Sierra Crest and Rabbit Brush

If one photograph were all I could use to show why the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada is one of the prettiest places to be, I think this image of the Sierras with thunderheads looming above and rabbit brush in full bloom captures the idea.

Mt. Morrison, just south of the Mammoth Lakes region. Rabbit brush is a very common high desert plant that blooms mid-summer and attracts lots of insects.

Mule Deer in the Sierras

I love driving through Yosemite National Park, especially the Tuolumne Meadows area where large mammals can easily and often be seen. During the middle of the summer, a huge herd of male Mule Deer took up residence in the meadow. Early one morning as I was on my way across the park, I saw dozens of deer, all with huge racks of antlers. As the weeks went by and I visited the area again and again, those bucks were seen each time. Some days they were lying down, resting in the grass, other days they were seen nibbling on the willows that hug the banks of the Tuolumne River. The most deer I counted in one day was 60. All bucks! I don't know where the females were, but the males were mighty pretty.

One weekend I drove further north, up to the Calaveras Big Trees State Park, then went for a hike in a distant part of that park. The area was very dense with foliage and I got the feeling something was staring at me. Glancing into the brush, just a few yards off the trail was a beautiful buck. He was so perfect, so silent, so frozen at first I thought he was a statue.

During October I visited a grove of giant sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park and came upon a doe with 2 fawns who were nibbling the bark or perhaps lichen on a giant sequoia tree. The animals were very interactive. When a fawn got in the way of the doe, the larger animal used her front leg to push the little one away. Lifted it up, batting the small one over and over. A minute later the doe got in the way of the little deer and the smaller one batted at the doe with its hoof/leg.

California Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus californicus)are found throughout California. They are a subspecies of Mule Deer which are found in western NA.

Ravens, birds of opportunity

Throaty croaks announce the presence of the common raven, (Corvus corax). These birds are smart. They are opportunistic birds and eat all sorts of things. This past summer I visited Yosemite Valley and pulled over to take some photos of a couple of ravens that were intent upon a bit of fluff on the road. Most ravens I have seen are pretty quick about leaving the road when a vehicle gets within 100 feet of them, but this pair lingered until cars were within feet of them. The fluff in the road looked like a tail to me and both birds returned a few times until one was able to fly off with it.

The two birds flew into a nearby conifer where the tail was pulled apart and consumed by one bird. The other sat on a branch in the same tree, seemingly content to wait for its partner.

Panum Crater, Mono Basin

One of the interesting aspects of the Mono Basin is the volcanic features of the area. Just a tiny bit north of the Long Valley Caldera, the area is full of craters and small volcanic bumps. Well, they look like bumps but when erupting they probably are gaseous, hot masses of oozing lava of the glowing red variety. The place is dormant. The last eruption of a bump was maybe 600 years ago, and the area has been erupting for many hundreds of thousands of years, including the Long Valley Caldera. Millions of years if you go back in time to when the Sierra Nevada mountains were volcanoes and what we see now was deep underground.

Panum Crater is one of the bumps that is an interesting place to visit. It isn't very big, it takes all of 15 minutes to walk to the center of the thing, but what a rewarding trip it is.



Panum is a rhyolite plug dome. It erupted and the rocks it left behind are beautiful in a black obsidian and air filled pumicey kind of way.




The whole area has volcanic features. Panum Crater is immediately south of Mono Lake. Looking south from Panum are the Mono Craters, a series of pumicey blurps, a bit taller than Panum, and a bit older in origin.