rock tanks become lifelines.

Lambs on the Ledge

I’ve followed fresh tracks startlingly close to Twentynine Palms homes but haven’t heard that they come into neighborhoods to munch on landscaping. Have you seen a bighorn near town? If so, we’d love to hear from you!

One of my first bighorn encounters happened climbing and stumbling a little up Ryan Mountain’s endless stone steps. Sweat pouring down my back, I paused to catch my breath and looked up—only to see a small herd cross the trail above me. Rams with their curled horns, ewes, and at least one lamb all paused to glance down at me before disappearing upslope as though gravity had no hold on them. A few minutes later, I ran into a park biologist who nodded knowingly. “Yep,” he said. “They’re up there almost every day this time of year.”

Of course they are. While I plod step-by-step, the bighorn fly.

Marine base resource managers refill wildlife water holes known as guzzlers by helicopter

A Call for Corridors

There’s a larger story here too. Bighorns, like so many desert species, face shrinking habitat and increased isolation. As resource managers and conservationists at the park and the Marine base work to study and support these animals, one of the big concerns is connectivity—how to allow isolated populations to mingle, share genes, and remain strong.

Wildlife corridors—safe passages across human-made barriers—are essential not just for bighorns but for bobcats, tortoises, and foxes. Supporting regional conservation efforts and respecting posted closures like the current shutdown of the Forty-nine Palms Oasis trail are small ways we can help support these incredible animals.

It’s tempting to romanticize bighorn sheep. And why not? They’re tough, graceful, elusive, and resilient. But they’re not mythical creatures. They’re living, breathing residents of our desert home—part of the same ecosystem we all depend on, even if we don’t see them every day.

So next time visitors ask me where to find “mountain goats,” I’ll smile, share a few favorite spots, and quietly hope they have their own magical moment in the rocks.

Until then: Stay curious. Stay respectful. And may your path be a little more sure-footed than mine. And remember, don’t be sheepish (sorry!)—be a GOAT—keep exploring!

There’s lots more to say about bighorns; we’ll be coming back to them in a few months.

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If you’ve spent any time near water sources in the desert this summer, you may have noticed the air humming a little louder than usual. That buzz you hear? It’s not just desert stillness playing tricks on your ears—it’s the sound of summer bees.

From the blooming smoke trees to the vault toilets at the Hidden Valley trailhead and Jumbo Rocks Campground, bees are everywhere right now. While they might seem like unwelcome guests during your hike or picnic, these winged wonders are part of a complex, ancient desert story.

Poet W. B. Yeats once dreamed of a “bee-loud glade,” conjuring up a peaceful Irish garden filled with their hum. In the Mojave, that glade might just be a kiddie pool or a sweat-soaked T-shirt. Not quite as poetic—but just as alive with activity.

Why so many bees now? As temperatures climb and desert moisture disappears, honeybees of all stripes come out in force looking for water. They’ll sip from your sweat or spilled soda—and from their favorite makeshift oases: puddles of water left by maintenance staff who clean vault toilets in the park. Honeybees sometimes overwhelm places where people gather in the park, leading to closures of the Lost Horse trail or the Keys View overlook.

This seasonal surge can seem overwhelming—especially to those with allergies or an aversion to insects—but it’s also a sign of life in one of the harsher environments in North America.

Even though they are super-useful as pollinators, honeybees are not native to North America. European settlers introduced them in the 1600s to pollinate crops. Today, agriculture depends on these little immigrants, and they help produce billions of dollars in food annually.

Meet the Locals

Despite the parched climate, the Mojave Desert is one of the richest bee habitats in the nation. According to a recent scientific study led by entomologist Dr. Michael C. Orr, Joshua Tree National Park hosts astonishing bee diversity—possibly up to 600 species. All of these bees are exquisitely adapted to dry climates.

Why are bees so bountiful? Our native bees are very specialized. Many of these bees pollinate just one family of flowers and ignore the rest. And though the flowers they pollinate only bloom for a short time, just as one group of flowers fades, another group comes into bloom—and each new bloom sequence supports a different set of bees.

Some species can delay emerging for years, waiting until the right plants bloom after a rare rain. Diadasia bees, for example, use pollen from only a few kinds of cactus, sunflower, and aster flowers.

Unlike social honeybees, native bees are usually solitary. Many dig individual nests in the ground, where they wait out the seasons and where females lay their eggs.

