Mono

[abraxas]

 

[JYoung]

What a beautiful, peaceful shot! I love this.

 

[abraxas]

What a beautiful, peaceful shot! I love this.

Thanks!

 

[JYoung]

Is this part of Hoover Dam?

 

[tpe]

Thats wonderfull, the sky and its reflection complement each other soo well, and the way it fades to white really make it a sublime and dreamy picture, actually it has to be one of my favorites.

tim

 

[abraxas]

Is this part of Hoover Dam?

No, Mono Lake is located in east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

I have a page on it >> Here <<

The salt lake is the oldest lake in the United States, and too salty for fish. About the only thing that lives in the water are the brine shrimp and alkali flies along the edge, who's larvae is a big deal for several species of migrating birds, the eared grebe (pronounced greeb) in particular.

The eared grebe, which looks like a combination of Clark's Grebe and my favorite, the pied-billed grebe, gathers in huge numbers to feast on the shrimp, and end up staying for a little vacation as they can double or triple their weight and can't fly until they lose it.

There's an interesting story that goes with the larvae- at least to me; An American explorer, Joseph Reddeford Walker was looking for a trail across the desert from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in Utah. His men were starving when they happened upon an Indian village. The Indians had never seen white men and scattered on sight deserting the little camp. The men found a tasty meal plentiful throughout the camp. The food was high in protein and they ate their fill and loaded all they could find into their bags before they continued on their journey.

The men of the Western Mono Paiute Indian tribe had been hunting when the band of white people raided the camp. The women and children who had ran away from the strange party informed the men of the theft of their winter food stores. The men of the tribe soon caught up with the expedition and asked if they could have their food back?

Walker and the Indians negotiated as the food was more than enough for them to finish their trip. Walker asked, "By the way, what is it?" The Indians explained that it was the larvae of the flies along the lake, that every year the nomadic people came to the lake to gather the yellow-white goop and dry it on the flat rocks in the sun -- Walker and his men promptly returned the full measure of what they had stolen.

If you are interested in seeing the location on a map of California, the easiest way to find it is to look about halfway up the state, find Yosemite National Park, and look east at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The Hoover Dam is located several hundred miles to the south along the Colorado River, which of course, is a whole other story.

Sorry if some of the links aren't developed out all the way- I'm still plugging away at my lizards and snakes pages.

The Great Outdoors is Great, because it's Outdoors

 

[abraxas]

Thats wonderfull, the sky and its reflection complement each other soo well, and the way it fades to white really make it a sublime and dreamy picture, actually it has to be one of my favorites.

tim

Thanks!!

 

[tpe]

Cor blimy, where have you been hiding those pages, they are excelent. The lizard and snakes pages are most interesting for me, and a real treat. I am not sure about the red racer, but it turns out that racers may well be venomous, back fanged, but that their venom is very mild in humans and that they dont usually get the chance to chew it into their victim when biting people, if i find the article again i will send it your way.

tim

 

[JYoung]

Walter, this is an amazing site and is going to take me ages to go through as I am interested in everything on it. Your pictures are stunning!!

Tim, I would also be interested in the article on the red racer if you care to pass it on to me.

 

[tpe]

I dont know about the red racer specifically but here is a reference to the first article on racer venom.

Perry. G. Mild toxic effects resulting from the bites of Jan's desert racer, Coluber rhodorachis, and Moila's snake, Malpolon moilensis (Ophidia: Colubridae) Toxicon1988;26(6):523-4.

I think that they say it is probably a common phenomenon but previously unnoticed because of its mild effect on humans

All the articles as far as i can see are in toxicon, a journal i am sorry i dont have access to the full text any more without ordering it individually.


But there are is probably some good reading in the abstracts of the related articles
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&DbFrom=pubmed&Cmd=Link&LinkName=pubmed_pubmed&LinkReadableName=Related%20Articles&IdsFromResult=3176046&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus

But possibly a little dry?!?

tim

I just had a look through google and it turned up more than the local science library, gulp!!!

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00....0.CO;2-S&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

This one is quite nice explaining why they may have venom glands to differing degrees...

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/msh091v1.pdf

anyway sorry for digressing ...

 

[wolfepakt]

Beautiful pic, but I must admit my first thought was how did he get a picture of "kissing disease"?!
But like I said, this is a great shot!

 

[JYoung]

Thanks for the info Tim. Between Walter's site and your links, I have a lot of reading to do which will keep me busy for a while.

 

[abraxas]

Cor blimy, where have you been hiding those pages, they are excelent. The lizard and snakes pages are most interesting for me, and a real treat. I am not sure about the red racer, but it turns out that racers may well be venomous, back fanged, but that their venom is very mild in humans and that they dont usually get the chance to chew it into their victim when biting people, if i find the article again i will send it your way.

tim

I'll check the links, I heard about the back fangs, but not the venom.

A little embarassing, but some of the snake photos are from the National or State wildlife services. In order to keep up with the competition I've had to change my job description to editor in the last year. I still do the photos when I can and will replace public domain shots with mine, but things were getting stretched waiting for photos that when I did get them turned out unsatisfactory.

