I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does

Pocket mice:

Cholla:

Beavertail cactus:

Ladderback woodpecker:

male and female phainopeplas:

Raven:

Male Scott’s oriole:

Female Anna’s hummingbird:

and a male of the same species:

female Costa’s hummingbird:

Male Costa’s hummingbird:

Phil just sent out this email:

Dear San Jacinto friends and colleagues,

I’d like to alert you to a major update of the museum’s website with results of our study of the San Jacinto Mountain region. We now have a clickable map with which you can compare for each camp site the species lists from the expedition of 1908 and our results from 2008 and beyond. The address of the introductory page for the project is http://www.sdnhm.org/research/sanjacinto/index.php, and the address of the page from which you can click to get the results is http://www.sdnhm.org/research/sanjacinto/results/index.php. We will now be able to update the lists promptly after each field trip. Our tentative schedule for the next 3 months is Carrizo Creek 16–20 February, Strawberry/May valleys 16–20 March, and Garnet Queen Mine 27 April–1 May.

Thanks very much to Ray Garcia of the museum’s webteam for all his work in making this feature possible, as well as to Dana McLaughlin of our department for working with Ray so closely.

Thanks to all for your interest and support.

Phil

Philip Unitt
Curator, Department of Birds and Mammals

Check it out, the web guy did a fantastic job.

Oh, the luxurious delights of car camping! How it allows one to live like a king in the middle of nowhere! Well, we weren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it sure does make life easier when you can bring a grill, beer, wine and just about anything else you want. I slept in the back of my Volvo on a futon with a down comforter and only had to open my eyes in the morning to get a breathtaking view of Mt San Jacinto. You can see the 10,800 ft. peak in the background in this photo. Gene and I were up there last spring via the Palm Springs Tramway.

The rest of the party arrived at the site on Monday and endured howling winds for the next two days. It was so windy that they actually considered abandoning the rest of the week, but by wednesday morning it had calmed down. By the time I arrived Wednesday afternoon, there was almost no wind at all and the weather was great. The clear desert skies gave us a stellar view of the moon at its largest in 15 years. It was so bright that it hampered our night-time spotlighting.

The Snow Creek site was absolutely beautiful. To the south was Mt San Jacinto and to the north was San Gorgonio Mountain which provided us with spectacular vistas, especially in the morning. We were camped in a boulder field, complete with paved-road access. Just a short walk from camp was a cave with some honest-to-goodness Indian art (some of them that turn up are fakes) depicting the phases of the moon.

So ends the re-survey for 2007. We’ll take a break for the month of January and start again in February. Gene and I are travelling to PA on Sunday the 21st with me kicking and screaming the whole way. The last time we travelled at Christmas, I swore I’d never do it again. The airports are a nightmare and I hate flying anyway. We’re only staying until the 25th but are planning to squeeze in a day of house-hunting.

Saturday November 15th I spent a large part of the day preparing for the trip…packing, desperately trying to pick up my bag and walk around the house, unpacking, re-weighing, unpacking, repacking and making tough decisions as to which items to leave at home. The flask of Knob Creek bourbon and leisure reading book were jettisoned, to my great regret.  In addition to preparing my backpack, the day’s activities also included extracting a ten-inch piece of dental floss out of Sinbad’s butt.

Sunday morning came and at 4:05 am, as I was preparing a sandwich for the day’s lunch and ten minutes prior to leaving the house, Sinbad had a seizure. We pumped him full of IV valium and that stopped it…but jesus, give me a break. Right before I leave for a week?! These are the kinds of insane coincidences that make one believe in kooky shit.  I had no choice, I had to leave Gene with a post-ictal dog and who-knows-what forthcoming canine disasters.