Carpenter bees—gorgeous blue-black insects that dart and dive as they fly—chew holes in wood to build their nests. Females collect pollen and nectar and make a dough called “bee bread.” They lay one egg at the end of the hole, seal it with bee bread, and lay a half dozen more eggs, shutting them into cells, one behind the other. When the larvae hatch, they feed on the bee bread as they develop.

Bee-ing a Bee

I went looking for native bees, but it’s been a brutal year for wildflowers and probably for the native bees too. While we wait for the monsoon to roll in and summer flowers to bloom, I took a close look at our local European honeybees collecting pollen from a desert willow.

They were, as you’d expect, very busy, and it was hard to take a photo. In fact, it was almost easier to snap a hummingbird!

When you look at a desert willow flower, you can see lines running from its pink petals into the cup where pollen is produced. Bees see in ultraviolet, which is the color just beyond the violet at the rainbow’s end and a color few humans can see—although many animals can. In An Immense World, science writer Ed Yong says, “Ultraviolet vision is so ubiquitous that much of nature must look different to most other animals.” Flowers have evolved vivid UV patches the signal the presence of pollen.

Bees follow the lines into the flower and pick up pollen all over their fuzzy bodies, collecting it especially on their thighs—and there is nothing like the golden thighs of a honeybee! I watched the bees closely, moving slowly—bees process movement much faster than we do and so I probably looked like a big, dim blob as I tried to take pictures of bees being bees. (I will refrain from making a pun about to bee or not to bee. You’ve suffered enough.)

Most of the honeybees who live around here are not very reactive and really don’t want to sting you. European honeybees that have bred with bees from Africa are more aggressive, and these killer bees have been slowly spreading across the southern United States. They’re rare and not naturally hunting you, but they will sting to protect their hives.

Bees may be bothersome at times, but they’re also brilliant. They’ve evolved complex systems of navigation, plant preferences, nesting behaviors, and survival strategies in our dry desert paradise.

Meanwhile, we’ll wait for the monsoon and the appearance of summer flowers like fetid chinchweed and the native bees that pollinate it. After all, bees are the invisible web holding much of the desert’s floral tapestry together. Their work goes unnoticed most of the year—but in summer, they remind us that this land is alive, alert, and full of motion.

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The loggerhead shrike is a chunky little fluffball with a large head, bandit mask, and wicked curved bill. You’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a mockingbird–it has similar dusty gray feathers and white wing bars that it flashes as it hunts. The shrike, however, has lethal superpowers you might not suspect.

You may already know that shrikes hunt lizards, large insects, and small birds and mammals. Even more gruesome–you may have seen the dried remains of a hapless lizard that a shrike has impaled on a yucca spike and left to cure for a few days.

Fear the Shrike

What is cool–wait, is it okay to say that about watching one animal kill another?--is how the shrike dispatches its prey. I witnessed a shrike catch a young black-throated sparrow and give it a quick shake to kill it.

If I had the superpower to watch this in slow motion, I would have seen the shrike pinch the sparrow’s neck, severing its spinal cord. A 2018 study showed that loggerhead shrikes whip their prey back and forth with a force up to 6-g, which is about the amount of force you feel barreling downslope on a rollercoaster or if you’ve ever been rear-ended in a slow-speed car crash.

Shrikes also have tooth-like notches near the end of their hooked bills. These are called tomial “teeth” that help them paralyze their prey. Small raptors like falcons also have these notches and they seem to give an edge to smaller birds that can’t fly off with heavier mice or birds.

Be glad this little impaler is a tiny bird with no taste for human flesh.

Why do loggerhead shrikes stick carcasses on spikes? Is lizard jerky easier to eat? Both males and females cache their prey but males do it more often, perhaps to demonstrate that they are good providers. (Nothing says love like a little lizard leather.) Shrikes also spike toxic insects like Monarch butterflies to let the noxious chemicals break down for a few days before they eat them.

Fierce Little Fighters

So, what is a loggerhead? There are loggerhead sea turtles, which have large blocky heads–and so do these shrikes compared to their slender lookalikes, the northern mockingbird. When you fight with someone, you are at “loggerheads,” which might be a nautical term for cannonballs mounted on long poles. The loggerheads were used to soften tar to seal the decks of sailing ships–and also made useful weapons when sailors fought each other.1

Male shrikes fight too–they flutter their wings and bow at intruders. When two males show off near each other, they usually face away but might suddenly turn to face off or stomp their feet. Before building nests, a few nearby shrikes may gather, calling out and showing off for a few minutes. This helps them figure out where their territory is, find a mate, and let new birds know where others have already settled.

