On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
We have a great mix of posts this first full week of the new year!
Albatrossity
After wandering around the high Sierra near Bishop and Aspendell, I headed south to Big Pine and then east across the basin and range country of eastern CA and western NV. I would end up in Ely NV, which was the nearest option with a hotel close enough to get to my next day’s destination, Great Basin National Park. Next morning I was up with the sunrise and heading to the park visitor’s center, just outside the tiny village of Baker NV and only 8 miles from the UT/NV border.
The drive was glorious, with many vistas like this, highlighting the reason that this is dubbed basin and range. And if you have not had the pleasure of reading John McPhee’s masterful book by the same name, put it on your 2025 reading list. Click here for larger image.
This national park is hard to get to, but definitely worth it, particularly in the fall season. It encompasses a range of mountains (ominously named the Snake Mountains) which have caves, high peaks, scenic vistas, and lots of hiking trails. At the time of my visit the Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) was blooming, and that made for some nice backgrounds for bird and insect photography. Here is a Hoary Comma (Polygona gracilis) nectaring on a Rabbitbrush shrub. Click here for larger image.
Another insect taking advantage of the Rabbitbrush flowers was this bee-fly, which has not been identified down to the species level at the time of this writing. It is one of many members of the fly subfamily Anthracinae, and may remain mysterious forever. Click here for larger image.
One of many White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) in the park. Interestingly (well, if you are a sparrow nerd like me) this one does not seem to be the common breeding species for this part of Nevada, since it has pale lores (the region between the eye and the bill) rather than dark lores. Click here for larger image.
Other high-altitude birds included an abundance of these cuties, Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis). Curious and noisy, they were seemingly everywhere in the pine groves. Click here for larger image.
Accompanying the nuthatches were flocks of Mountain Chickadees (Poecile gambeli), which were featured here last Monday. Here’s a closeup of one of these boldly-marked bandits. Click here for larger image.
One of the birds I really wanted to photograph here was Pinyon Jay, which feeds almost exclusively on pine seeds, especially those of the Pinyon Pine (Pinus edulis). Packing over 3000 calories per pound, pine nuts can keep a bird well-fed all year round. The helpful ranger in the visitor center gave me some tips on spots where I might find those birds, and I headed up to visit some of those. Click here for larger image.
I spotted some jays on the way up into the park, but they were too distant for a picture. At the first suggested spot where I stopped, however, I heard and saw a couple of very cooperative Pinyon Jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). Here’s a portrait of this subtle beauty. Click here for larger image.
And here’s a candidate for next year’s Bird Butt calendar (the 2025 version is still available through the end of the month)! Click here for larger image.
The Pinyon Jays were not the only corvids taking advantage of the abundant pine nuts. This Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma woodhouseii) has two in its beak, and likely several more in its crop. Click here for larger image.
Spellboda
Basin & Range is a great book! Note that it is included in McPhee’s Annals of the Former World, which also includes In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, Assembling California, and Crossing the Craton.
SteveinPHX
@Spellboda: I had read “Basin & Range” many years ago as a young man living on the east coast. I will look for that collection of his. Thanks.
Thank you Albatrossity for the great photos as usual.
Winter Wren
Love the pinyon jays in particular!
WendyBinFL
What a delightful assortment, Albatrossity! Thank you!
A Hoary Comma! A sparrow that looks like a chickadee, and an actual chickadee, and a nuthatch with a bandit mask in between!
And… oh my word, I have fallen in love with pinyon jays.
MCat
Great photos. I love birds and always enjoy your descriptions. Thanks so much!
Another Scott
Yesterday I got the birdy calendars I ordered. They look great. Thanks for putting them together, and for showing us your great work and telling evocative stories here every Monday. It’s appreciated.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Chris T.
I’ve been to Great Basin National Park several times. Never made it to the top of Mt Wheeler though; the one time I might have, a storm came in and everyone hightailed it off the mountain. (I ate my lunch under a shelter at the parking lot at 10k ft, while rain pounded down.)
Trivia Of The Day: Ely NV is pronounced “eel-ee” rather than like the name Eli(as).
Interstadial
The Great Basin is a wonderful and amazing region if you love large landscapes, wide-open spaces, and lots of elbow room. Get off the interstate Albatrossity did, and get up close to and into the mountain ranges and there’s a lot to see.
I’ve only been to Great Basin National Park once but it was really enjoyable. I need to get back there sometime when the higher mountains are not snowed in like they were last time.
I really enjoyed the birds! The only one I knew about beforehand was the pinyon jay and it was great to get a clear look at it.
Pinyon jays and other birds have played an essential role in allowing conifers to spread across the Great Basin since the end of the last glacial period ~10,000 years ago. They plant large number of seeds for later retrieval, and sometimes will carry a number of seeds to a different location, even to a new mountain range. During that glacial period, the region only had small glaciers in some of the mountain ranges but the climate was too cold for nearly all of the conifers that now live there. They had to move in after the climate warmed (our current interstadial period!) by hopping from one range to the next, something they could not do without the help of birds.
cope
Wonderful, evocative pictures, thank you.
I did a lot of well site geology work in Railroad Valley south of Ely in the ’80s. It is a truly fascinating chunk of the country. I was driving back to the rig from Ely when I heard about the Challenger explosion on the radio and it was out on one of the flat desert pavement areas that I found a meteorite. Also, a wonderful place to watch meteor showers.
Thanks for exciting those memories in my ossifying brain.
Xavier
The basin and range country just has an unmatched purity about it. There’s something about those hundred-mile views that rests the soul.
Also, Chris T., More trivia: Ely is the only airport in the US where the airport designation is the same as the name of the city…
Gloria DryGarden
When I’ve been to needles district in canyonlands NP, I thought that too was part of the Great Basin region. I know nothing about the California Nevada parts. Wonderful photos
Interstadial
Canyonlands and the surrounding region is part of the Colorado Plateau, a separate region of the intermountain west (the region between the Rockies and the Pacific Crest). Unlike the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau drains to the ocean via the Colorado River.
Ex-lurker
I grew up on the northern edge of the Great Basin and still love to get back there, especially in the spring. I used to see Pinyon Jays occasionally around my parents’ place. They’d appear, hang around for a few days, then be gone, sometimes for years at a time. Since my family home was at least 100 miles from any concentration of pinyon pines, and there weren’t many other pines around, I’m pretty sure they were feeding on juniper berries. I don’t remember clearly, but I’m guessing they were showing up in juniper mast years.
Albatrossity
@Interstadial: “Get off the Interstate” is excellent advice. I purposely headed to Big Pine to catch the most scenic route across that part of CA and NV; it was sorta not the most direct route, but it sure was rewarding!
TKH
Basin and Range! Some fantastic hiking there, hard but so worth it! Thanks for the great pictures of the local critters. That’s where iPhone-photography really falls down.
Netto
In certain seasons, Ely is also known for another large bird species. Here’s one over Wheeler Peak.