waterfowl

Escaping the smoke

This summer has been unbelievable in the amount of smoke, even in areas distant from the wildfires in California, Nevada, and the Pacific Northwest.  In northern Nevada, rather than the rare smoky day, a day better than “moderate” air quality was something to celebrate.  During much of July and August, the air quality never got […]

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Desert Marsh

The Great Basin is a rough, corrugated landscape of rugged mountain ranges separated by desert flats.  Although each one differs a bit, most of the valley bottoms are decorated with bursage, big sage, and salt flats. When the glaciers melted at the end of the Pleistocene, these basin were filled with large lakes, primarily Lake

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White pelican on Catnip Reservoir

The white pelican

I had the good fortune in mid-July of this last summer to visit the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in far northwestern Nevada.  Along with it’s sister refuge, Oregon’s Hart Mountain Refuge, it preserves a wonderful chunk of Great Basin habitat.  Wide, open volcanic mesas and corrugated drainages stretch to the horizon.  It is an important

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One marsh, many voices

This summer has been a tough one for recording.  With much of the mountainous west either on fire, freshly blackened from a fire, or waiting to burn, camping out in the mountains while hoping for something to record is a scary proposition.  I’ve spent most of my time sequestered away from the heat working on

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