Bobcat
- The short, powerful bobcat body is adapted to pounce from a bush on birds,
rodents, and rabbits. Keen senses, patience, and night shadows aid this shy cat.
Cougar
- Also known as the Mountain Lion or Puma, tracks of this big cat can be seen in
the higher, less traveled elevations in the park.
Coyote
- The name of the game is survival. Options: use a unique plan, specialize, or
take advantage of every opportunity as a jack-of-all-trades. The desert's most
successful opportunist is the coyote. Its skill as a hunter, and its appetite
for anything swallow able, ensures this desert carnivore's success. Its diet may
include insects, lizards, snakes, birds, rodents, rabbits, carrion, fruit, nuts,
grass, tennis shoes, or young tortoises. Coyotes are renowned for howling, but
they also bark playfully.
Roadrunner
- (Geococcyx californianus) A large ground bird belonging to the cuckoo family.
It measures about 58 cm (23 in) and has brown plumage streaked with white above
and on the throat, and white plumage below. It also has a bushy crest, blue and
red eye rings, long, spindly legs, and a long tail. The roadrunner seldom flies,
depending on its quick feet to take it out of harms way. It eats small snakes as
well as insects, lizards, and, occasionally, the young of ground-nesting birds.
Big
Horn Sheep - (Ovis canadensis), A wild sheep with a brown or buff coat,
short ears, and large curving horns. The male bighorn, or ram, measures up to
150 cm (5 ft) long, about 100 cm (40 in) high at the shoulder. Many of the
larger ones weigh up to 157 kg (350 lb). The bighorn sheep are can be spotted on
rocky hilltops in the park, which they easily climb with their sharp cloven
hooves. They feed on small plants, flowers, and cactus.
Desert
Tortoise - Often called "land turtles", they have short,
elephant like feet with un-webbed toes, and a high-domed, body-encasing shell.
Tortoises can draw their heads and feet completely in under their shells when
attacked. They are generally slow-moving, and live in burrows. Tortoises will
eat almost any kind of plant and animal matter, and even though they are
toothless, they have no trouble biting off pieces of food with their sharp
cutting beaks. Tortoises may live up to 30 or 50 years.
Plants
which live in the desert survive only if their adaptations allow them either to
escape from the worst of the heat and drought or to successfully endure it.
Annual plants survive through escape-as seeds that lie dormant in the soil for
years until that unpredictable time when a perfect balance of rain and warm
temperatures triggers their growth.
Some seeds rely on coats of growth-inhibitors to prevent false starts after a single skimpy rainfall. To assure enough moisture for the young plants' survival, sprouting occurs only when sufficient rain falls to wash away these layers of chemicals. Desert dandelion and evening primrose, mallow, and buckwheat, lupine and phacelia: they germinate and flower with haste, in a frenzy of blossoming that must produce seed before crucial moisture disappears once more.
Perhaps the drama of the desert's spring bloom, in contrast to its normal austerity, magnifies our emotional reaction to the incredible carpet of flowers. The annuals erupt from their dormancy with a passion, a release of energy that can't help but be contagious.
Admirers of patience over passion will find kindred souls in shrubs and trees that live through the long, unpredictable dry spells. Ocotillos drop leaves in drought, and later re-grow them in a matter of days when rains return. In blossom, their flame-tipped branches, all leafy- green when rains come, make them almost unrecognizable if you have seen them only in drought-a random candelabra of thorny sticks.
Other trees lose their leaves in dry spells, but even with this sacrifice they can grow only along washes where sand holds a trace more moisture. Along the banks of these dry streams you find Palo Verde with green bark that can take over the food- producing role of leaves, and mesquite, whose roots reach deep, sixty feet or more, in the search for life-giving water. Elegant smoke trees line the drier washes: desert willows crowd watercourses with moister sand.
Out on the flats, creosote bushes keep their distance from one another, These fragrant plants ensure an adequate water supply by releasing secretions into the soil that kill seedlings competing for precious moisture. Creosote bushes retain their leaves through drought-slowly, but dependably, manufacturing their food under the driest conditions.
Cacti
rank as nearly everyone's favorite water miser. They have lost their leaves
permanently, trading them for protective, shade- casting spines. Their
succulent, green stems store water between rains, in pads and barrels and
columns of ribbed tissue. They maintain one extravagance that gives away their
close relationship to the rose family: fantastically showy blossoms that
bejewel the desert in spring.
| Their strange forms give them their names... | ||
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| Beavertail cactus |
Hedgehog cactus |
Old Man cactus |
| ...but their flowers give them their spirit. | ||
Second only to Joshua trees among the most memorable images in the park are
great heaps of boulders, eroded in a fantastic variety of arches, windows,
knobs, and hollows. Rock piles and Joshua trees complement each other and
combine to distinguish the high desert from the low desert below and the
mountains above.
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| Grand Tank |
Arch Rock |
Balanced Boulder |
Petroglyphs | Queen Mountain |
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