Naturalist Notes
A Mono Basin Chronicle
End of May: Western tanagers, rufous hummingbirds, black headed grosbeaks … what a year for Western wallflowers (Erysimum capitatum) … cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) regeneration on Lee Vining Creek is underway with many as tall as two feet high … swallowtail butterflies along desert and mountain trails … a calliope hummingbird … MacGillivray’s warbler ... dusky flycatcher … bats swooping overhead in the glory of insect hatches in the evenings … a Franklin’s gull seen mingling with the California gulls … brine shrimp in bloom and flies too … Tioga Pass opens on May 28.
June: Two northern mockingbirds down by the lake … an osprey seen flying low out to its nest on the tufa with a large fish in its talons … vigorous yet short lived snow storms for two days early in the month remind us that it is still officially spring … a green heron and a snowy egret on the north shore are good signs of regenerating wetlands … a badger seen roaming and digging among the sagebrush out by the Jeffrey pine forest … snowy plovers skidder about … a black tern flying above the lake … a gray catbird calling on top of a willow thicket up Lee Vining creek.
July: A rose-breasted grosbeak in Lundy Canyon had people scrambling to go find it … first immature gulls seen on the canoe tours … the osprey are successful in raising young and one is seen picking up a snake near Navy Beach and carrying it out to the nest … great horned owls heard hooting in the evenings down at South Tufa … a gopher snake blocking the road coiled and struck when nudged to safety … on a windy day down at Navy Beach long-billed curlews, black-bellied plovers, and a black-necked stilt nesting with chicks.
August: 136 swllows catching the first rays of sun on a power-line here in town … cormorants seen flying past Navy Beach … snow squalls tumbling over peaks early in the month but the cold does not last long … the Lee Vining Creek trail is in full bloom with lupine (Lupinus argenteus), evening primrose (Oenothera hookeri and Camissonia boothii), and prickly poppy (Argemone munita), while the desert peach (Prunus andersonii), buffalo berry (Shepherdia argentea), and dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) are fruiting … on the weekly morning birdwalk the group saw Townsend’s warblers, a downy woodpecker, eared grebes, Wilson’s phalaropes … rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus) and sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) are in bloom and we’re all itchy and sneezy … a great blue heron sitting on a tower at South Tufa spotted on a canoe tour … and a highlight of the month, and possibly the year, 113 black terns in transition plumage flying low over the lake catching alkalai flies.
Return to Fall 1999
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