Our group met at Phil’s house and we left San Diego for Pinyon Pines promptly at 4:30. We arrived at one of the Forest Service Volunteer Association members’ homes which was used as a staging area for the trip due to its close proximity to our site. They were kind enough to treat us to an excellent breakfast prior to starting our hike. While the FSVA horse people arranged our supplies on their horses mules and a lone donkey, we stood around, helping occasionally, but mostly wondering what the hell lie ahead. Our packs were heavy – would we make it? Rather, would I make it? Only six of the eight pack horses were able to make the trip. That unforeseen blow meant that we wouldn’t be able to carry in as much water as we’d planned. But in an unexpected and fortuitous turn of events, the horse volunteers had scouted the area the day before and assured us that there was plenty of water available at the site. Who knew! The desert at this time of year is usually bone dry.  While we were feeling anxious, the FSVA volunteers laughed almost continuously and rioutously at corny horse jokes, anecdotes about their animals and who knows what else. They were clearly enjoying this adventure immensely.

Things just got better when a woman announced that they’d be loading us expeditioneers and our packs into the back of a truck and driving us part of the way. Halleleiujah. That meant a four mile walk instead of seven! Maybe I would make it after all. We were dropped off at a locked gate leading into the San Bernardino National Forest, proceeded a mile, and sat down to wait for our equestrian guides adjacent to a long-abandoned orchard. We sat and reflected on the perfect weather, the excellent company we were keeping and the fact that we were off into uncharted territory…at least uncharted biologically since 1908. We saw mountain bike tracks here and there on our journey, but probably not left by the kind of people who were interested in hanging around to explore. Although we were having a great time, and despite the fact that our guides had scouted the day before, we just weren’t sure how this trip would pan out which naturally created both excitement and apprehension.

Our guides showed up after a short wait and we began the hike along an old forest service road. In high spirits we followed the telltale signs of horse turds and hoof prints as the pack train moved ahead of us faster than we could keep up. The only thing quashing my mood was the thought of Sinbad on an operating table, half-dead and stricken with peritonitis, as a veterinarian surgically removed the dental floss that had sliced though his innards.

The road fizzled out and we continued out journey in a sandy wash that made for difficult walking. Luckily, it was for only several kilometers and we followed the horse turds off on a trail to the west that led up over a ridge. We reached the top of the ridge and looked down to see the horses and our gear waiting on a lovely little flat next to a briskly moving stream. I made it! And with plenty of gas to spare! It wasn’t so bad after all, even with a pack. Damn!! why didn’t I bring that bourbon! was all I could think!

The horses and riders took off leaving us to set up camp and begin our week in the wilderness. Our camp was beautiful and the running water was fabulous. The creek was filled with California tree frogs and just a little further downstream was an incredible granite canyon through which the water fell and coursed forming a beautiful series of falls and deep pools. It was the perfect area for bathing throughout the week…until someone found two piles of mountain lion dung in the vicinity.  Wondering if you’re suddenly going to feel claws plunging into your naked back kind of put a damper on the bathing.

By Monday evening I had myself convinced that Sinbad was dead due to status epilepticus, Little Buddy had slipped his leash and was now roadkill on 4th Street, and that Gene had also succumbed to a passing bus while trying to save Little Buddy. In a cruel twist of fate, we had cell phone service, but neither calls nor messages would go through. I tried repeatedly. If only I could make contact…

to be continued…

Phil just sent out an email summary of our Little Paradise trip intended for distribution to our supporters. Here’s the official version of our trip, my personal account to follow:

From 16 to 22 November eight of us made an expedition to what is now the most remote and least visited of the camp sites covered by Grinnell, Swarth, Taylor , and Richardson in 1908: the middle section of Palm Canyon near Little Paradise, elevations 2400 to 3000 feet. We could not have made this trip without the generous help of the equestrian section of the Forest Service Volunteer Association, especially Mike McCann, Tom and Cathy Furth, Ray and Dena Barmore, and Ron and Sandy Korman. These folks scouted the route for us ahead of time, then took Sunday 16 November and Saturday 22 November to load our gear on their horses and guide us the nearly 5 miles from the north end of Palm Canyon Drive on Pinyon Flat down Potrero Canyon to Agua Bonita Spring, where we camped for the next week.

Please recall that one of our goals in this project is to make one of our minimum 3 surveys at each of the 1908 camp sites in winter, insofar as possible. This trip in the third week of November qualified as our first winter field trip.

