Immature Coulter Pine cone, Idyllwild Park, CA. The largest of these when fully grown can weigh 8 pounds... 

Southern California: Joshua Tree +

27 January – 3 February 2026

     Common Raven - bird of the trip

My wife, Carol, wanted to visit a place where she had lived as a young teenager—that was 29 Palms, California. She was there, living at the Marine Corps Base, riding her horse out into the high desert back in 1969. So we organized a trip that would take us to 29 Palms, Joshua Tree National Park, Palm Springs, and the San Jacinto Mountains (Idyllwild). This would give us a diversity of outdoor walking experiences and some interesting plants and wildlife.

    29 Palms Marine Corps Base entrance. We did not get inside... 

Our first stop was 29 Palms, in the high desert of southern California. The town is, in essence, a strip that has developed along east-west route 62, with the Marine Corps base a bit to the north of the highway.

    Contact Mine Trail in Joshua Tree National Park. Great walking! 

We stayed in a nice motel in 29, and wandered mainly in Joshua Tree National Park, which is just south of the highway. We did not get very close to the Marine Corps base where Carol had lived because of security warnings that greeted us on our approach.

              Work of Noah Purifoy, featured in his museum in Joshua Tree town. 

29 Palms is a hardscrabble town with not much for the tourist. It is infested with barbershops and tattoo parlors because of the large population of young crewcut men at the Base. We loved dining at the restaurant named grnd sqrl (“Ground Squirrel”) a quirky eatery on main street with great home cooking.

    Another work of Noah Purifoy, Joshua Tree town.

The best art we saw was found at the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Museum in the back of Joshua Tree town—more than 100 pieces of assemblage art constructed by the African American artist from found materials, some on a colossal scale.

    Carol and a flowering Ocotillo in the Ocotillo Patch of Joshua Tree National Park                      

                        backlit Joshua Tree - wonder of the Park

The highlight of our first three days was hiking in the Park. The hikes we did over three days (all worth doing) were: Contact Mine Trail, Split Rock, Lost Horse Mine, Hidden Valley, the Maze, Ryan Ranch, and Barker Dam. Other features we appreciated included the rare hybrid Live Oak in the Live Oak picnic area, Skull Rock, the Cholla Cactus Garden, and Ocotillo Patch.

          Space robot in Joshua Tree National Park, working on his gold game....  (Joshua Tree grove in distance)

             Little Green Man on main street, Joshua Tree town

    Bog Rocks are what define Joshua Tree

The Park features several natural phenomena: giant granitic boulders in big stacks, stands of Joshua Trees, desiccated mountain ranges, cactus assemblages, and desert flower blooms. It also included  historic human developments: mines and ranches, now just rubble remnants of their former selves. The Contact Mine trail offered the best effusion of wildflowers. The Park had been drenched in rains not long before our arrival, and the environment was unusually green for a desert.

                        desert in bloom! This is apparentlly Wild Canterbury Bells Phacelia minor

Highlights were certainly the rock features, the “forests” of Joshua Trees, and the cacti and flowers. The walking was excellent. We put in tens of thousands of “steps.” The Park is absolutely a great place to walk.

      Silver Cholla cactus

Birding and mammal-watching was disappointing. Birds: mainly Common Ravens and White-crowned Sparrows, plus a few desert birds (e.g., Phainopepla, Black-throated Sparrow). We saw virtually no mammals in the Park, though Bruce did glimpse a Bobcat at the roadside one night in Joshua Tree town. The Park is thus best for walking and wildflower-watching.