Shrikes can be polygynous. While they usually stay with one mate, a female will sometimes raise her first brood of babies with one male, then find a new mate and raise a second set of nestlings in the same season.

Given their cranky temper, shrikes need big territories–The Lives of Desert Animals in Joshua Tree National Monument (1964) estimated about 30 or 40 acres per bird and counted a half dozen birds between Quail Springs and the park entrance in Twentynine Palms.

So next time you spot a plump gray songbird perched on a fencepost, scanning the ground with sharp eyes, remember: behind that sweet song is a deadly precision. The loggerhead shrike is a reminder that the desert is full of unexpected contradictions—beauty and brutality, softness and strength—bound together in one fierce little package.

Not bad for a two-ounce fluffball. Whether it's skewering lizards like hors d’oeuvres or showing off a bug buffet to win over a mate, the loggerhead shrike proves that you don’t need size to rule the desert—you just need guts, grit, and a good place to hang your leftovers.

A shrike enjoys a sip of water on a late winter afternoon. Shrikes live in the area all year long. (Video Kat Talley-Jones)

Now that it’s finally spring, the desert iguana that hangs out near the porch has been practicing his pushups. He’s been so handsome and impressive, I almost didn’t notice the object of his attentions.

A female desert iguana (lower left) as a male does pushups. (Video Kat Talley-Jones)

Is she impressed? What do you think? When the day warms, it’s hard to miss the side-blotch lizards, whiptails, and chuckwallas looking for love. It makes me giddy.

She Rex

When I first thought I’d write about lady lizards for Wildlife Wednesday, I was just going to focus on whiptails, the long-lined, elegant lizards that insist on darting across roads and trails. A 2017 Twitter post from Joshua Tree National Park had me thinking that the whiptail species that lives around here are all females.

Sadly, this isn’t the case. We are graced here with western or tiger whiptails (Aspidoscelis tigris tigris), which are male and female and reproduce sexually.

Some whiptails, specifically the New Mexico whiptail (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus), consist only of females. These striped beauties produce eggs that don’t need to be fertilized. The offspring are essentially clones of their mothers. The lizards do participate in mating behaviors—one lizard will mount the other and they’ll twine tails, which triggers ovulation in one or both lizards. There are theories about why some lizards species are all-female—benefits include the ability to spread to new habitats if it only takes on individual, a brilliant advantage that gives resilience with habitat loss and climate change. (This is giving me an idea for a science fiction novel….)

The Big Girls

Inquiring minds want to know how spiky horned lizards mate. (Very carefully!) The males have tough underbellies and persist despite females’ very spiny backs. Females are larger than males, which don’t aggressively defend their territories or sport mating colors. Males use their energy looking for females rather than maintain a large body size. Both sexes feast on ants, which are more plentiful in some seasons than others.

Lizard Hands? Human Hands!

There are 18 or so species around here, and they all lay eggs—an activity that will be taking place in the next couple of weeks among our lizard species. Many of them will dig shallow holes with their front claws, like this desert iguana inconveniently laying her eggs next to a driveway:

A female desert iguana digs a hole for her eggs (video courtesy Heidi Heard)

By the way, according to stories told by the Miwok people,1 a grandmother lizard is the reason people have hands instead of paws. In the 1930s, María Copas Frías, a Coast Miwok woman who lived in Marin County, told this story. She explained that Coyote made most animals and people:

Coyote made some wooden people, a man and a woman. He kept them close to his house for four days…and they became my people and the Tomales [Marin] people. He also made mud people. These might be the Sebastopol people [South Pomo].

When the first baby was born. Coyote said, "Oh, my baby is going to have paws like mine." Then Old Lady Lizard said, "No. All my grandchildren are going to be born with five fingers, just like mine." She spread her fingers. So there are [we have] five fingers.

Thank you, lady lizards, for our human hands!

Desert Trumpet is looking for writers! Are you interested? Email your resume and two writing samples to editor@deserttrumpet.org and we’ll be in touch!

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While most of us slept, spring arrived last Thursday, March 20, at exactly 2:10 a.m. PST. If you’d been standing on the equator, in say, Kigali, Rawanda, you’d have seen the sun directly overhead at noon, marking the equinox, the moment when day and night balance perfectly. Out here in the Mojave, long before dawn, something shifted.