In 1908 Grinnell and Swarth actually had three camp sites in the middle section of Palm Canyon , though one was an unplanned stop necessitated by the slow progress of their burros down the steep, rocky west slope of Palm Canyon . They spent from 12 to 14 and 17 to 18 June in middle Palm Canyon , so naturally our results for November 2008 differ from theirs, especially for birds. Nevertheless, our results were good and an interesting comparison in many ways.

In spite of its remoteness, middle Palm Canyon has seen considerable environmental changes over the last century. The area burned in 1994, according to Ray Barmore, and we saw many skeletons of burned, dead shrubs and juniper trees much larger than any that have resprouted over the last 14 years. The habitat is very rocky, with much of the surface covered by granite boulders. A little attention to the plants growing between the rocks reveals that many of them are chaparral species, including redshanks, yerba santa, sugarbush, Yucca whipplei, and even chamise. But the aspect of the habitat is open desert scrub, with catclaw acacia, mesquite, and multiple species of cholla. In unburned areas to the east of Palm Canyon, larger chaparral shrubs and some very large sugarbushes (one large enough to have a woodpecker nest hole in it!) persist, suggesting that before 1994 middle Palm Canyon would have rated much farther toward the chaparral end of the spectrum. As we saw at Banning, then, fire may be inducing chaparral to retreat from the fringes of its range where it can no longer sustain itself.

We were fortunate to have with us on this trip ecologist Genie Fleming, who made some formal vegetation descriptions and analyses of our study area, something we will do at each of our camp sites.

In and near the creek through Palm Canyon , native plants (including scattered cottonwood trees) were much augmented by invasive exotics: tamarisk, Bermuda grass, fountain grass, cocklebur, etc. The California Tree Frog was by far the most conspicuous vertebrate along the creek and was quite vocal at night.

We had unseasonably warm temperatures during our trip—hot in the intense midday sun, down only into the 50’s °F at night. Probably as a result reptiles were quite active, and our 8 species far exceeded herpetologist Brad Hollingsworth’s expectations. We found more species than did Grinnell and Swarth in June 1908, and the only species they found that we missed was the Baja California Collared Lizard. Some species were represented primarily or exclusively by juveniles, the adults apparently having already retreated into inactivity for the winter. The Yucca Night Lizard was a species missed entirely in 1908, undoubtedly because the technique of searching for it in clusters of dead yucca leaves was not known at the time.

Birds were sparse. As expected, Grinnell and Swarth recorded 10 species of primarily summer visitors plus 2 species of late spring migrants that we did not find on our trip. Conversely, we found 11 species of winter visitors absent in June 1908. Rather unexpected among these were one Wilson’s Snipe, foraging along the creek on 19 November, one Slate-colored Junco on 19 November (one of only two juncos seen all week), and one male Merlin, flying over our camp as we were packing up on 22 November. A big surprise was a flock of 21 Canada Geese, flying south up Palm Canyon at sunset on 21 November, only about 100 feet off the ground. They passed directly over our camp, were as startled to see us as we were to see them, then circled over a low ridge and returned back down the canyon.

Resident birds that Grinnell and Swarth found that we missed were the Gambel’s Quail and Oak Titmouse. We saw a flock of quail, but they all sounded like California, and all we could see well looked like California . These two closely related species mix and hybridize in this region. The titmouse could well have retreated upslope with the burning of the mature chaparral—we have certainly found it to be a species sensitive to fire in San Diego County . More or less resident birds that we found that Grinnell and Swarth missed were the kestrel, Mourning Dove, Great Horned Owl, Anna’s Hummingbird (California fuchsia was still blooming during our visit, a food source for the hummingbirds), flicker (could be a winter visitor, but we saw a nest hole in the single dead palm at Little Paradise spring), Loggerhead Shrike, raven (Dana Hogan photographed a large stick nest probably of this species on a cliff; we saw a pair nearby), Verdin (multiple nests suggest the species is resident in the area), Lesser Goldfinch, Song Sparrow (specimen collected is of the locally resident subspecies), and Rufous-crowned Sparrow. Notice that even in this remote area the appearance of some of the birds we have noticed as increased or colonists elsewhere in the San Jacinto region: Anna’s Hummingbird, Common Raven, and Rufous-crowned Sparrow. Little Paradise makes the fourth site at which we have found the Rufous-crowned Sparrow, a species apparently absent from the entire San Jacinto region in 1908.

