Road Trip 5

One of the things I like about Five Springs (apart from the lack of people!) is the variety of landscapes in the area, from the Big Horn mountains (rising to over 13,000 ft) to the desert and canyons below.

We stopped for lunch one day beside the Big Horn river. After lunch I wandered around with my camera. The first thing I found was that there was a lot of prickly pear cactus, and it was all blooming. I'm used to seeing occasional prickly pear cactus flowers but I don't think I've seen a whole area blooming at once like this.

The flowers are quite pretty up close.

There were a few other flowers around. I think this is Locoweed.

The bank beside the river showed interesting layers of sedimentary rock.

At the bottom of the bank I came across this lizard which took off at an amazingly high speed. I froze and watched where it stopped. I then approached very slowly and it stayed where it was. I think it's a Common Sagebrush Lizard.

A bit later Shelley spotted another lizard. It also made an initial run for it and then froze in place. It turned out to be a Short-horned Lizard (aka a horned or horny toad, even though it's not a toad at all). They are also found in southern Saskatchewan (endangered) although I don't think I ever spotted one there.

Driving by, I noticed a trail head sign on an unmarked gravel side road. We went to investigate and found it was a new trail to Rainbow Canyon. From the Five Springs campground you can see there are some badlands down below but we didn't know how to get to them. The first thing I spotted along the trail were Sego Lilies. (the state flower of Utah) I love the details of the flowers.

The colors and patterns of Rainbow Canyon itself were quite impressive.

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Snails

I still have more road trip photos to post but I'll take a break for something different. It rained Friday night and Saturday morning and when I went for my long run there were lots of snails out on the sidewalk. On the way back I picked up a few and zipped them into the pocket of my rain jacket. It was funny because I could feel them crawling around inside the pocket. iNaturalist says these are Brown-lipped Snails - yet another import.

First I took some staged shots indoors with black and white backgrounds. Which do you like best? The snails vary quite a lot in coloring so I used a lighter one for the black background and a darker one for the white background.

For a more natural look I put them on one of our garden plants. They don't move very fast, but they don't stop and if I spent too much time fiddling with my camera they'd be on their way to escape.

After I released them near where I found them, I took a few more photos in a more realistic (but more cluttered) setting.

This one decided to climb a stalk of grass. I'm not sure where it thought that would get them.

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Road Trip 4 - Sheridan

After three nights of camping and with a forecast of bad weather we took a break from Five Springs and drove over to Sheridan on the other side of the Bighorn mountains. It's a nice drive. Along the way we saw some moose near the road that let us photograph them.

Moose shed their antlers every year and you can see the stubs of the new ones.

We also saw a Red-tailed Hawk but it was too far away to get very good photos. Their red tail isn't always obvious, but you can see it in this photo.

In Sheridan we like to visit Sam Mavrakis Pond where there are frogs and turtles and birds. Unfortunately, the frogs are non-native bullfrogs but they're still fun to watch.

At least the turtles are native Painted Turtles. (Unlike the ponds in Victoria which are full of previous pet non-native Yellow-eared Sliders.)

There was a family of Mallards with cute ducklings.

Lots of Red-winged Blackbirds hung out around the pond.

And a few Cedar Waxwings.

There weren't very many damselflies and dragonflies. It's hard to judge, but it seems like there are fewer insects around these days, sadly.

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Road Trip 3 - Five Springs

In between paragliding there's lots of time to wander around the Five Springs area. Some things are familiar from past trips but there's always new stuff as well. This is one of the few places where I have found cicadas. This one jumped on my wing while I was packing up.

This was the first time I've found a shed skin from a cicada here.

The first one of these butterflies I spotted wouldn't let me get close enough to photograph. I looked for a patch of the same kind of flowers and luckily found one that was more cooperative. I don't think I've seen these Juniper Hairstreak butterflies before.

Meadow Deathcamas are common but pretty. (It's poisonous, thus the name.)

Death Camas Mining Bees are one of the few insects that are immune to the poison.

Western Blue Flag (a kind of iris) and lupines are also common.

This huge Nevada Bumble Bee was enjoying the lupines.

Larkspurs are less common.

It's always nice to see Prairie Pasqueflowers and Shooting Stars up here. I associate them with the prairies, not the mountains.

In one spot there were lots of these Spring Orange Peel Fungus.

I was surprised to see this water strider blow into our van. We were a long way from any water.

Threatening weather (not great for paragliding).

One day when it was too windy to fly we went and hiked the state line trail to get a view of Big Horn canyon. And more flowers, of course.

There were tent caterpillars on the sagebrush and a spider who had found them an easy supply of food.

I liked the skeleton of this long dead tree.

We found another trail into Cottonwood Canyon. It was supposed to go to a waterfall but despite being spring it was dry. But there were still things to see (and photograph!).

On the drive out we passed this relatively cooperative Pronghorn.

I just call it Five Springs but technically it is Five Springs Falls. Here are the falls:

While I was looking at the falls a curious squirrel was looking at me.

I heard this Green-tailed Towhee first. I finally spotted it in the distance. I didn't have my big telephoto so I had to sneak close enough for the lens I had. Curiously, my notes say the last time I saw a Green-tailed Towhee was also at Five Springs.

This little bird (Dusky Flycatcher?) first tried repeatedly to get into our van. When that failed it made our side mirror its regular perch. (Which it then "decorated"!) I'm not sure what it found attractive about the van.

We always like to see the Yellow-bellied Marmots at Five Springs. They are tricky to photograph because they usually run away immediately. This one was a little more cooperative.

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