Christmas Day in the Desert 2008.....................

I hope the term "better late than never' is acceptable for this blog post.

On Christmas Day I went out to the desert with hubby and son. We were amazed at the wildlife and tracks we came across that day.

A hawk

A hawk in flight with it's breakfast (look close at it's tallons)

Pack of wild dogs

Coyote fleeing across field

Same coyote fleeing into miloGoose, very rare sight

(sigh...... I must share a funny tale with you. Imagine a middle aged, non slender woman trying to creep up cautiously and get a shot of this beautiful goose without scaring it away. Heavy camera around my neck, focus is the least of my worries. I just don't want to scare it way. But there is no way on earth I am crawling up that embankment. My hands will not touch dirt unless I have a sink with nice warm water, soap and a bottle of hand lotion at my disposal. So we must all settle for this very blurry picture of the beautiful goose.)CranePossibly baby hawkHawk in flightDucks in canalWhen we got to the riverbed we spotted a lot of tracks..........

DeerCoyote

Another Coyote track......

(my son was walking a little ways from us and says that he saw a mama coyote and her two pups run off, not sure if that is a fish story or not)

And the thrill of the day................ either a very large bobcat or possibly a mountain lion. I wish I had placed a dollar bill next to this print to show the size.

And a tale about another type of Coyote and not the animal type.

Coyotes are people who transport illegal aliens up from the border. If you will notice on the next picture there is a lot of heavy trees and brush towards the right hand side. This is the route we took as we were walking away from the river.

We came across this man made bench. Hubby says possibly a lookout point for coyotes.
And sure enough just a while later a police officer stopped by and talked to us and told us to be very careful in this area. He said it is a known location for coyotes to stop with immigrants and wait for their pickup vehicles. He told us that the week before they had picked up over 20 illegals in this area but the coyotes escaped. He also mentioned that the coyotes were heavily armed... yikes!


And now for a few random scenery shots...................

Some shots deserve black and white

My very favorite scenic shot of the day which I will probably have printed and put on my wall.