Some years, spring drifts in, subtle at first—a few extra trills from the black-throated sparrows, verdins whistling, mourning doves getting cozy on the fence. The desert spiny lizards start their territorial push-ups.

This year, no such hesitation. Spring arrived all at once! As I drank my coffee, a cottontail rabbit boldy watched me through the sliding glass door. I know bunnies are the scourge of landscaping, but I miss the numerous rabbits we had around before the 2020 hemorrhagic rabbit virus burned through.

Out at the birdfeeder, the Gambel’s quail were back, finally.

Where do they go in winter? Someone nearby must have better birdseed. I think they return because this is home—the place where they dodged coachwhips and rattlesnakes as chicks, where their feet know the sand and gravel. However snaky, there is no place like home.

When I went for a walk later that morning, happy not to pull my hood over my ears to keep out the wind, I was thrilled to see my first wild desert tortoise of the year. (Frankly, every tortoise spotting is a thrill.) She’d come out of her burrow to warm her shell in the sun and see if there was anything good to eat. Green sprouts dotted the ground here and there, but it doesn’t seem like it will be a good wildflower year. She might have to wait patiently underground for the next rainy year, getting by on scraggly goldfields and, if we’re lucky, desert pincushion.

Yellow blooms cover the creosote, shimmering with bees and the occasional darting Anna’s hummingbird—which especially enjoy the ocotillo in bloom.

Just a few days before, straggling migratory turkey vultures had tumbled through the Basin, trying to ride the intense gusts of spring winds. The massive Joshua trees that line Hwy 62 in Yucca Valley swayed, their white blooms like masses of bells shaking in wind blasts. The Joshua trees are blooming in the national park along the road, but I didn’t see any flowers on trees when I walked a series of circuits around Barker Dam. Maybe at another elevation, but in any case, more blooms than last year.

Great horned owls hoo-hoo at each other in the night, and the roadrunner takes charge on the roof, clacking his beak and keeping an eye out for lizards. An excited visitor in the park told me he’d seen a Komodo dragon on the Hidden Valley Trail—chuckwallas are impressive but not as big enough to tear apart a goat like a Komodo dragon.

The speckled rattlesnake hasn’t curled up by the back door, and I haven’t run across any elegantly spiraled sidewinders warming up and watching for lizards—it’s not quite snake season around here.

The white-crowned sparrows have beefed up to start their epic journey to Alaska and will be leaving soon. I’ll miss them. Migrating songbirds have started to pass through and I’ve caught quick flashes of butterbutts1 and hooded orioles.

Did you notice the sudden onset of spring? What signs of spring have you’ve seen, smelled, and heard? Maybe it’s just a feeling. Maybe it’s just what I’d been wanting. Either way, spring is here.

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What do the Morongo Basin and Austin, Texas, have in common?

Both places like to think of themselves as “weird,” although Austin stopped being strange a few decades ago. Both are great places for music. And both are homes to Great-tailed Grackles!

These elegantly bizarre black birds are one of three iconic Austin animals along with armadillos and free-tailed bats. In the Morongo Basin, grackles barely register because they are fairly new arrivals and grace only a few bright and trashy hot spots; they’ll probably never join our wildlife pantheon of jackrabbits, roadrunners, and desert tortoises.

An Annoyance of Grackles

The collective noun for grackles is “annoyance,” and that tells you everything you need to know about the huge, pesky, raucous flocks of these birds occupying parking lot trees and pooping on hapless shoppers who didn’t read the white, splotchy signs that signal a grackle roost.

Here in the Morongo Basin, grackles are more demure; maybe that’s because they just got here. I first noticed them twenty years ago or so when I stopped at Stater Bros. on my way to Wonder Valley. I heard the scratchy call that sounds like creaking hinges capped with a metallic cry of “grackle! grackle!”

I had loved these birds as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, enticing them with peanut M&Ms to come close to me so I could observe their beautiful black, iridescent feathers, gleaming with purple and ocean blue. Their long tails seem asymmetric and are very expressive.

The males show off to impress each other and attract females, spreading their wings, fanning their tails, and pointing their beaks straight up to the sky. For a long time I thought the grackles kept company with cowbirds until I learned the females are much smaller than males and their feathers are a prim brown-black.

