Category: geology

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 23, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos are from Dean Graetz, who’s compiled various assorted photos, each with a story. Click on the photos to enlarge them; Dean’s stories and captions are indented.

Photos with a Story

Photography makes my life interesting.  I photograph scenes that look interesting and then explore the story they have to tell.  Almost always, the story is far more interesting than my photograph.  Here are eight examples of photos and their story.

This is the most beautiful flower I know. It is a dry country ephemeral and its (arterial) blood-red flowers are stunning. It is much loved and cultivated under the name Sturts Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa).  Its story is from the ‘Dreamtime’ mythology of Aboriginal people.  A young women (and child) who were promised to a Warrior eloped with another man: an act punishable by death.  The vengeful jilted Warrior tracked them, and at night, killed all three.  At dawn, he was horrified to find these flowers growing where blood had been spilt.  No matter where he fled, dawn relentlessly revealed the persecuting blood flowers, displaying his crime and eventually destroying him.:

The story of this ‘cute’ image is a technological one.  The water-repellent waxy cuticle of this sturdy leaf forces the rain drops to coalesce and form slightly-flattened spherical globules.  Each globule now acts as a lens visibly enlarging details of the underlying leaf surface.  A natural microscope.  In the1670s, an amateur Dutch scientist, Leeuwenhoek, made the first microscope using simple glass beads—a globule lookalike—as lenses.  His invention significantly and irreversibly enhanced human observing power and began the critical science of microbiology.  Since before and after, with raindrops and waxy leaves, Nature continues to demonstrate its small-scale microscopes:

A near-spherical, balanced granite rock poses three questions: why round, why balanced, and how did it get there?  Roundness is a granite characteristic because it (exfoliate) weathers in large slivers (see LHS edge below) like a peeling orange.  The rock is balanced because a line through its centre of mass passes through the contact area with the base rock – thus perfectly vertical.  Because there is no hard rock connection between the balanced and its base, how did it get there?  The geological answer is a step-wise process beginning with the cooling and cracking of liquid magma, millions to billions of years ago, then chemical weathering of hard rock to less resistant material, and finally the eroding away of the softer material.  So, the balanced rock in the picture is the remnant core of very, very much larger volume of granite now removed – like the pit/stone of a peach.  It is difficult to accept this explanation because we just cannot grasp the vast expanse of time involved, but the circumstantial geological evidence is there:

A female Leaf Curling Spider (Phonognatha graeffei) hidden by the structure she built, waits for the vibrations of flying insects struggling in her web.  This one species, though common, has an uncommon set of behaviours such as selecting a leaf, curling and silking it into shape, then hauling it up from ground level and centring it into a funnelling web.  The sexes cohabit in separate locations within the sheltering leaf.  This spider’s story raises the usual two questions.  The Why question is easy – because it obviously works.  The species is sufficiently abundant to be labelled Common.  How could such a strategy come to be?  There is the usual blind faith assertion of Big G’s intelligent design.  Or the reasoned argument that because the behaviour is instinctive, not learned, then it must be heritable and therefore likely variable.  Thereafter, Nature will relentlessly reward the strategy that ‘works best’, as it has done here:

This is a difficult photo to interpret.  I was shooting straight up into the sky.  The uppermost layer is actually a shelf or ledge projecting out over the lower rock wall.  The story here is based on two features.  There are two very different rock types with a very sharp boundary between the two.  The upper layer appears to have been smeared over the lower.  The upper is a layer of rocky ‘rubbish’, materials of diverse types and sizes jumbled together.  It looks like what a bulldozer blade might push up.  The bulldozer here was a glacier.  The timing was about 720 million years ago when this part of the Australian continent was located at the Equator.  Now known as the Sturtian Glaciation, it began the speculation that planet Earth may once have been Snowball Earth.  Geological timing and ages are always thought-provoking:

This magnificently gaudy grasshopper introduces an intriguing story.  Locally known as Leichhardt’s Grasshopper (Petasida ephippigera), its flamboyant colouring says, ‘don’t eat me’.  It is not common, found only on certain plants in three areas of northern Australia.  The intriguing story is about Leichhardt, a young man seeking fame and fortune as an explorer and naturalist.  Which he did with his 1845 expedition (4000 km, 2500 m, 443 days long).  On that long walk, he encountered and described this grasshopper species noting their abundance.  Subsequently, he achieved lasting fame with his 1848 expedition to span the East to West coasts of the continent (4000 km, 2500 m), an expedition that completely disappeared without a trace.  Interestingly, so did the namesake grasshopper.  It was assumed extinct until positively identified more than a hundred years after their 1845 description of abundance.  I photographed this one in the same type of country where Leichhardt first saw them.  This was a minor thrill because I had long known the story and had speculated where in Australia’s deserts the 1848 Leichhardt party had ‘done a perish’:

