The second part of my “excellent adventure” (Part One, is right here) involved coming down from the San Jacinto mountains to the valley floor some 5000′ below and the very different habitat - and consequently very different birds - of sagebrush and desert. Looking at my edition of Lane’s “A Birder’s Guide to southern California” the best way to pick up the common species I wanted to see (eg Cactus Wren, Verdin, Gambel’s Quail) in the time I had left - about four hours of daylight - was to go to “The Living Desert” at Palm Canyon then nip round to the “Indian Canyons” on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. This would involve a drive through Palm Springs, but how many people would be out and about in a quiet little place like Palm Springs mid-week? Hmm…

First of all though I had to make the descent back down the mountain loop. Going from snow-covered pines to parched creosote trees in thirty minutes is an atypical experience for a Brit like me, but I have to say I was looking forward to getting back into the warmer air down at sea-level again (I was getting tired, what can I say?). “Lane” stated that there would be few birds on this section so it would be worth just pushing on without stopping. I’d agree: there were few birds (actually I didn’t see anything apart from the odd Northern Raven), but the scenery is so spectacular that hurtling through it fixated entirely on getting down as quickly as possible is a shame. Were I to do the loop again I’d like to leave a little more time to descend at a more leisurely pace. The road jinks around hairpins and sweeping bends through prime “Bighorn Sheep” country for miles, and the views to the snow-dusted mountains in the distance are wonderful…

 

It’s all very different to what awaits you in the valley. Call me hopelessly naive (if you must) but I hadn’t quite figured just how popular owning a piece of well-watered desert real-estate is with today’s “we can live anywhere we want to” Americans. I remember once driving to the stunning Brazilian National Park of Itatiaia - a huge “mountain” covered in a remnant chunk of primary rainforest about three hours from Rio de Janeiro. The drive to the park is horribly depressing: a lesson in deforestation as you drive past mile after mile of denuded slopes pocked with the stumps of what was once huge trees. As you approach the park entrance though you start noticing a green wall approaching, that finally reveals itself as the edge of the forest. Behind the boundary of the park are towering trees ages old, right up to it there is nothing but change and human beings. It felt a little similar descending into the various “palm cities” here: behind you, just a few miles away, is a wilderness of ancient rocks and the tracks of streams and washes carved out over thousands of years - down here there are shopping malls, stop lights, and crowds of people busy converting unique habitats into the suburbs they left behind them.

The “Living Desert” at Palm Canyon is - in my opinion - an extension of the changes going on all over this part of California. Perhaps my early start had got to me, but initial impressions were very disappointing. I was hoping for prime desert birding in a quiet location, instead what I found felt more like a zoo. The car-park is enormous (the one Roadrunner I saw during the day couldn’t run across it fast enough), the teenager eating his burrito in the entrance kiosk whilst happy to take the 11USD entrance-fee seemed to have little knowledge of what lay beyond the gates, and there was a sea of incredibly noisy children between me and the birds I hoped were inside somewhere.

Skimming through the Visitor Guide reinforced the impression that this wasn’t quite the desert haven I’d been expecting (yes, ‘naively expecting’). The photos used on the front of the guide show a meerkat, two giraffes, and a cheetah (all African species and more at home in savannah than a desert) , a park employee playing at being a falconer and displaying a Golden Eagle, and right at the bottom a tiny slice of desert. There are three shops, two restaurants, the “Gecko Gulch Kids Play Park”, a “Petting Kraal”, and “the longest model train trestle in the world”. Why might you need to know this? Just so that you’re aware that if you do turn up with binoculars, a camera, a face smeared in sun-block, and wearing hiking-boots you will look mightily out of place amongst the day-trippers who’ve come to see…oh, who knows what they’ve come to see, actually, because eavesdropping on conversations seemed to only reveal how confused most of the adults were and how bored their children were.