It made me happy to see my old Texas friends here, but when I told my ornithologist colleague at the LA Natural History Museum about them, he just said, “bah. Trash birds.” He explained that Great-tailed grackles had been working their way west from South Texas, following the 10 and 40 interstates, going from truck stop to supermarket to golf course.

Grackles need trees to roost in, a water source (puddles will do), and a good supply of seeds and bugs and French fries. The Twentynine Palms Stater Bros. parking lot fills the bill.

Best Heard at a Distance

After seeing them at the zócalo in Guadalajara, I learned that they’re called zanate in Mexico, and their large vocabulary of songs is admired and said to represent the seven passions of life: love, hate, fear, courage, joy, sadness, and anger. Grackles aren’t members of the crow family, although they seem almost as intelligent—or at least, as mischievous—but are related to blackbirds and orioles. They can be almost as melodious as blackbirds; however, one biologist said they were “best heard at a distance.” (I’ve found that’s also true of parrots.)

Great-tailed grackles are probably here to stay, although they’ve been having a hard time in the Stater Bros. parking lot since one of the big palo verde trees blew over in the July 2024 storms that flooded 29. There are records of them on iNaturalist at the golf course on the Marine base as well as a few other attractive spots along Highway 62.

The next time you’re at a green and lush spot in the desert—or a fast food parking lot—keep an eye out for Great-tailed Grackles and enjoy experiencing these raucous, ridiculous, rambunctious birds.

If your favorite isn’t on the list (we are limited to five choices), write it in the comments!

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Do you ever go for a desert walk, sit on a rock to eat a snack, and get a hinky feeling? That something is watching you? That someone might like to have you for a snack? You glance up the rocky slope at the barrel cactus and creosote: Is that a long-tailed slinky shadow slipping toward you? You’ve seen bighorn sheep upslope—could there be a mountain lion?

Probably just your overactive imagination.

And while sightings are rare, Morongo Basin features a major wildlife corridor and habitat linkage that runs through our communities linking Joshua Tree National Park, the Maine Air Ground Combat Center, the Pioneertown Preserve, and on to the Sand to Snow National Monument. A 2008 report1 shows possible mountain lion habitat in the Morongo Basin, with the most likely habitat highlighted in dark green. Mountain lions have huge ranges; a male might cover 100 to 200 square miles in his lifetime, while a female will prowl 30 to 70 miles. They need that much of a range to hunt for their food and also to avoid each other.

They also try to stay away from us. A study published in 2024 in the Santa Monica Mountains showed lions becoming more nocturnal so that they don’t interact with people and can hunt more successfully. Ellie Bollas, the study’s lead author said, “Seeing that mountain lions are flexible in their activity and sensitive to recreation is, I think, a reason we can feel optimistic that they’re willing to avoid us and want to avoid us.”

There haven’t been many mountain lions documented in Twentynine Palms, but there have long been rumors of a mountain lion along Lear and near the Fortynine Palms oasis. The Marine base’s Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan, released in 2024, shows no records of lions on base, however, and none have been reported in Twentynine Palms on iNaturalist.

But they’re around. Mountain lions have been caught on trail cameras in the Joshua Tree National Park. They have been spotted on Godwin Road in Wonder Valley and in the highlands of the village of Joshua Tree.

@projectcoyoteorgMe sneaking into the kitchen at 1:04 a.m. to eat shredded cheese. Longtime Project Coyote supporter Annica Kreuter sent us this video of a mountain lion crossing her patio in Joshua Tree, a rare capture indeed! 🐱 Mountain lions, also known as cougars or pumas, are renowned for their elusive nature. These solitary animals have mastered the art of remaining unseen and unheard in their rugged habitats. With their keen senses and remarkable agility, they navigate the wilderness with finesse, often leaving behind little more than paw prints. Conflicts between humans and mountain lions are rare, and coexistence with this species is certainly possible. Remember to be aware of your surroundings when living and/or recreating in mountain lion habitat. 🧡 If you have a unique trail cam video you’d like to share with the world, please email us at capturecoexistence@projectcoyote.org #MountainLion #Cats 📹 Annica Kreuter

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Two mountain lions were hit by vehicles in Yucca Valley last year. Homeowners found an injured five-year-old female mountain lion in June as she lay in the shade of their residence in Yucca Valley. Sadly, she didn’t survive. Another female mountain lion was more lucky and was trapped and treated for wounds and dehydration at the San Diego Humane Society Ramona Wildlife Center. Once she recovered, she was released into the San Bernardino County wilderness in November.

