A few weeks ago, just as winter was finally arriving in northern Nevada, the dog and I headed to southern California to do some recording in the Mojave Desert. I expected to find spring on its way out, with birds frantically bringing food to their youngsters. But the weird winter we had out west threw things out of whack in the desert, too.
The Mojave received very little rain this last winter, not receiving much precipitation until March. When we arrived at the end of March, things were just greening up, and nothing was blooming yet. Temps were in the 80’s, so it felt like spring, but looked more like late winter. The bird activity was just getting started and so the dawn chorus were pretty subdued, but still lovely.
We camped in the Granite Mountains, on the southwest side of the Preserve. There are some really nice boondocking sites there, although it can be tricky to find one during some seasons (like late winter). This is an area that Bernie Krause recommended as good for nature recording in his 2002 book, Wild Soundscapes. However, I think vehicle and airplane traffic has increased significantly from when Bernie used to record here. Air traffic was almost non-stop; it appears that the Preserve is on the inbound flight path for LAX. Car and truck traffic on Kelbacker Road was also considerable and occurred all night long. With the wide open valley, it took a long time for the sound of vehicles to diminish. But in the moments in between planes and cars, it was beautifully quiet, nothing but a thin whisper of the breeze through the cactus and the rattle-song of the cactus wrens.
In the evenings, coyotes and great horned owls called in the distance. I stayed a couple of nights, with the evenings greeted by a lovely full moon.
The dawn chorus was subtle and sweet, with many of the same characters I knew to from the Sonoran Desert (phainopepla, cactus wren, Gambel’s quail) plus white-crowned and black-throated sparrows.
On my second morning, as I was packing up to leave, I heard the lovely trill of a white-tailed antelope squirrel. I set up the recording equipment to capture the sound, and was happily surprised when a male Anna’s hummingbird started singing.
On the way home, we stopped for a night in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, CA, which was very crowded on a Friday night before Easter Sunday. I was surprised how little snow there was on the 14,000 foot peaks. The southern Sierra received even less snow than the northern Sierra this winter.
From there we took the long way to Mono Lake, partly by choice and partly because the highway was closed due to a nasty vehicle accident. We found a lovely place to pull off on the east side of the lake, with a fantastic view of the snow-covered peaks on the east side of Yosemite.
It was a cold night at over 7,000 feet, but we were treated to a lovely serenade by some long-eared owls. No dawn chorus to speak of, but a flock of mountain bluebirds chittered their way through camp.
All-in-all a good trip. Found some places I probably won’t go back to, at least for recording purposes, like the Mojave Desert Preserve, and found others that I might check out again, like the Alabama Hills and Mono Lake. With spring rapidly arriving up north, I’m busy planning several more recording expeditions. Stay tuned!