Kenya (30 years ago): Day1.  Field work with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).  My local (Kikuyu) Assistants are using my soil colour charts to determine the colour classification of their skin.  I had explained to them that Melanin determined the skin colour of all humans: colour variation was in the amount and packaging.  My sermon concluded with the statement that no people were Black.  Very dark Brown: Yes.  But not the derogatory Black.  My two Assistants agreed but were quite sure that the Maasai were Black.  I knew that the Kikuyu disliked the Maasai and thought this statement reflected cultural bias, not fact.  Nobody was Black!:

Kenya: Day2.  UNEP added a young woman to the fieldwork.  Neither of us knew why.  A young American non-scientist, who was very excited to be out in the African Bush.  My concern was that bra-less may be comfortable but potentially unwise.  Come noon, universal lunchtime, with the wonderful lunch packs the tourist hotels provided.  Right on time, two Maasai appeared, both armed, announced by my retreating Assistants as “Trouble, Bwana, trouble!”  I did think then that it could turn into an SOS moment (aka Shit!  Oh!  Shit!).  However, it was peacefully resolved by international trade.  The two Maasai agreed to one photograph and a swift departure for two unopened lunch boxes, one Australian and one American.  She thought it was all thrilling.  I was both hungry and wrong.  The skin colour of one Maasai was the darkest I had ever seen.  But Black?  I plead selective breeding because the Maasai value Black as a spiritual ‘strong’ colour and that could influence mate choice.  My Kikuyu Assistants were delighted that they knew more than the Bwana:

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 14, 2026 • 8:15 am

UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison has returned with some photos about serpentine ecology. Susan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them:

Serpentine ecology at The Cedars (Sonoma County, California)

“Serpentine” might be a familiar word if you live in a region with volcanos, earthquakes, and hot springs.  It’s an informal term for ultramafic (very high magnesium and iron) rocks, mainly serpentinite and its parent rock peridotite, as well as the soils formed from these rocks.  The common name comes from the often snakeskin-like appearance of serpentinite.  These rocks are twisted and fractured bits of the Earth’s mantle, first extruded into the ocean crust in midocean spreading centers, then fully or partly metamorphosed by hydration, and finally scraped onto land during the sliding of one tectonic plate under another – this last process being what also produces “ring of fire” volcanos and earthquake zones around the world.

Serpentinite:

Partly serpentinized peridotite:

Botanists and plant evolutionists have long been drawn to the unusual flora of serpentine.  Most plant species are intolerant of its harsh chemistry, especially the scarcity of calcium relative to magnesium, and space is thereby opened for hardier species to adapt and sometimes even speciate on serpentine.  In California’s flora of around 5,500 full species there are just over 1,000 “tolerators” that can grow either on or off of serpentine, and an estimated 255 “endemics” entirely restricted to this difficult soil.

Serpentine endemic plants in California include multiple Jewelflowers (genus Streptanthus, Brassicaceae), which have been studied to understand soil-driven adaptation and speciation.

Hoffman’s Bristly Jewelflower (Streptanthus glandulosus ssp. hoffmani):

Morrison’s Jewelflower (Streptanthus morrisoni), a non-flowering first-year individual:

Serpentine tolerators, like the Sickle-leaved Onion (Allium falcifolium), grow on varied soils.  Sometimes they show adaptive genetic differences between populations on and off of serpentine.

Sickle-leaved Onions:

Today’s photos are from a May 2026 excursion to one of the most remarkable serpentine sites in the world: The Cedars in western Sonoma County, California.  This site was named for its vast stands of Sargent’s Cypress (Cupressus sargentii), a serpentine-endemic tree.

The Cedars:

Part of The Cedars’ magic is that it’s a large (30 square km) and well-isolated block of serpentine within a benign coastal climate.  This seems to be a winning formula for promoting plant evolution, as witness four full species and three subspecies found nowhere else in the world.  Here are two species discovered by botanist Roger Raiche, who devoted decades to exploring and protecting The Cedars.