Because our roads are perils to mountain lions and other wildlife, the Mojave Desert Land Trust has bought 43 acres on either side of 62 in Morongo Valley, where wildlife density is higher because of water almost always present at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. They will be working with CalTrans to develop a wildlife crossing.

If you’re lucky, maybe someday you’ll see a mountain lion flicker across highway 62 in the twilight, chasing after prey: a coyote or a jackrabbit, maybe, or a bighorn sheep wandering away from the 49 Palms oasis. Slow down so you don’t hit it and feel grateful that you’ve had a chance to see one of our desert’s most amazing predators.

Vans, RVs, and SUVs crowded the Twin Tanks parking lot. Families dragged back from hiking to Heart Rock on a hot summer morning, the wind snatching snack wrappers from their hands. We had been poking around Twin Tanks looking for tadpoles and triops after a recent monsoon rain. I was glad I had an extra water bottle in the car—but what was a half-eaten orange doing on the roof?

Who was the asshole who left their trash on my car? I saw a pair of ravens hopping around the parking lot keeping their eyes out for dropped morsels. Then I noticed a splash of white poop on the windshield. Culprits identified! I swear I heard them snickering.

An unkindness of juvenile ravens checks out the water dish.

Less benign than the shredded orange was the broken shell of a hatchling tortoise I found along the Boy Scout Trail, a hole probably drilled by a raven’s powerful beak.

I admire ravens for their intelligence and playfulness—during a presentation I’ve long forgotten, I watched a group of young ravens roll and tumble in air streaming from the vent of a Pasadena office building and wished I could do that too. Chris Clarke tells an enchanting story of one raven tricking a group of gulls out of a prized snack, demonstrating peak bird braininess.

But ravens also prey on young desert tortoises, losses the population of endangered reptiles can’t afford to bear. It’s not the ravens’ fault—it’s ours. We’ve created opportunities for them to thrive on our garbage and roadkill. The power lines we’ve strung across the desert provide spots for ravens to roost, nest and linger in places they once flew through.

Some novel ideas have been tried for discouraging ravens, including Hardshell Labs Techno Tort, which lures ravens to feed on a robotic hatchling tortoise and deters them with a puff of artificial grape flavoring, which the birds hate, training them to stay away.

Better yet, more than 500 utility poles have recently been removed from the Mojave National Preserve, taking away prime raven nest sites in tortoise country. Ravens have no shortage of other places to build their nests. Here in Twentynine Palms, placing utilities for commercial buildings underground per city code helps eliminate some of these nesting spots, especially near the national park boundary.

Although I am Team Tortoise, I still enjoy watching the mated pair of ravens that claim our yard as their territory. In the spring, the (mostly) monogamous couple soar together with a whoosh of their wings and dare each other to great heights. Their fledglings whine that flying down from the top of that tree is just too scary, mom.

I can empathize with them panting with their beaks open in the deepest summer—ravens are here all year, and I appreciate their willingness to stick it out. Just don’t eat any baby tortoises, I tell them, but when has a raven ever listened to a human?

What do you think? Are ravens beautiful and inspiring? or are they mischievous tricksters? Or are they “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous birds of yore?”1

It’s that spooky season: The wind is up. Gusts rattle at the vents and loose windows. Dust devils swirl. And the little burrowing owls—with their OMG I THOUGHT THAT WAS DECAF WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS A RED-EYE look—hunker in their burrows.

Maybe you’ve seen Western Burrowing Owls here in the Morongo Basin, but I haven’t.1 I have seen these owls at Badlands National Park occupying prairie dog colonies. I was lucky enough to be at a pullout in the Badlands when a carful of adults and kids pulled up. When the family spotted the long-legged owls and tubby prairie dogs, I was treated to the squee heard around the world. So cute!

Burrowing owls range from Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada all the way to the tip of South America. In our desert’s loose, sandy soil, the owls can dig but prefer to take over ground squirrel and rodent holes, coyote and fox dens, and even desert tortoise burrows. Here, a burrowing owl at an English hawk conservancy shows how it’s done:

In agricultural areas they might line the mouth of their burrows with cow dung (at Badlands, it was bison poop). The feces may attract insects the owls feed on—or maybe the owls just like the way it smells. Burrowing owls eat insects, lizards, scorpions, and mice, and some are even reported to eat prickly pear and cholla fruit.