Our mammal team enjoyed great success with the Sherman traps, which yielded a 50-60% return rate per night, far beyond the 10-20% usually expected. This success is quite the contrast to what Grinnell and Swarth experienced on 13 June 1908, when their 60 snap traps yielded only two mice. We recorded every species of mammal noted around Little Paradise by Grinnell and Swarth, except the chipmunk, which like the titmouse could have been cut back by the fire and failed to recolonize with the poor regrowth of chaparral. Now the cactus mouse and San Diego pocket mouse can be considered abundant in the area. The results of our motion-sensor cameras were disappointing, but at least they picked up a gray fox. Scat of coyote, fox, and bobcat was common, and Genie Fleming found a skull of a bobcat. Tom Myers also picked up two samples of mountain lion scat. We saw a few small bats in the evenings, but identification will have to wait until Drew Stokes analyzes the recordings the two Anabat detectors we set out may have picked up. The scat of ungulates was abundant and probably included some of the bighorn sheep as well as of the mule deer.

So it was a productive week, but we were glad to see our friends with their horses on 22 November. It took us 3 ¼ hours to make the hike out, an elevation gain of 1400 feet. Interestingly, on 18 June 1908 Grinnell and Swarth left their camp near the same place as ours at 8:15 AM, and they arrived at Asbestos Spring, about a half mile farther beyond our trailhead, at 11:15 AM. So while those two young men may have been nearly superhuman in 1908, our team did very well too. Thanks to Melody McFarland, Tom Myers, Dana Hogan, Genie Fleming, Scott Tremor, Brad Hollingsworth, and Melissa Stepek for a great trip. Everyone did a terrific job proving that we can pull this off even if it takes a week-long backpacking trip to do it. We’re especially thankful to volunteers Tom Myers (one of the sharpest-eyed biologists around) and Melody McFarland (who managed our camp, oversaw the pitfall cups, helped with bird skinning, and took the most artistic photographs). And thanks again to our equestrian friends and their noble beasts for making it all possible.

Here’s what Phil sent out to our supporters and other interested parties after our trip last week (text only, I added the photos):

Dear San Jacinto friends and colleagues,

We found a junkyard

Last week Melody McFarland, Jim Berrian, and I spent from Monday to Wednesday, 8 to 10 September at Valle Vista (just east of Hemet at the west base of the San Jacinto Mountains ), resurveying the site Harry Swarth covered from 30 August to 5 September 1908.  Actually, the site we covered, along the wash of the San Jacinto River at the east end of Valle Vista, is about 2 miles northeast of the 1908 site, which is now covered by orange orchards and the concrete-lined channel of Bautista Creek.  We selected it as a surrogate, as it supports the only remaining alluvial scrub at the same elevation in the general area. It has been designated for conservation as open space and wildlife habitat.  It is under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Municipal Water District, and we thank Joe Lewis, Director of Engineering Services, for authorization and access to cover this site.

This visit was focused on birds and invertebrates; intensive surveys of mammals and reptiles will come on a subsequent visit when more of our team is able to participate.  But we wanted one survey to correspond in time as closely as possible to the time of Harry Swarth’s visit in 1908.  Like Harry Swarth, we experienced the “blistering heat” of which he complained (what do you expect in Hemet in late summer?!), but at least we did not endure the dust storms that afflicted him in 1908. 

Mockingbird

Ken Weaver also covered the site on the morning of 9 August 2008, and his results are tabulated with last week’s in the attached spreadsheet.

