mountainFrugal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:52 am
...Various buzzards starting circling above me and hanging out on nearby plants....
I don't know a lot about the behavior of buzzards, but I got really fascinated by condors one time (which are similar - they are both types of vultures). I was camping in the marble canyon. This is along the colorado river, upstream of the Grand Canyon, in northern Arizona near the Utah border. It's near the city of Page, horseshoe bend, and Lee's Ferry, where many people get onto the Colorado river to float down it in small boats. In that area, the canyon is about 400 feet deep and is quite narrow. In some places the drop is nearly vertical and just solid rock. And there are offshoots of the canyon from contributary steams that are normally always completely dry, and can be walked/scrambled down at least some amount. It's a really interesting area to hang out.
Anyway, there aren't many animals visible in that area. But one that were are California Condors. I'd see one flying around every now and then and watch it. They can fly incredible distances without ever flapping their wings - I mean miles at a time. This spot I camped had very long unobstructed views so I'd sit for quite a long time using binoculars to watch them fly. They seem to me like a very efficient animal - being able to travel so far with little energy - and being able to find food without needing to kill it, and in some cases to eat food that might otherwise largely rot or be eaten by insects (?)
They endangered now or something like that - I think mostly due to hunters using lead bullets and shooting animals but not retrieving them, so the condors eat them and eat the lead. Every few days, a government worker would come out with a strange antenna to do a scan for the tags they place on the feet of those condors to try to monitor and protect them.
The desert is metal. Anyone else?