A few local burrowing owls have been reported on iNaturalist, and there are records of them in the Pinto Basin in Joshua Tree National Park. People who live in Harmony Acres say they’ve seen them in the Sugarbowl, and they’ve been reported in Wonder Valley. Just this year, the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center published an Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan that includes a recent survey of Western Burrowing Owls on base.

In 2007, wildlife surveyors for the Marines counted 25 burrowing owl territories. In 2022, they only found two territories.

That doesn’t sound like good news, does it? What happened? The report suggests that two bad drought years before the 2022 survey might have been to blame. Like the Mojave desert tortoise, the owls have also suffered significant habitat loss. For owls, the change of grasslands into farms, large wind and solar projects, and the use of rodenticides as well as accidents with wind turbines and cars have all reduced their populations.

Sadly, burrowing owl numbers are falling everywhere in California, and just three weeks ago, the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) declared the the owl a candidate for listing as a threatened or endangered species. A full status review might take up to two years.

Meanwhile, around 9,500 nesting pairs of owls live in California, three-quarters of them in the furrows, berms, and roadsides of farms in the Imperial Valley. The Center for Biological Diversity, which led the petition to the CDFW, hopes that listing the owl will give it protection. “I’m thrilled they’re safeguarded for now,” said conservation advocate Jeff Miller, “and look forward to these adorable little owls getting permanent protection.”

How can you help burrowing owls?

1. Always observe owls from a respectful distance.

2. Do not use pesticides or rodenticides near owl nests.

3. Keep dogs on leashes and cats indoors; they may kill owls and chicks.

4. Support land use standards, natural open space planning, habitat stewardship, and habitat enhancement projects that benefit burrowing owls.

5. Report any birds found nesting or near construction sites to the CDFW.

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This weekend, duped by the previous days’ cooler temperatures, a group of us slogged up a 7.5-mile section of the California Riding and Hiking Trail. We lingered in the scraggly shade of a creosote drinking water and eating salty snacks—until Jo began to scrabble at her pant legs. “Ants in my pants!” she laughed and ran behind a yucca to shake out the ants in privacy.

“Ow! They’re biting!” We helpfully offered all the Benadryl cream we could find in our first aid kits, and the ointment seemed to help.

Jo had been swarmed by California harvester ants, which have a potent venom they deliver by biting with their powerful mandibles and then following up with a sting from their abdomen. I know from witlessly hanging laundry on a clothesline over ant nests that the stings are quite painful and itch for days. Have I moved the clothesline? No, I haven’t. Some of us never learn.

Despite the risk of bites/stings, it’s fascinating to watch harvester ants. It’s irresistible to touch the velvety chaff the worker ants pile up outside of their nests, husks and stems discarded from the seeds the ants gather.

It’s hard to make an individual connection with ants, but it’s possible to admire the efforts of worker ants as they collect the seeds they store in chambers several yards below the surface. Large colonies might have tens of thousands of workers that range hundreds of feet outside of their nests. It’s easy to see how important they are in the ecosystem because they disperse seeds, loosen sand and dirt so water seeps in deeper, and mix nutrients from the plants they gather into the soil.

Harvester ants forage even during the hottest months, and run around frantically with their gasters (the bulbous part at the end of an ant) held high to keep them off the ground. They slow down in temperatures below 65 degrees but might emerge on warmer winter days.

Many animals find harvester ants tasty—have you ever run across a horned lizard perched at the edge of an anthill hoovering up ants? Ants make up 90 percent of the lizards’ diet—they can flick the toxic ants into their mouths and swallow them before they can get stung.

Harvesters ants have a place in California Native rituals, according to the late Cecelia Garcia, a Chumash elder and healer. She described how boys were given hundreds of harvester ants to swallow as part of a coming of age ritual. The youth show their character as they endure the pain and may experience visions from the ant toxins.1

Fortunately, harvester ants prefer to be outside, and we don’t have to worry that they’ll invade our kitchens and bathrooms looking for water, as Argentine ants do in more urban areas. Harvester ants have evolved perfectly to do their work in our hot and dry climate and despite our experience on the trail, don’t bother us unless we carelessly step on their nests.

I keep looking for signs of fall. These include spotting Orion, a winter constellation in the northern hemisphere, while watching the Perseid meteor shower from the driveway, and the recent lovely run of cooler days made me wonder where my favorite sweater is.

