Memories of Cottonwood Spring - Joshua Tree NP

*Route to Cottonwood Springs in Joshua National Park.*

Cottonwood Spring is located inside Joshua Tree National Park. Twice, in 2016, I visited there, with the science team from the San Diego Natural History Museum; once at the end of September and again at the end of November. Both occasions were brief.

Then, in 2017, we had a longer visit from June 12th to the 20th. The science team focused its mission on Cottonwood Springs and the Pinto Basin at the southeastern corner of Joshua Tree National Park. I had my 50th Poway High School reunion to attend, but I joined the group on the 15th and stayed to the end. The purpose of the expedition was to resume the restudy of the biological surveys started by Joseph Grinnell’s teams from Berkley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in the early twentieth century.

It was hot to the extreme and registered into the one hundred teens (°F) most days. Without the house provided for us to work from, I don’t think it would have been wise to undertake the expedition. Seventy years ago, when teams from Berkley were studying the fauna here, they had to do it from tents and primitive camps. Those hearty folks in the 1920s, ‘30’s, and ‘40’s probably had to suffer for science. I don’t know how they dealt with the threat of heat exhaustion.

One interesting observation by both the mammalogists and the ornithologists on this trip, was that the animal subjects found here were juveniles. All the Phainopeplas, Northern Mockingbirds, and many of the House Finches I saw were juvenile birds. As a rule, mammalogists don’t collect juveniles for museum specimens. When caught, researchers document them and then release them. On the second to the last day, someone mistakenly delivered one juvenile Desert Pocket Mouse to the Rat Theater for photographs. In the dark of the early morning it must have looked like a Little Pocket Mouse, but when I got it under the lights in the Rat Theater, it lacked the tan tones in its pelage I expected to see. In the full light of day, Scott gave it a closer inspection and confirmed my suspicions. As either a juvenile Pocket Mouse or a Little Pocket Mouse, it was bound for release, anyway.

Spiny Pocket Mouse - Chaetodipus spinatus — *Called “Spiny” because of the long, stiff spiny hairs, this mouse loves rocky talus slopes. Found near Cottonwood Spring in southern Joshua Tree National Park. Riverside County California.*

The Little Pocket Mouse is a species of special concern, and conservationists have petitioned for its “endangered” status. The conversion of broad areas of the desert, especially in the Coachella Valley, to agricultural, residential, and commercial uses has rendered the habitat there unusable for this small mouse. There are nine subspecies of the Little Pocket Mouse, all of which are struggling to maintain a foothold in the ecosystem.

In my previous post, I shared images of the players in the Rat Theater, but I also had some nice avian encounters during this expedition. Mockingbirds, Mourning Doves and House Finches were numerous at the water hole in the front yard of the house the park services had provided us. We had Say’s Phoebes, Scott’s and Hooded Orioles making regular rounds. At a survey site not far away from where we stayed, were Ladder-Backed Woodpeckers, Ash-Throated Flycatchers, Black-Tailed Gnatcatchers, Verdin, Black-Throated Sparrows, and more orioles. In the early evening, Lesser Nighthawks dipped and darted through the desert surrounding the house.

My activities in the Rat Theater caused the loss of much of the best early morning light, sometimes the resulting bird images suffered. The oppressive heat we endured lasted well into the evenings, and I used it as an excuse to curtail some of the afternoon opportunities, though I got some satisfactory late afternoon images of the Loggerhead Shrike and the Ladder-Backed Woodpecker.