The Valle Vista site is interesting because it originally hosted a subset of what I am calling the “Aguanga fauna.”  That is, species of characteristically desert

green lynx spider

distribution that have an isolated population on the west side of the mountains, centered at Aguanga just north of Temecula Creek in south-central Riverside County.  Of birds these include (among others not reported from Valle Vista) the Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Black-throated Sparrow, of mammals the White-tailed Antelope Squirrel, and of reptiles the Zebra-tailed Lizard and Long-nosed Leopard Lizard.  Because the 1908 expedition did not extend south to Aguanga this biogeographically interesting region has gone underappreciated over the last century, and it has been questioned whether the birds were resident in the area or just postbreeding dispersers.  Ken Weaver has been studying the Aguanga region and is finalizing a paper on the area’s birds.

Our striking finding at Valle Vista for 2008 is that none of the “Aguanga fauna” may still survive at Valle Vista.  We hope to find some on future visits, but the Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Black-throated Sparrow, Zebra-tailed Lizard, and

Western toad

White-tailed Antelope Squirrel, at least, should have been seen easily in 4 days if present.  In 1908 Harry Swarth commented on the importance of cactus fruit, noting that the four antelope squirrels he collected were stained inside and out with juice of the fruit.  In 2008, prickly pear cacti were sparse, low, and not looking very healthy; I saw only one fruit, already nearly dried up.  So an important component of the ecosystem may no longer be functioning.  The decline of cactus undoubtedly contributed to the disappearance of the Cactus Wren too.  Similarly, Harry Swarth commented on yucca pods as a food source in 1908; in 2008 yuccas too (both schidigera and whipplei) were few and unimpressive, lacking fruit.

Bewick's wren

A couple of other characteristically arid-country species were barely present in 2008. In 1908, the California Gnatcatcher “was one of the most abundant species” at Valle Vista; in 2008, Ken Weaver found just one on 9 August and we found none from 8 to 10 September. In 1908 Brewer’s Sparrow was “fairly common,” with 3 specimens collected; in 2008 I saw just a single individual each on 9 and 10 September.  It’s not clear in what role Brewer’s Sparrow occurs at this site; most likely it is just a migrant, but a few years ago Bob McKernan found it nesting not far away at Winchester.

cucumber beetle

The message seems to be that when enough species are extirpated from a site interesting biogeographic patterns can be threatened with extirpation as well.  And in spite of the desertification of the climate, it is the seemingly desert-adapted species that have suffered the most in this case. Ken Weaver reports that all the species of the “Aguanga fauna” now missing at Valle Vista still survive at Aguanga, highlighting the conservation importance of that area.

On the plus side, we saw 35 species of birds Harry Swarth missed in 1908, more than doubling the list for Valle Vista.  Among these are many of the usual suspects, the Red-shouldered Hawk, Anna’s Hummingbird, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Black Phoebe, Cassin’s Kingbird, American Crow, and Common Raven, not to mention the introduced House Sparrow, European Starling, Domestic Pigeon, and Eurasian Collared Dove.  In some cases local conditions at the site clearly contributed: the proliferation of the tree tobacco is providing nectar for 3 species of hummingbirds in 2008; Harry Swarth noted no hummingbirds at Valle Vista in 1908.  The percolation basins in the floodplain, dry in late summer, are grown up now with thickets of sunflowers, providing a bonanza of seeds for the American and Lesser Goldfinches; Harry Swarth noted no goldfinches at Valle Vista in 1908.

To me the most interesting addition among birds was the Rufous-crowned Sparrow.  Along with Snow Creek and Banning, Valle Vista makes the third site at which we have found this sedentary species missed completely in 1908.  Yet Harry Swarth found and collected them less than two weeks after leaving Valle Vista, in the Santa Ana Mountains on the opposite side of the San Jacinto Plain.  I suspect that the species has spread, aided at least by fires in the San Gorgonio Pass.

We were disappointed by the low diversity of reptiles, especially as Jim Berrian is an experienced herpetologist.  But I hope you enjoy Melody McFarland’s photo of the Red Diamond Rattlesnake, a species missed at Valle Vista in 1908.  The site is riddled by abundant rodent burrows, so it is likely to be interesting when our mammalogists are able to work here.  The seasonal flow of the San Jacinto River leaves dried mud, especially in the percolation basins, that is great for prints, so a tracker better than I should be able to identify from them species beyond the raccoon that I could confirm.  In any case, we look forward to future visits to this site, important as the only 1908 site at a low elevation at the west base of the San Jacinto Mountains.

honeybee

Thanks very much again to Joe Lewis for authorizing us, to Karin Cleary-Rose for her advice in this area and suggesting the site we covered as a logical surrogate site, to Ken Weaver for his help and knowledge of this area, and to Melody and Jim for their help in the field.

