Natural History Journal

Last year, Eric and I spent the month of June traveling through England and Scotland, visiting amazing historic sites, touring places connected with our favorite classic literature, rambling across the stunningly beautiful British countryside, and of course, birding.  The last week of our trip was spent in Scotland, and I had the opportunity to see quite a few birds right in the heart of Edinburgh, in and around Holyrood Park. Eurasian Bullfinch I was incredibly excited to see this male Eurasian Bullfinch, sitting atop a fence one fine, mizzly morning on our way into Edinburgh.  Though he looked a bit damp and bedraggled, he was singing nonetheless and didn't seem to mind the quintessentially Scottish weather.  Eurasian Bullfinch Eurasian Bullfinches range across much of Europe and parts of Asia, preferring deciduous woodland edges, farmland, hedgerows, parks and gardens.  Though not terribly uncommon, these striking little birds can be difficult to see, as they tend...

Okay, so technically it's not quite summer yet.  But that detail aside, the weather was beautifully warm, the meadows were green, the waterfalls were roaring, and the birds were singing their hearts out on a recent trip to Yosemite National Park.   Following John Muir's historic route from the Central Valley up through Coulterville and Greeley Hill, and finally into Yosemite, we made our way up into the cool green cathedral that is the Sierra Nevada.  For the nth time, I thanked God for his glorious creation, and for situating me so near to these mountains, that I might marvel at his divine power on display at such a massive scale on a regular basis.  And, not least of all, I thanked God for giving us time to get out and enjoy it! During four days of hiking and birding, and three nights of camping, we encountered abundant breath-taking mountain scenery at every turn, and a total of 60 species of birds.  Here are just a few of my favorite photos from the tri...

Once upon a time, there was a valley.  A level plain between two great mountain ranges, this valley was dotted with shimmering wetlands and carpeted with grasses and wildflowers that swayed in the breeze.  Oh, those wildflowers!  Those wildflowers were the stuff of legend, pure poetry in living form.  Wild rivers flowed across this valley, swelling with snow melt each spring, their meandering courses and sprawling floodplains charted by dark ribbons of vegetation: tangled thickets of wild blackberries and roses, silvery clouds of willows and verdant bowers of wild grapevines hanging from a canopy of majestic oaks.  In those days, the Great Central Valley of California was a beautiful sight to behold indeed. As John Muir described in Treasures of the Yosemite (1890), "One shining morning, at the head of the Pacheco Pass, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most divinely beautiful and sublime I have ever beheld.  T...

Summer is waning and autumn - that glorious season of deliciously rich color before the quiet sleep of winter - is softly approaching. California is a state of gold: golden grasses, golden trees, golden sunlight and, of course, literal gold!  Oftentimes, trees, especially our brilliant autumn star the aspen, steal the show this season.  (I wrote about them  last year , and the year before .)  But of course, the unsung heroes of the fall color pageant are the background characters, those who quietly put on a stunning performance no less brilliant for its subtlety.  I'm talking, of course, about California's wildflowers.   While spring is the traditional glory season for wildflowers across the lower elevations of the state, autumn has its moments of jaw-dropping splendor as well. John Muir called it, "... a most extraordinary outgush of plant-life, at the very driest time of the whole year.  A small unobtrusive plant, Hemizonia virgata, from s...

It is the height of summer, and I often feel that at this time of year there is no place I would rather be than in the Sierra. Summer in the meadows and forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains is one great rush of all that is poetic, romantic, magical and sublime in this world: the heady scent of resinous pine and mountain misery hanging thick in the warm mountain air; riotous colors of wildflowers bedecking green meadows surrounded by spires of tall conifers; thickets of lush and verdant dogwood, willow and alder bisected by clear, cold streams murmuring as they flow over smooth stones; the ethereal call of thrushes rising from the undergrowth as the chatter of chickadees and warblers drifts down from the canopy above; billowing thunderheads rising in the azure sky to crest snow-capped peaks. Tunnel View, Yosemite National Park Here in the Sierra, as John Muir once wrote, "... The sun shines not on us but in us.  The rivers flow not past but through us, thrilling, tingl...

A week or two ago, while hiking in the Wawona area of Yosemite National Park (taking in the glorious fall colors and hoping beyond hope to see a Great Gray Owl), I came across a dried up stalk of Woodland Pinedrops ( Pterospora andromedea ) growing on the forest floor.  I'm sure most people would have walked right on by, but of course I was thrilled!  I stopped to take a bunch of photos (Eric wondered, I'm sure, what all the fuss was about over something so seemingly unspectacular) and once home, decided it was time to introduce you to a few of California's magnificent monotropes! Dried stalk of Pinedrops - unassumingly beautiful! Pinedrops are a lesser-known cousin of the showy Snow Plant ( Sarcodes sanguinea ), both of which are included in the heath family, Ericaceae.  Other plants in this family include California's 40+ manzanita species, John Muir's beloved Cassiope, the abundant Salal of the Pacific Northwest, and...