The Cedars Fairy Lantern (Calochortus raichei):

The Cedars Buckwheat (Eriogonum cedrorum):

A second charm of The Cedars is the surprising abundance of water in its austere landscape, probably because fractured serpentine rock masses tend to store rainwater and release it slowly, and also because many streams on serpentine have chemically cemented beds that create deep pools.  Streambanks here are fringed by Western Azalea (Rhododendron occidentale), Serpentine Columbine (Aquilegia eximia), and the two showy orchids shown below.

California Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium californicum):

Giant Stream Orchid (Epipactis gigantea var. rubriflorum; photo by Nishanta Rajakaruna): \

The piece de resistance, sine qua non, ne plus ultra of The Cedars is its mineral springs. Until geologists discovered the strange chemistry of these springs in the 1960s, it was not known that serpentinization, the hydration of mantle rock, could occur in near-surface terrestrial environments.  Serpentinization supports anaerobic microbes that are collectively the most abundant life form on Earth; they are considered strong candidates for the origin of life, as well as for the possibility of life on other planets.

The spring known as Mineral Falls:

Part of the spring known as Wedding Cake:

Animal life is relatively scarce on serpentine. Here are two of only 8 bird species we saw in a full day at The Cedars.

Violet-Green Swallow (Tachycineta thalassina) hunting above Austin Creek:

Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) perched in the middle of a towering cliff:

JAC: I told Susan I couldn’t see the falcon, so she sent me a photo with the bird circled:

My friend Nishanta Rajakaruna has devoted his career to studying serpentine ecosystems around the world.   On field trips like this one, he collects photos of people leaping.

Leaping on serpentine (photo by Nishanta Rajakaruna; that’s me on the right):

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 16, 2026 • 8:15 am

Dean Graetz has come through with a set of images from the outback of Australia. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Dean has added links to two videos, one of them his.

And send in your wildlife photos! Once again, this is the last batch I have.

Australian Landscape Images

Being geo-patriots, we frequently travelled and camped in the remote Australian Outback, aka ‘The Bush’, which is about 70% of the continental area.  Our interest was landscapes – their vista, and the living and fossil lifeforms they contained.  Here is a series of landscape photos chosen by their appeal summarised as one word.

Bliss

Dusk: Site chosen on extensive plain – see horizon.  A table set for two, one-saucepan meal on gas burner, and swags (bedroll) to be positioned and occupied last.  A near cloudless sky with dry airmass promises a dome of stars all night.  Bliss!:

Beginning

It is always entrancing to witness the silent illumination and transient colours of a landscape as our world turns to the Sun.  Always, you see detail and colours that you didn’t appreciate during the previous dusk.  This is a sandy bed of a large but ephemeral creek – a great campsite.  The stark, dead (Eucalypt) trees germinated with the 1974 floods only to be killed by a wildfire some 20 years later.  Such is life:

Reboot

A ‘Spinifex’ (actually Triodia) grassland wildfire: hot and lethal, reducing all in its path to ashes.  This hummock grassland type covers about 25% of the continent.  Ignited by lightning or people, such fires are frequent.  With the first rain post-fire, the Triodia regenerates from seed and roots, faster than competing woody plants.  So, repeated fires – burning your neighbours – is a sustainable way to persist:

Success

Heavy rains in 2009 triggered a massed pelican breeding.  Thousands of birds gathered at one location, mated and successfully bred.  More details are here.  Success in this time-dependent gamble is shown by the chicks (darker heads) are now as large as the parent birds.  All life is a Game: If you win , you stay in the Game:

Bugger

A feral camel (Dromedary [Camelus dromedarius] single hump) enjoying an uncommonly lush grassland.  Imported in the mid-1800s, camels facilitated the exploration and settlement of Outback Australia.  Displaced by motorized vehicles in the1920s, instead of a bullet, they were abandoned to die out.  But they didn’t.  Then a couple of hundred camels is now a large feral population of at least 600,000 damaging pests – a significant multi-million dollar problem.  In the Southern Hemisphere, a well-intentioned action resulting in a disastrous outcome is widely known as a Bugger, made famous by this Toyota video:

