Nevada

Seasons of Stillwater revisited

One of my favorite places to visit and record in northern Nevada is Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, near Fallon.  It’s a collection of ponds, ditches, and marshes, where the Carson and a portion of the Truckee Rivers end.  It is such a critical oasis in the arid Great Basin that it’s part of the Western […]

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Headwaters of the Amargosa River.

Desert Oasis

This year I decided to expand the acoustic monitoring that I’ve been conducting at the River Fork Ranch in northern Nevada.  The Nature Conservancy has been supported of my efforts by graciously providing access to preserves, so I decided to try to monitor at other TNC preserves.  In April of this year, I headed south

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Comings and goings at a northern Nevada wetland

One of my interests since I began nature sound recording is how acoustic information can be used for scientific purposes.  When an animal is recorded, a lot of information is saved.  The identity of the species, the type of call, the date, the location.  While each individual data point may not be that useful in

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That time when the dog got stoned

As I usually do in early July, this last summer the dog and I headed off to the hinterlands of northern Nevada.  The trip is timed to allow us to get far from civilization to spare Shadow the horrors of fireworks.  This years trip took us across central Nevada to Ruby Lakes Wildlife Refuge, then

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Sunrise on the lower Colorado River, California

Best laid plans

I recently returned from a 7-week sound recording expedition to the southwest U.S.  From Carson City, to southern California, southern Arizona, southern Texas, western New Mexico, central and southern Arizona, a quick trip to Albuquerque to see friends, back to Arizona, and finally home through Utah and central Nevada.  Almost 7,500 miles, and almost all

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Into the Quinns

In southern Nevada, a bit more than 100 miles north of Las Vegas, lies a mountain range known as the Quinn Canyon Range.  I first became aware of it when I was pondering over some vegetation maps of Nevada, and noticed that this range had an unusually high diversity of trees.  Some, such as white

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Toiyabe Mountains, Nevada

Venturing out

Although I stayed pretty close to home during the spring, avoiding Covid-19 and all, by June I couldn’t stand it anymore.  So I June 1st, I packed up the car and headed into central Nevada to record the sounds of the wild.  My first stop was Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, near Fallon.  Breeding activity was

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Rolling like thunder

Ok, it’s been a ridiculously long time since I’ve posted anything, much less some new content.  But I’m finally getting caught up with various writing and recording projects so it’s time to get back in the blogging game. Like everyone else, my schedule was turned upside down by Covid-19.  I work from home and I’m

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Retrospective

Well, it’s been quite a while since I posted here, as I’ve been recovering from knee replacement surgery.  Recovery has been quite the ordeal, with hours and hours of physical therapy every day.  But the strength and flexibility is coming back, just in time, as the trees and shrubs are starting to bud, the spring

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Sagebrush Singers

Wow, where did the summer go?  It seems like just yesterday I was waking up to some lovely dawn choruses and now many of the birds have already migrated south.  With breeding season over, even most of the resident birds have quieted down, so the steppe and woods surrounding my home are much quieter now.

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Sagebrush Soliloquy

I take my dog for a walk almost everyday, usually to a chunk of BLM land on the east side of town.  The city and BLM have created a small recreation area there, with many trails winding up and around a mountain.  The trails are in a stand of big sage, an ancient stand where

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Spring arrives at Stillwater

Spring is taking its good old time arriving in northern Nevada, and everything seems a bit behind schedule.  I recently headed over to Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge to see how things were progressing.  The birds at the refuge were not waiting – they were in full breeding mode, which means making a lot of racket. 

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