Natural History Journal

On the dry, desolate, rocky slopes of remote desert regions across the western U.S. there lives a bird known to some as... the "devil bird."   To others, it is more properly known as the Chukar.  And aren't they cheeky little critters! If a Chukar could give cheek...  The Chukar's name derives from its unique call, a sort of clucking sound that suggests its near kinship to other game birds, including grouse, partridge, pheasant, turkey, and - you guessed it - Red Junglefowl, the original wild ancestor of the domestic chicken.   Peeky cheeky Chukar (the children's book that you didn't know needed to be written) While Chukars tend to be quite vocal, they can be difficult to find in the vastness of their arid, sandy habitats.  Their soft gray and tan coloration blends in beautifully with the surrounding desert, and these birds are surprisingly agile on their feet, quickly scrambling up rocky hillsides to evade predators - including those of the two-legged...

Eric and I recently returned from a week-long camping trip in California's eastern Sierra Nevada, where we hiked, paddled, and birded around Mono Lake, Mammoth Lakes, and the White Mountains.  The following is a recap of some of my favorite bird encounters from the trip. East of the Sierra: Mono Lake, Mammoth Lakes Basin & the White Mountains Our first stop was at the popular fishing resort of Virginia Lakes, nestled below Dunderberg Peak just north of Mono Lake and west of Highway 395.  While the resort (which consists of a small store, a few cabins, and a campground) caters to anglers, it also maintains a few bird feeders outside the general store, next to the parking lot.  This arrangement is delightfully convenient and draws one particular bird that many birders come especially to see: the Gray-crowned Rosy-finch.  Gray-crowned Rosy-finches are birds of high elevations, making their living far above the range of the average biped, on alpine fell field...

California is exemplified by many different landscapes: its sunny beaches, rolling vineyards, granite mountain cathedrals, and vibrant cities, to name a few.  But it is also home to a wide array of forests, which contain a few of the world's most amazing types of plants.  To me, it wouldn't be California without the trees! While California's Coast Redwoods  ( Sequoia sempervirens ) have earned the title of the world's tallest trees, and Giant Sequoias ( Sequoiadendron giganteum ) of the Sierra Nevada are the world's most massive, hands down the winner for the world's oldest trees - and indeed the world's oldest living single organism - goes to the White Mountains' ancient Great Basin Bristlecone Pines ( Pinus longaeva ). While bristlecone pines are found across the Great Basin in parts of Nevada and Utah, the oldest specimens, many of which exceed 3,000 years, grow in the harsh conditions of eastern California's White Mountains.  The Methusel...

This series on what makes California such a unique and special place began with an overview of the state's incredible biodiversity .  Then, a few days ago, we talked about California's climate.   (Actually, we did much more than that: we went through an entire crash course on atmospheric conditions and threw in a few laws of physics just for fun.  If you missed it, catch up here .) Today's post is broken into four sections that each realistically deserve not only their own article, but their own text book(s)!  Those sections are: California's Geomorphic Provinces Plate Tectonics and Geologic Processes Soils The Rain Shadow Effect Much like we trekked all the way to the source and recognized the sun, along with Earth's tilt and rotation, as the ultimate driving forces of California's climate, today we'll peel back several more layers of science to take a look not only at California's diverse topography, but the tectonic forces and geologic proc...