No doubt I’ll get an angry mail from “The Living Desert” staff pointing out the conservation work they do, and how there are information boards everywhere explaining how important saving this disappearing habitat is - and I’m sure it will be justified, but this was far more “Disney does the Desert” than I could stand. If it wasn’t for the 11USD I’d already spent I’d have made a sharp exit, but having missed so many birds back in the mountains I had to give the place a once-over just in case…

The photos below probably show what a curmudgeonly sod I’m becoming, because there were a few birds around. Not in large numbers, but enough to make it worth spending an hour here if you ever want to pick up some of the commoner desert species without too much effort. Verdin are fairly common, poking their yellow heads in tiny flowers, Gambel’s Quail rocket away along the paths winding through the cactus displays, and a noisy bunch of Cactus Wrens chased each other as they made their way across the “Living Desert” towards somewhere more natural. Highlight of the visit was probably a very obliging Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, a quieter and less boisterous bird than its eastern cousin and very lovely in a non-extravagant and subtle way.

 

Black-tailed Gnatcatcher Polioptila melanura

Verdin Auriparus flaviceps

Cactus Wren Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus

 

To be absolutely fair to “The Living Desert” (which judging by how many people were visiting hardly needs defending by me of course) there is an area of ‘proper’ habitat tucked into a northern corner of the park. A series of trails loop through a wash (an overflow for rain water/snow melt running off the San Jacinto Mountains) and along the edge of some rocky hills that looked so perfect for Rock Wren that I was certain I’d soon be knee-deep in them. I’m either a very poor judge of what constitutes good Rock Wren habitat or the birds were so unsettled at seeing an actual birder that they turned tail and fled - or both perhaps - but scour as I might there was not a sign of a wren (or anything else for that matter).

Fortunately the bushes and shrubs down in the wash were a little better, and I finally found a Costa’s Hummingbird (read “Lane” and you’ll think that at this time of the year you’ll be swatting them away like flies). Other additions for the day included a lovely male Ladder-backed Woodpecker, a red-shafted Northern Flicker, and a rather dopey Black-tailed Jack Rabbit which loped slowly away, its long ears waving like flags, when it finally noticed me walking towards it.

 

Costa’s Hummingbird Calypte costae

Ladder-backed Woodpecker Picoides scalaris

Black-tailed Jackrabbit Lepus californicus: a Hare, not a rabbit…

 

By the time I returned to the entrance/exit gates I was about thirty minutes behind my self-imposed schedule. I wanted to get across to the “Indian Canyons” in time to have a proper search for some of the birds I’d missed that - according to “Lane” - I should have already seen easily: Common Ground-dove, Black-throated Sparrow, and the unusually elusive Rock Wren. There was also Phainopepla to be found, and perhaps an early rising Great Horned Owl on way back out towards the I10?

The distance between the two sites is about twenty miles - which should take around half-an-hour perhaps? You might think so, but for reasons I’ve yet to fathom the city planners here have seemingly decided that there should be traffic lights every few feet. And they’ve apparently decided to synchronise them with traffic flow in Bombay or Hong Kong, anywhere other than the traffic that is trying to move through their streets anyway. Someone, somewhere must know why it was necessary to make the drive through this part of California such a frustratingly slow series of stops and starts (perhaps the planners own the shops along the road and hope we’ll give up trying to get out of town and stop and buy something), but it took me nearly an hour to reach the canyons at Agua Caliente.

By this time it was 16:00 and the sun was starting to dip. Signs at the entrance clearly state that the site closes promptly at 17:00, a message re-enforced by the ranger I handed my entrance-fee to. Would you happen to know, I asked, the best place for birding given that I’ve so little time? The reply was to have a look around the nearby Andreas Canyon about a mile away…

 

 

From an anti-social birder’s point of view “Indian Canyons” is very much ‘the real deal’, a stunningly beautiful area of sagebrush, hills, deep canyons, and hiking trails. I undoubtedly got the impression that the place was empty of people because - by the time I arrived - it was: most visitors were surely already making their way back home. I would of course had liked more time here, but having said that arriving so late did at least mean that the birds were re-emerging to feed up before dusk and I could stop and peer out of the window at them without causing a tailback. And within about 500 yards of the entrance I was indeed stopping and peering a great deal.

Almost the first birds I saw were a party of what looked to be small sparrows flitting between the low bushes. Jumping out of the car and walking after of them I was soon getting views of one of my favourite American sparrows, the Black-throated. Why a bird that is essentially a mix of grey, black, brown, and white should appeal so strongly is anyone’s guess, but I have to admit to absolutely loving these little passerines. They somehow manage to look both ordinary and strangely exotic at the same time, a wonderful fusion of subtle colours and striking markings that look perfectly right for the habitat they live in (which in itself of course is far removed from the fields and hegerows that I normally bird in). Oddly enough I get this way about White-throated Sparrows in Central Park too, and as I write this a vagrant White-crowned Sparrow in East Anglia is causing birders over here to reach for their dictionaries as they try to outdo each other’s increasingly Wordsworthian descriptions.

Whatever it is about American sparrows that appeals to Brit birders so much, the Black-throated has it in abundance. Throw a few Western Bluebirds into the mix, tee up a pair of Phainopepla in the background, and have a Say’s Phoebe flick through and this particular Brit birder was - at last some would say - a very happy man.

 

Black-throated Sparrow Amphispiza bilineata (and House Finches)

 

I reached Andreas Canyon with just thirty minutes left before the “Canyons” closed for the night. Surely time to add Rock Wren (described in “Lane” as a “fairly common permanent resident of rocky sites”) or Canyon Wren (”fairly common permanent resident of steep, rocky canyons with water in the foothills”) to the day-list? Apparently not. I raced up and down the narrow trail in Andreas Canyon, pishing for all I was worth and for as long as I dared, before wandering back to the car ‘wren-less’ and beginning the long and tiring drive back to Los Angeles and my hotel bed!

 

Looking along Andreas Canyon at dusk - note absence of wrens…

 

I may have missed the wrens but as I began to mentally recap what I had seen - the birds, the incredible habitat, the views - I really didn’t mind. Yes, I was year-listing and in competition (with a friend), but at heart I was just doing what I normally do - birding until I almost dropped and having a thoroughly enjoyable time while I did it. Would I try that loop again? I’m sure in summer the birding would be entirely different, so the answer would have to be a qualified ‘yes’. It is though hard work and if you’re starting in LA and need to end in LA you’re looking at over 300 miles of driving - easy enough with a birding pal to keep you awake, but a little tough without…

 

 

Day List: (includes San Jacinto, new for the Year underlined)
Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis 2-3; Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura 50+; Band-tailed Pigeon Columba fasciata 2; Greater Roadrunner Geococcyx californianus 1; Anna’s Hummingbird Calypte anna 2; Costa’s Hummingbird Calypte costae c)10; Acorn Woodpecker Melanerpes formicivorus 3-4; Ladder-backed Woodpecker Picoides scalaris 1; Northern/Red-shafted Flicker Colaptes auratus cafer 2; Black Phoebe Sayornis nigricans 1; Say’s Phoebe Sayornis saya 2; Ruby-crowned Kinglet Regulus calendula 2; Phainopepla Phainopepla nitens 5; Cactus Wren Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus 4; Bewick’s Wren Thryomanes bewickii 1; California Thrasher Toxostoma redivivum 1; Western Bluebird Sialia mexicana 7; American Robin Turdus migratorius 5-6; Black-tailed Gnatcatcher Polioptila melanura 2; Mountain Chickadee Poecile gambeli c)10; Oak Titmouse Baeolophus inornatus 2; Pygmy Nuthatch Sitta pygmaea c)10; Brown Creeper Certhia americana 2; Verdin Auriparus flaviceps 3-4; Steller’s Jay Cyanocitta stelleri 2; Western Scrub Jay Aphelocoma californica 10-12; American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos 50+; Northern Raven Corvus corax 15-20; Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris 20+; House Finch Carpodacus mexicanus 30+; Lesser Goldfinch Carduelis psaltria 3; Yellow-rumped Warbler Dendroica coronata 3-4; California Towhee Pipilo crissalis 4-5; Lark Sparrow Chondestes grammacus 2; Black-throated Sparrow Amphispiza bilineata 4-5; Fox Sparrow Passerella iliaca 1; White-crowned Sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys 10+; Golden-crowned Sparrow Zonotrichia atricapilla 1+; Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis oreganus 20+; Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus 2; Western Meadowlark Sturnella neglecta 2; Brewer’s Blackbird Euphagus cyanocephalus 5+