Mute

A rock engraving, a graphic message from a pre-literate time, meticulously pitted on a vertical rock face.  What can be inferred from it?  In order of certainty, it was done by a male, likely over a working period of 3-5 days, at least 10,000 years ago.  In spite of much speculation, we cannot ever really know the message or the audience, a realization that sometimes evokes a puzzling tinge of sadness:

Harsh

The Pilbara region is Australia’s harshest landscape.  It is hot –(recorded 160 consecutive days of above 100°F (38°C)), and essentially water- and treeless, and rendered unfriendly by the swarm of small spiny hummocks of Spinifex (Triodia).  Yet prospectors and geologists continue to search here for mineral riches.  After we found the rocks containing a fossil stromatolite, dated at 3.4 billion years, and then thinking about Deep Time, we forgot about the current temperature and Spinifex spines:

Serenity

Why do we find a slow-flowing river so timeless, relaxing and peaceful?  In 1925, two men, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, wrote their explanation as the words of the song ‘Old Man River’.  A truly timeless contribution to our culture that you are probably silently singing right now:

Awe

This image captures a mind-stretching contrast in ages between the biological world and the geological world.  In the foreground are several species of ephemeral  plants – bright, colourful, with a life spans of months to a year or so.  In the background, the blood red rocks looking sharp edged and resistant, are dated at more than 2.5 billion years.  The smallest units of geological dating, millions of years, are beyond the reckoning of biologists, yet life was present on earth when those background rocks were being formed.  The Deep Time of Life is right up there with the Rocks:

Me

A densely painted gallery in Arnhem Land, northern Australia.  The gallery contains older figures – devil-devil figures (LHS), a python and several crocodiles (Middle) – all overpainted by numerous, modern (less than 100 years) ‘hands’.  The ‘hands’ are not stencils or imprints.  They are deliberate drawings infilled with colour.  The overall impression of the modern ‘hands’ layer is just exuberant happiness celebrating ‘Me’, ‘Look at Me’, by the many painters who contributed.  No deep cultural significance just an expression of the ‘joy of life’ in vivid colour.  The longer you scan this image, the more surely you will smile:

Renewal

It was a hurried camp selected in falling light with the best site option being a desert track in the sea of (flowering) Spinifex.  All that is forgotten now as you slowly wake in the golden light of a quiet and calm dawn, along with the smell of dew-dampened sand.  Life is good!:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 12, 2025 • 8:15 am

We’re down to one more contribution, and then the tank runs dry. Please send in your GOOD photos, preferably a related group instead of singletons.

Today’s penultimate photo-and-text post comes from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, and is part III of a series of his visit to a park in Brazil (see parts 1 and 2 here and here). Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Chapada Diamantina – III

About 70 km from Lapa Doce, we arrive at Lençóis (len-soh-iss), the main gateway to Chapada Diamantina National Park.

The village of Lençóis was established around 1845 with the discovery of diamonds along the Lençóis river (pictured) and other watercourses in the region. This was a magnet to adventurers, deserters, runaways, visionaries, petty criminals, big criminals, women of ill repute, preachers, government officials and other ne’er-do-wells. Like any hard work carried out during most of Brazilian history, diamond panning was done by slaves, who built the bridge over the river:

Between 1845 and 1871, Lençóis was the world’s largest diamond producer. At the height of its wealth, the town had a cinema, two newspapers and a French vice-consulate. Here, the former residence of a local nabob:

Things become to unravel in the 1860s, with the progressive depletion of diamonds. But the death knell came in 1865 with the discovery of diamonds in South Africa. Most people left and the town quickly fell into decay. Fortune turned again in the 1990s when outsiders discovered the region’s natural beauty. Today, luxury hotels, B&Bs, dozens of tourism agencies and restaurants cater to national and foreign tourists:

A view of Chapada Diamantina National Park. The 152,000-ha park was created in 1985 with the help of American biologist Roy Funch, who arrived in the area in 1978 and still works as a local guide. The park comprises caatinga xerophytic formations, cerrado (a type of tropical savanna) Atlantic Forest vegetation, meadows and rocky plateaus (chapadas):

Detail of lithophytes (plants that grow on bare rock) on a plateau top. This local flora has high degrees of diversity and endemism, but it is still poorly known. An open field for a beginner botanist:

Most park visitors head for the waterfalls and natural pools (of outstanding beauty), but we wanted to explore the caatinga, a UNESCO designated biosphere reserve and one of the world’s less studied biomes. All the ‘dead’ vegetation in this photo will spring to life at the first seasonal rainfall:

