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Category: My World Tuesday

My World Tuesday – Predator and Prey


Kaibab squirrel
Sunday morning I lead a nature walk with only three visitors, all avid birders. (Sometimes these walks can be up to 30 people.) I’d been talking about the Kaibab Squirrel and we were all keeping our eyes open to see one.

Copper’s Hawk
We stopped along the trail to study some fossils and up in a Quaking Aspen we saw a Copper’s Hawk. I know, not a very good photo but the best I could do. Hawks are a predator of Kaibab Squirrel so we were very surprised when we saw one leaping gracefully along right under the hawk’s tree.

Copper’s Hawk nest
We all had our cameras ready for the hawk to swoop down on the squirrel, but it didn’t happen. Could be the hawk was busy as a hummingbird was flying all around it.

To see more of life around the world, or to share your own, go to My World Tuesday by clicking here.
Copper’s Hawk, Grand Canyon National Park, Kaibab squirrel, My World Tuesday 25 Comments

My World Tuesday – Storm Watching at Grand Canyon National Park

Better enlarge these to get the full effect.

Southeast to southwest view of the South Rim from Cape Royal
Today I went out on the Walhalla Plateau and gave a geology talk at Cape Royal while keeping an eye on the sky. This storm swept across the South Rim from west to east in a show of thunder and lightning for over an hour. I’ll bet the temperature dropped at least 10-15 degrees F as the wind increased. I was so excited! The energy was high, lots of negative ions. Yet on the North Rim, we felt no rain. I took over 50 photos trying to catch lightning, yet it’s so quick and I’m so slow. I lost count of how many strikes. One hit the wall of the canyon with a flash of fire.
Then I tried a minuet of video.

One frame caught lightning (my first capture of it) with Wotan’s Throne in foreground
Before leaving the Cape I warned visitors, “do not to be the tallest thing standing on this rocky promontory holding the metal rail if the storm comes north. Get up that quarter mile trail as fast as you can and into your vehicles.”

View southeast with Sky Island in foreground from Walhalla overlook
I didn’t want to leave. Yet at Walhalla overlook where I gave an archeology talk another storm was coming in from the north. I felt only 10 drops of rain while watching this veil quickly sweep to the southeast.

View northeast and east from Point Imperial
Again, I didn’t want to leave. But after lunch I went to rove at Point Imperial where I always enjoy the vast distant views. I was greeted by another storm coming from the north along with patches of sun reflecting off the Vermillion Cliffs to the left and Echo Cliffs to the right.

Wow, what a day! Sure beats yesterday which I vented about on the previous post.

So that’s my exciting world today. To see more of life around the world, or to share your own,

go to My World Tuesday by clicking here.

Thank you all for your concern. I did have a second full bottle of propane to switch to. The fridge hasn’t been cooling for a week. It just does that when the temperatures rise, when it cools down outside it usually starts works again. It is an original unit in a 1977 RV. Did it all matter today? No.

Cape Royal, Grand Canyon National Park, lightning, My World Tuesday, Point Imperial, storm, Walhalla Plateau 29 Comments

Rocks in my head, rocks in my pockets Fossil hunting in the Kaibab National Forest


You probably think this is just a bunch of rocks. Maybe even leverites, as in leave it right there. But you’d be wrong.

OK, I’ve been promising fossils for a while. It’s only been a week and a half since I went camping and fossil hunting at Marble View in the Kaibab National Forest.

Worm castings on veranda wall
After I give a geology talk I encourage Grand Canyon visitors to look for fossils on the walls of the lodge and veranda while I put props away. Then I lead a fossil walk part way out Bright Angel trail.
Bright Angel Trail
Kaibab limestone makes up the top layer of rock walked on here at Grand Canyon National Park. It was deposited about 270 million years ago when an ocean covered southern New Mexico and most of Arizona, Utah and Nevada. Many marine fossils can be seen.

Brachiopods are ocean bottom dwelling bi-valves yet are not related to clams or oysters. They were the most plentiful fossil on earth from the Paleozoic Era yet are rare in today’s oceans having never fully recovered from the devastation that occurred during the end of the Permian.

Sponge fossil in limestone and small fan coral on lower left corner
Sponges are also bottom dwellers and the simplest form of multi-cellular animals. Sponges feed, breath, reproduce and excrete by pumping water through the pores in their bodies. They vary in color, shape and size.

Crinoids, also known as sea lilies or feather-stars, have a stem formed of many stacked discs and grow in colonies on the ocean floor. The stem is topped with multiple feather-like feeding arms that filter small particles of food from the water.

The button-like crinoids have long been gathered and used for beads. Archeologists excavating at the Grand Canyon discovered crinoids strung by the Ancestral Puebloan Native Americans that lived here about 1000 years ago.

A work in progress
So I’m going to string some of my fossil finds along with some turquoise. That is if I ever get off the computer long enough.

For more glimpses into life around the world go to My World Tuesday by clicking here.

 

Arizona, Kaibab National Forest, My World Tuesday , , 39 Comments

Lijit

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