Late one recent afternoon at Barker Dam in Joshua National Park, I watched a dozen turkey vultures gather around the rock formations, gliding in lazy circles. Were these local vultures hanging out and enjoying some late in the day thermals? Or was this the leading edge of the fall migration of these big birds?

I’m jumping the gun a bit—it’s warmed up again, and it is still officially summer for a few more weeks. And according to BirdCast, a bird migration dashboard, the fall migration has barely started, and vultures are not yet among the hundreds of thousands of birds starting to cross our skies, mostly at night. (This dashboard is insanely awesome, and you’ve got to take a look.)

According to my notes and others’ observations, vultures usually start coming through in big groups the third week in September. I want you to keep an eye out for them because if you haven’t seen a kettle of 50 or more turkey vultures spiraling past, you are in for a treat.

This vortex of vultures moves lazily but purposefully along the ridges of the little San Bernardino Mountains and very close to Highway 62. If you look closely, you’ll see that some migrating hawks join them. For a few weeks in September and October, turkey vultures are going to Central America and perhaps as far away as Ecuador.

Turkey vultures smell better than almost any other animal (although they don’t smell good—they projectile vomit when they are alarmed and pee on their legs to cool off). They can detect just a few parts per trillion of dead animal smells. Ken Stager, who worked at the Natural History Museum in LA, showed that vultures have such a keen sense of smell that oil companies added a gas (ethyl mercaptan) that smells like dead animals and looked for circling vultures to track leaks in their pipelines.

Turkey vultures roost in local trees for the evening as they migrate and are often seen hanging out in the California fan palms at the Oasis of Mara. Their gliding flight is very efficient, and they seldom stop for a snack—but sometimes they can’t resist a dead animal that has gotten good and rotten. One afternoon I watched a half dozen gathered around a dead jackrabbit1; it was the kind of windy day that sends your lawn chairs into the neighbors’ yard, and the turkey vultures were having trouble taking flight. It made me laugh as they tumbled claws over beaks a few feet off the ground. Finally, in a calm moment, they were able to take off.

Turkey vultures and other migrating birds will be here soon. Keep watching the skies!

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One of summer’s pleasures—and by August after weeks of 100+ degree days, summer joy wears thin—is watching bats swirl in their evening aerial ballet. It’s thrilling to watch one appear, to be joined by another and another until there are a dozen bats chasing bugs and somehow not running into one another.

One of summer’s annoyances post-monsoon are the gnats buzzing around while I’m bat-watching. The gnats seem to go for my ears (how do jackrabbits cope?), but my misery is a bat’s delight—and dinner.

Sixteen species of bat have been observed in Joshua Tree National Park and many of them range into Twentynine Palms. It is very hard to identify bats on the wing unless you have a scanner that picks up frequencies of bat echolocation signals—or unless you are another bat.

A bat hunts for bugs around a porch light. (Kat Talley-Jones)

Around our house near Indian Cove, I’ve seen pallid bats (I know because one roosted on the house for a few weeks—they are called pallid bats because of their light-colored fur), California myotis bats, and big brown bats.

A bat blitz in the park found the big brown bat to be the most common species, and Barker Dam had the most bat species of the half-dozen gnatty water holes that scientists surveyed.

Where do our bats roost? They live in rock crevices and on buildings and hang from the beards of palm trees in yards and oases. So far, white-nose syndrome hasn’t been found in local bats; this terrible fungus grows on the faces and wings of hibernating bats, causing them to wake up from their winter sleep and use up their fat reserves—the fungus has wiped out entire colonies in the eastern and midwestern states. The Mojave Desert Inventory & Monitoring Network tracks this disease in public lands in the west.

To many people, bats seem the most alien of all mammals because they fly at night and in erratic zig-zags. It’s hard to connect with them the way we might with the local coyotes, cottontails, and antelope ground squirrels.

Bats also navigate by sending out high-frequency signals through their mouths and noses and listening for echoes. Because few of us find our way through the world by squeaking and shrieking at high pitches,1 it’s hard for us to imagine what their lives are like.2

Wouldn’t it be something, though, to sleep upside-down hanging from tiny claws? To fly on leathery wings and negotiate the dark by squeaking and listening for echoes? To swirl with other bats in an intricate dance above desert water holes? To save jackrabbits (and people) from itchy ears by eating all the bugs?

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Note that donations in excess of $100 are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law, and your subscription/donation will be listed as AHA Projects, the name of our fiscal receiver, on your statement. Donations over $100 can be made via the Aha Paypal.