The Valle Vista trip was our last of the summer; the next will be to Little Paradise in Palm Canyon in the third week of November, beginning our winter surveys.

Thanks for your interest in our study.

I’ll get right to the point:

Crotalus ruber - Red Diamond Rattlesnake

This was the highlight of the trip for me. We’ve spent a lot of time hiking in desert areas for the last year and have not found a rattlesnake, to my great disappointment. Our trip this week to Valle Vista resulted in not one, but two excellent sightings. I found the individul pictured above sheltering himself from the blistering sun inside someone else’s burrow. He posed for a few minutes before retreating to the bowels of the burrow.

This morning Jim and I were photographing insects and spiders in an area filled with shrubbery and sunflowers when he suddenly yelled that there was another snake directly in front of him. This time we got the full show – hissing, rattling and strike position:

Crotalus ruber - Red Diamond Rattlesnake

This animal did everything in its power to avoid us and unless we did something idiotic, we were in no danger of being bitten. If you want to read an account and see some seriously gnarly pictures of what happens to people who get bit by rattlesnakes, check this out.  Seeing these snakes really makes a person think a little bit more about where they step and what they grab.

I got a lot of good shots on the trip. But I’m tired and will post more later on.

This snake was beautiful

My friend Suzanne has a desert tortoise for a pet. That’s her on the left. Not Suzanne…the tortoise.

Big week coming up. Gene is leaving on Sunday for a week to get grilled in job interviews. He has two in Pennsylvania and one in New Hampshire.  One of the practices sent him an itinerary which details almost 12 hours in hell; interviews with 12 different people that includes a lunch and dinner. How long does it take to decide if someone’s a turd or not? Like 30 seconds?

Phil, Jim Spider (that’s certainly not his real name. He’s our spider expert) and myself are off on Monday before dawn to do the next segment of the San Jacinto survey. You can see where we’ll be – click here to go to a Google map. We’ll be working in the area North of Florida Avenue and Idylwild National Forest Highway. Due to permitting issues, the mammal crew is not going, unfortunately. In light of their absence we’ll only be spending three days at the site…in a hotel. I was hoping to return with stories of how we battled dehydration, scorpions, rattlesnakes and harvester ants in the 100°F+ desert heat like real explorers, but we were denied camping priveleges at the only available site, so a nearby hotel is our only option unless we want to be cited for squatting or vagrancy. Bummer. It’s just not the same with luxury accomodations.

Our next site is about 20 miles from the last, at the edge of the town of Hemet. If I remember correctly, our survey area abuts an orange grove so we can most likely expect a significant difference in species from that of the 1908 expedition’s results. We’ve expanded the scope of our invertebrate sampling, so Jim and I will be spending most of our time assessing the smaller members of the Valle Vista area. Phil will be doing birds, so we’ll help him also.

Sewing fans, the leopard dress is done…and meow! Anyone know where I can get a pair of white go-go boots? Wouldn’t that look swank?! I am thrilled with the results, as you can see in this abysmal photo. The pattern was a good choice for difficult fabric. Too bad I don’t ever go anywhere that requires one to drape themselves in polyester leopard print.

We started Sinbad on pehnobarbitol and were told that “he should have about a two week adjustment period” in which time he might be lethargic or otherwise show symptoms of drug use, but after that he’ll be fine. So we started giving him the drugs and waited for him to pass out into a stuporous haze. Nothing happened. He runs around here with his usual vigor and purpose with no ill-effects. I was loathe to give them to him since I’d hate to see anything dampen his spirits but we couldn’t allow the seizures to continue. He’s so cheerful and lively and I want it to stay that way.  Hopefully it’s a high enough dose to suppress the seizures.

Lake Hemet bird photos: