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Mono Lake Committee
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From: Greg Reis and Lisa Cutting
Date: 18 Apr 2008
Time: 20:35:27 -0400
Remote Name: 65.241.2.134
At about 3:15 pm Friday we were on the Lee Vining Creek Trail when Lisa spotted a mink running downstream on the far side of the channel. We watched it run for 50 yards, and then it jumped in the water and swam downstream! Then it got out again. About a half hour later I was just downstream of where it disappeared, and I saw it again. It was moving upstream a little more slowly, and I went to the top of a hill so I could watch it longer. I last saw it in the entrance to the A-3 Channel, a channel rewatered during the 1990s interim court-ordered stream restoration. It was chocolate brown, very sleek and powerful looking, and about the length of a small cat. There was a report of a mink foraging in Rush Creek a couple of winters ago from the fisheries monitoring team--so this is a fairly rare sighting! ----- In other news, Plateau Gooseberry (yellow flowers) and Desert Peach (pink) are beginning to bloom along the trail! Mourning Cloak butterflies can be seen there too.