Great Sand Dunes

On the way back from my high adventure trip at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in SC Colorado. The sand dunes for which the park was name really are great with some standing over 700 foot tall. They are the largest sand dunes in all of North America and are perhaps the most beautiful as well. I climbed up some of the dunes which cover approximately 30 sq miles of the San Luis Valley. The picture below (which has been altered to make the people stand out more) shows just how large the dunes are. Click on it to see the people on them.

The first glimpse I got of the Great Sand Dunes is in the photo below. Seen from 15 miles away they are barely visible and are dwarfed by the 14,000 ft peaks in the background. In this picture you can only see the dunes when it is blown up but for some reason you can't do that once you move a picture on blogger :(

I took the picture below at dusk from just outside the park at a restaurant. The dunes look very neat in this light; almost purple.

After dinner at the restaurant we parked the motor home at a campground just outside the park. I took the picture below the next morning. It is of the view from the our campsite!

As soon as the sun was up I was too. We drove down to the dunes where I spent some time hiking up them. The sand dunes are contained within the Great Sand Dunes Wilderness.

On the way in we saw a small herd of Elk feeding in the grasslands near the dunes.
It was very windy out and it was hard to walk in the sand even on the flats below the dunes not to mention hiking up a very steep hill of it. Somehow I managed to survive the climb up. My camera was having a hard time with the sand. The wind was blowing some grains around where the lens comes out making it almost impossible for it to open up for some time. I did manage to fix the camera which is working just fine today. The photo below is one of my favorite photos I took while I was up in the dunes. I love that you can see my footprints, that the clouds seem to be getting blown up over the dunes, and the fact that the lighting was great and the skies were dark blue. A lovely picture indeed!
The view from the top of the dunes was pretty neat. The photo below shows the visitor center, parking lot, etc. As you can tell it is a long ways down from the top.
The time came for me to leave the dunes. On my way down to the parking lot I found a Circus Beetle which is one of the eight endemic insect species that inhabit the dunes. Just several days after playing around at the dunes I got a grain of sand in my eye which I had to get removed for a whopping $250. That is a bit much for one piece of sand don't you think? Although we are not sure where the sand came from my mom and I like to think it was from the sand dunes.

The Great Sand Dunes are a very interesting place. to learn more about them go to:

http://www.nps.gov/grsa/index.htm

New Mexico-July 21-Day 3

When the sun rose over the New Mexico plains, I got out of the motor home and immediately found a life bird. The Western Bluebirds (life bird 316, 3rd of trip) were numerous in a small pasture behind the camp area. Although I did not have great looks, I saw them just well enough to identify them. While on the interstate on the way to Albuquerque I also saw some new birds including Chihuahuan Ravens (life bird 317, 4th of trip) which were fairly numerous at times. A Curve-billed Thrasher (life bird 318, 5th of the trip) was perched upon a fence north of Las Vegas, NM. Due to the speed at which we were going I only had enough time to identify them but not get photos.

A stop at a rest area revealed some neat birds, although none of them were lifers. The Say's Phoebe was one of the birds I saw.

A Northern Mockingbird popped into view for a short time as well. I have seen both the phoebe and the mockingbird only once before in my life.

After the rest stop I saw my first Greater Roadrunner (life bird 319, 6th of the trip) sitting on a hillside south of Las Vegas, NM. Not long after we passed Santa Fe we made it into the city of Albuquerque. This was a foreign place to me. It was very "desertish" there and most of the houses were adobe style, nether of these things apply to where I live. We made it to a retreat house and were dropped off. Here we met with 60 other boys from across the country. We were all going on a "religious retreat" before we headed off to hike in the mountains. All of the boys were boy scouts and were chosen by their area "representatives" to go on this trip. The religious theme was carried throughout the trip. The retreat house had a great view of the Rio Grande River and of Sandia Crest, a mountainous area east of town. The room I stayed in on the second and highest floor had a great view of the area shown in the picture above. Just down the hall from my room is a sun porch which gives you an unobstructed view of the city. I got my picture taken there in the evening.There was a small yard there that had plenty of things to see including some roadrunners (first picture in post), Black-chinned Hummingbirds (life bird 320, 7th of the trip) Bushtits (life bird 321, 8th of the trip, pictured). A Rufous Hummingbird (life bird 322, 9th of the trip) buzzed by the retreat house.
Later that night my two friends and I were split up and put into different groups. There were seven groups overall. Mine had 10 boy scouts, a priest, and a seminarian. My group had people from California (2 people/one LA, one San Diego), Louisiana, New Jersey, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri. The priest (was in the Navy) was from Long Island, NY and the seminarian was from California (originally from Phoenix). My nickname came pretty quickly-it was no surprise that it was Birdman. Birds weren't the only things there to see, I also saw a Desert Cottontail (new for me) and some kind of beetle.

More coming tomorrow.

Sphinx Moth: hummingbird of the insect world

A large number of White-lined Sphinx Moths are visiting a flowering lilac bush in my yard tonight. I tried to and then successfully photographed one of them feeding. These moths are as challenging to photograph as hummingbirds and they even look like them too. I remember a number of years back I saw one of these during the day visiting some flowers and I thought it was a hummingbird! It must be a common mistake that people make since it was mentioned it in the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects. These moths are good sized and have a long, bill-like tube to suck up nectar, just like a hummingbird, plus they hover. If you want to see one of these strange insects go out to a flowering bush or a flower bed at night with a flashlight and you might catch a glimpse of this hummingbird of the insect world.

Four Butterfly Lifers

Today I picked up the Kaufman Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America from the library and used it to identify some of the butterflies I had photographed last summer.I was glad to identify them so easily (even the skippers!). It only took me a couple minutes each. My four butterfly lifers are: Least Skipper, Red-spotted Purple, Silver Spotted Skipper, and White Admiral. Kenn and Jim Brock sure did a wonderful job with the butterfly guide, which is very easy to use. I guess I am becoming a leodeprodist as well as an ornithologist!
The first butterfly in the list, the Least Skipper, I noticed in the flowers at my house in Iowa.

The Red-spotted Purple was in a bush that had tons of flowers on it in my neighborhood.

This Silver-spotted Skipper was in the same bush as the Red-spotted Purple.
The White Admiral was at Itasca State Park and is my favorite of my butterfly lifers. You can't find them where I live so I'll have to travel in order to see one of these again.