These two cacti are some of the caatinga‘s most ubiquitous sights: mandacaru (Cereus jamacaru) on the left, and xique-xique (Xiquexique gounellei). They both look disagreeable desert denizens to be kept at arm’s length, but there’s more to them than their sharp, painful thorns. These cacti are important fodder for cattle, goats and sheep in times of water scarcity (they are scorched slightly before being given to animals). Mandacaru‘s fruit feeds humans and wildlife, and its woody stem is valued in carpentry for its resistance to termites. Xique-xique flour can be added to goat’s milk for the production of yogurt with supposedly better probiotic quality:

This ‘stone’ is a tuber of a umbuzeiro tree (Spondias tuberosa), a natural water reservoir. The tuber network of a single tree can store up to 3,000 l of water during the dry season. The umbuzeiro fruit is consumed by wildlife and humans, and it’s sold in local markets:

We wrap up with a moqueca (moh-keh-kah), a seafood stew (fish or prawns) that is a must in the Brazilian cuisine and that best reflects its African, native American and Portuguese heritages. There are regional variations, but this moqueca was made with fish in a base of tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, palm oil and coconut milk. Urucum (Bixa orellana) pigment was added for colour, and chopped coriander sprinkled on top. Served with rice, pirão (a thick cream made with cassava flour and fish stock) and farofa (toasted cassava flour, onions, spices and nuts from a local palm tree). A fabulous dish from Nega and Jéssica, owners of Duas Irmãs (two sisters) restaurant.

After a gruesome 420-km drive dodging colossal potholes and nihilistic, homicidal motorists, we arrived back to Salvador, Bahia State’s capital and Brazil’s capital until 1763. The city is rich in cultural traditions, but like in any of the country’s big cities, you’d better mind your wallet, phone, empty alleys and overtly friendly strangers. As the natives say, Brasil não é para amadores – Brazil is not for amateurs:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 7, 2025 • 8:15 am

I’m running pretty low folks, so if you have good wildlife photos, perhaps you’d like to collect them, write a bit of text, and shoot them my way. Thanks.

Today we have another photo-and-text journey from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. This is part II, and you can find part I here, which explains the region.  Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Chapada Diamantina – II

We continue our journey inside Lapa Doce.

There’re lots of water stored in pools, nooks and crevices in all these cave networks. This water was vital to local populations before wells and distribution systems arrived. The doce of Lapa Doce is an allusion to água doce (sweet water), the Portuguese term for ‘fresh water’. These waterbodies are home for all sorts of creatures, including the endemic, blind and albino catfish Rhamdiopsis krugi:

Many skeletons of extinct creatures such as saber-tooth tigers, prehistoric armadillos, horses, and giant sloths have been found on the ancient riverbed. Here, a Eremotherium laurillardi giant sloth is flanked by a 1,80 m human:

The Scream II:

Everywhere: the relentless destructive/constructive action of water:

In some thousand years, this stalactite and stalagmite will come into contact and fuse into a column. You can’t see it from pictures taken by phones under torchlight, but mineral water is dripping ever so slowly from the tip of the stalactite:

The end of the trail, through another collapsed doline. Back to a world of blinding light and sizzling temperatures:

Some of the hundreds of cave paintings found on the walls of collapsed dolines in the region. They have not been dated, we know nothing about the artists, which didn’t stop wackos infesting the internet with extraterrestrial theories:

These cavities under the cave projection look like the result of water drips, but looks are deceiving. Each hole is a trap. A careless insect falling in will try to climb out, dislodging soil particles that send sensory signals to a predator buried on the bottom of the pit– an antlion larva, a lacewing-related insect (family Neuroptera) that will seize the prey, inject it with venom and suck up its innards:

Danger, danger everywhere. An apparently benign bank along the trail…:

… is an ideal ambushing spot for a trapdoor spider (infraorder Mygalomorphae). The door is a hinged segment of a silk cocoon that hides a patient spider:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 2, 2025 • 8:15 am

Athayde Tonhasca Júnior is back with a photo travelogue—the first of three parts.  Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Chapada Diamantina, Part I

Last year I invited WEIT readers to join me in a photographic tour of Serra da Capivara, a spectacular national park sited deep in the Brazilian caatinga, a semi-arid ecosystem that hosts exceptional levels of biodiversity and endemism. Today we will visit another ecological gem in the same geographical region: Chapada Diamantina, a 38,000 km2 expanse of rocky plateaus (chapadas), caves, forests, caatinga, grassland and savanna in Bahia State.

