Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.

Seminar spotlight: Mono Basin Mammals

Small mammals like squirrels, chipmunks, kangaroo rats, and mice scurry around us humans all day and night here in the Mono Basin, but how often do you actually get to really see them? If you’re interested in seeing the Mono Basin’s mammals up close (you might even get to hold one!), you’re in luck—there are a few spaces left in the Mono Basin Mammals field seminar coming up in a couple of weeks.

Mono Basin Mammals • July 25–27 • $155 per person/$140 for members • sign up here

The field seminar instructor is biologist John Harris, who has studied the Mono Basin's mammals since the 1970s. Photo by Elin Ljung.

Instructor John Harris has studied the Mono Basin’s mammals for decades, and has led many popular field seminars for the Mono Lake Committee and at the annual Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua. John catches the mammals in live traps, thereby allowing seminar participants to see these fascinating creatures up close.

The group visits the Tioga Pass high country to look for marmots and pikas during the seminar. Photo by Elin Ljung.

If you have never seen the tuft on a kangaroo rat’s tail, been able to compare the stripes of different chipmunk species, or watched families of pikas busily gathering grass for the winter, this seminar will show you all that and more. Last year the group even caught a glimpse of an extremely elusive, nocturnal flying squirrel, one of the only documented sightings in this area! Sign up now for a fascinating weekend in the Mono Basin, in the company of its smallest mammals.

More mammals occur in the Mono Basin than in many entire states, and identifying those varied species is much easier with John's help. Photo by Elin Ljung.

Mono Basin Mammals • July 25–27 • $155 per person/$140 for members • sign up here