Snake photos are the hardest. I stomp or something when I hike- maybe smell funny too. Snakes slither away. I brought up the problem at a class last year, possibly snakes feel the vibration in the way certain people walk and split. Although I plod around quite a bit in the desert nowdays and in the mountains when I was a kid, I can count my encounters with snakes in the wild easily on my remaining fingers (all there , but I like saying that).

To illustrate, here's an post from a local e-campfire board where we e-lie to each other about desert stuff.

RL wrote:
W,
Great research

Headin' back out later this week and will try to have the cam at the ready..

RL
--

Looking forward to any you get.

Meanwhile, a little story;

Book learning can be engaging, but there is nothing like practical experience. That being said, I'd like to add practical experience can be fun, but book learning can be rewarding. This might seem a little crazy, so I should explain.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it previously, but my grandson is visiting from Pennsylvania. He's grown quite a bit from the last I've seen him four years ago, and seemed to accquire enough sense not to run off the edge of a cliff chasing a squirrel or something or other. I decided to have him help me hunt down some lizards for photos.

I've always been a wanderer, and I trudge around, well, wandering. Sometimes I see lizards, most times I don't. I think it's because I trudge. If I do see a lizard I snap a photo if I can, but usually watch them run the hell away from me if I startle them. I wanted this to be more rewarding for the boy and studied up on lizard behavior and spotting techniques. It really helps to know what a lizard likes and doesn't like.

Some lizards like sitting on the top of rocks, some like being under them. Some like trees and brush, some like the sand and so on and so forth. So I look up the habitat notes on the area we plan to look for lizards in near the local mountain lake. It says look under rocks and bark. With that bit of knowlege we head off for a day of adventure.

We had spent several hours without any luck looking under rocks- nothing. Absolutley nothing. The boy was disappointed for sure. I was bummed out. We must have looked under a couple hundred rocks between us. Then I remembered something...

"Arf.. arf, arf", I meekly woofed.

"Bow-wow-wow-wow...", I continued, but louder.

The kid smiled and joined in, "Yiiiip-yip-yap-yap-yap."

Our barking got louder and brazen. We bellered, yowled, howled, bayed, and snipped and snapped like a pack of cur-mongrels chasing a kid on a bicycle with bent training wheels. We started flipping rocks over and lo-and-behold, lizards came pouring out of the woodwork. They was running all over the place like they were crazy. I never seen nothing like it and probably never will again. Man, this was fun!

I say it will probably never happen again because of Murphy's law kicking in- the batteries in the camera were dead. I went back to the spot the next day and there was not a herp to be found. I can't imagine why.

So anyhow, I hope these tips help you; check your battery and make sure it's fully charged, look under rocks and bark. Fool-proof.

So when my update wheel gets another walk around I'll rewrite all the pages and include new shots and my own wording in the articles, good stuff like; stuff, uh-huh, didja, kinda, sorta, dunno, and who'd-a-thunk it. My own style.

Final note on the red racer. When visiting Joshua Tree National Park for a few days we sometimes stay at a little inn next to the Oasis of Mara. The oasis is a nice little fan palm oasis That me and the little woman enjoy. I like to walk around with the grandkids when we have them and search out the wildlife. About 4 years ago we were visiting and I had read accounts of red racers being in the area, but didn't know much about them at the time other than they had a nasty temper. I spotted a red snake in a desert willow tree and pointed it out to my grandson (10 at the time). He kept walking up to it and sticking his tiny face what I felt was too close. I kept yanking him back. It irritated me that he persisted and we continued our walk (no camera- curses).

The next day I took the whole famn damily up to the park so we could all enjoy the sunset. I wanted a shot from up on the rocks and made the poor kid wait with his sister and grandmother. I wanted to shoot rather than watch him run wild.

After I took the shot above, I turned around and there was a Mojave Rattlesnake wedged in a dark crack under a boulder about two steps behind me. It justified my decision although I felt kinda bad- he wanted to hang with me, but I kept thinking of his itty-biitty face and the red racer.

So, imagine my surprise when a year or two ago while making the snakes pages that I find out that red racers prefer desert and don't climb trees while the rosy boa prefers riparian habitat and will climb! I could have let him stick his head right up next to the slick reptile. I felt kind of bad, but then again, it might have choked him to death.

So I brought this up to the kid this year. He said he remembered the snake, and also that he wanted to go with me when I saw the rattler. I felt bad so the next day I took him camping and on the way to the following shot recently posted here.

We saw half a dozen bighorn sheep. This seemed to make up for the snakes. I feel better.



Apologies for the long winded reply-

 

[abraxas]

Walter, this is an amazing site and is going to take me ages to go through as I am interested in everything on it. Your pictures are stunning!!

Tim, I would also be interested in the article on the red racer if you care to pass it on to me.

Thanks Joan! As of next week it will be 12 years I've been working on it. An avocationalist's dream I guess. I've nothing better to do. :meh:

 

[abraxas]

Beautiful pic, but I must admit my first thought was how did he get a picture of "kissing disease"?!
But like I said, this is a great shot!

Thank you very much.

That kind of flashed through my mind also, but I thought, "Who else would think about that but me and Vicki?" I wonder where she is now?- God, I loved her. I wonder if she ever thinks of me?