Chapada Diamantina region, northeastern Brazil © Ferrari et al., 2009:

We begin at Lapa Doce, or Sweet Cave, located in the municipality of Iraquara, the ‘speleological capital’ of Brazil. There are 1,694 cave systems in the region: one of them, Toca da Boa Vista, is the longest cave in South America, extending for 114 km. Lapa Doce is part of a 42-km network of caves, many yet to be explored and mapped; a ~1 km segment is open to guided visitation.

The cave’s entrance is hidden at the bottom of this collapsed doline (a bowl-shaped depression formed by dissolved limestone), aka sinkhole. Note the ribbed rock surface, a telltale sign of an oceanic past:

The bottom of the doline with a typical karst formation (a landscape largely shaped by water-dissolved rock). The temperature here is considerably cooler than at ground level:

The ‘melting’ effect of water on carbonate rocks:

This sign along the path to the cave precludes blaming language barriers for inappropriate behaviour inside the cave:

Cave entrance on the right. The two figures in red are human-size dummies planted there to give us a sense of scale:

Into the cave. The path is flanked by outlandish formations such as this floating jellyfish, illuminated by our three torches:

A monster from the underworld. By slowly swinging his torch up and down, our guide Raimundo made it open and shut its maw:

Lapa Doce was formed by a subterranean river that carved the limestone. The gallery is 60 m wide and 25 m high at the widest points:

If your torch goes kaput, you will need to use the rope that borders the path (seen on the bottom right) to guide you out. With no artificial light the darkness is absolute and disorientating:

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 18, 2025 • 8:15 am

Thanks to the readers who sent in wildlife photos.  Today we have the first part of a two-part series from Kevin Krebs taken in British Columbia. Kevin’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

The Crowsnest to Osoyoos – Part 1

Vancouver to Princeton

Each spring I make a pilgrimage from my home in Vancouver to Osoyoos in south-central British Columbia. Birds are what drew me there initially, but over the years the ecology and geology have cast a spell on me.

After roughly 2½ hours of driving on the Crowsnest Highway, E.C. Manning Provincial Park is my first stop. Located in the North Cascades, the area is densely forested with coniferous trees, and even in late May you can expect to find some patches of snow.

Every year without fail I’m greeted by numerous Columbian Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus columbianus). They hibernate for up to 8 months of the year, and this population has probably been active for only a few weeks when I visit.

I don’t have to go much further than the parking lot to find flocks of Chipping sparrows (Spizella passerina).

Venturing further into the park, I almost always find a few Townsend’s Warblers (Setophaga townsendi).

This year I felt especially lucky — a pair of American Three-toed Woodpeckers (Picoides dorsalis) appeared out of nowhere just as I was about to leave.

Princeton is my next stop, and where the transition from the forests to semi-arid climate begins to become apparent. According to Wikipedia, “Princeton is one of the sunniest places in British Columbia with 2,088 hours of sunshine annually”.

My destination is Swan Lake Wildlife Refuge, located just north of the city that is always replete with swallows, waterfowl, and many other surprises.

A Common Raven (Corvus corax) keeping watch from a fence post.

New World Sparrows (Family Passerellidae) don’t get a lot of love and it’s not uncommon to hear them derided as LBJs (Little Brown Jobs). I think many birders do themselves a disservice by not paying attention to sparrows and other ‘common’ birds. Here’s a beautiful Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus) posing on a branch.

American Kestral (Falco sparverius) are the smallest and most widespread North American falcon with distinctive sexual dimorphism. This male was waiting out a sudden rain shower:

Another photo of the American Kestral (Falco sparverius) being scolded by a Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) who was very unhappy with his presence:

The bluest of bluebirds — this male Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides) was quite shy, but let me get a decent photograph before it fled my primate curiosity.

A mediocre photo of a Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) — a large, oddball woodpecker which is still somewhat enigmatic.

On the route to Osoyoos, I pass through the small town of Hedley, once the site of a gold mine (confusingly named the Nickel Plate Mine). The geology is striking — uplifted Triassic sedimentary rocks of the Nicola Formation.