    Carol. dwarfed by large boulder in Joshua Tree Park

We visited with friends one night in Joshua Tree town, which is artsy and better-off than 29, offering much more for the tourist. That night we dined in adjacent Yucca Valley at the Copper Room, founded in 1957 and visited over the years by Frank Sinatra (he presumably flew in by plane—the restaurant is right at the airport). Nice ambience!

                       small Calfornia Barrel Cactus

Our second stop was Palm Springs. We stayed in a cute motel at the base of Tahquitz Canyon with  the massive face of Tahquitz Mountain rising precipitously from the desert floor. From our motel we could walk to the Tahquitz Canyon trail, in a reserve managed by the Agua Caliente Band of the Cahuilla Indian Tribe. The hike up into the Canyon is superb. Features: California Fan Palms, cliff-loving birds, and a beautiful tumbling mountain brook. Best birds: White-throated Swifts in flocks, Verdins, and soaring Red-tailed Hawks.  

    flowering Joshua Tree

We also hiked two trails in the Palm Springs Indian Canyons: Andreas Canyon Loop and the Palm Canyon Trail. These both feature thick stands of giant California Fan Palms and clear-flowing canyon streams. Great hiking! Fairly birdy as well (Costa’s Hummingbird, Rock Wren, Lesser Goldfinch). This reserve is also owned by the Agua Caliente Band. Both of their reserves are well-managed, well-trailed, and worthy of repeated visits.

    Carol with large California Barrel Cactus

Our dining in Palm Springs included two winners: breakfast at “Bit of Country” and dinner at “Tony’s Grill and Bar.”

                        towering California Fan Palms (Washingtonia filifera) in the Artesia Canyon of Palm Springs

    The giant fan palms of the Indian Canyons of Palm Springs

Our third stop was Idyllwild, high in the San Jacinto Mountains, about an hour’s drive up a winding and cliffside road that gave Carol the willies. Idyllwild is in the mountains just south of Palm Springs, in a valley nestled below high peaks that top 10,000 feet. This funny little tourist town is filled with towering Ponderosa Pines and other conifers. There are an array of lovely tourist lodges and parks that offer great walking and birding.

                         Carol and giant Ponderosa Pine in Humber Park, Idyllwild, CA

                        looking up at the Tahquitz Rock, famous for its rock climbing routes

Upon our arrival, we picnicked at Humber Park, famous for its access to Tahquitz Rock, where serious rock-climbing was born in the United States in the late 1930s (prior to Yosemite).  Humber Park hosts giant Ponderosa Pines, hemlocks, firs, and Incense Cedars (looking like Redwoods), and birds such as White-headed Woodpecker, Pygmy Nuthatch, and White-breasted Nuthatch (western Interior population with the distinctive voice).

    Mountain Chickadee

           female White-headed Woodpecker

    Steller's Jay

Here the Ernie Maxwell Scenic Trail follows a contour that crosses the Sweetwater Creek. Nice walking! Lots of Acorn Woodpeckers and Mountain Chickadees. A roadside Coyote was nice to see at close range from our passing car.

    Pygmy Nuthatch

The other good walk was the Perimeter Trail of Idyllwild Park. Here we found many fertile Coulter Pines, with their giant and peculiar cones (producing the heaviest pine cone on Earth). Here we also found Red-shafted Flickers and Western Bluebirds.

    look at this pine cone! Coulter Pine! 

From Idyllwild we drove the “back way” to LA, stopping for a picnic at Lake Elsinore (Western Grebes in numbers) and getting a glimpse of the Mission San Juan Capistrano (too early for the spring-arriving Cliff Swallows).

    view into the Mission at San Juan Capistrano

Our last night was spent at Hermosa Beach, just south of LAX airport. The vast beach is reputed to be the birthplace of beach volleyball. The highlight of our trip’s dining was “AttaGirl” just off the Strand. On the morning of our departure many volleyball games were being played in on the beach  (some players sporting US Volleyball Team outfits). The broad beach hosted flocks of gulls (best: Heerman’s and Western) and terns (Royals, not Elegants). The offshore avifauna include Brown Pelicans, Pacific Loons, and Eared Grebes.

             view of Hermosa Beach from the pier

    adult Heerman's Gull

    foraging Marble Godwit, Hermosa Beach

TAKE HOME POINT: The desert lands of southern California are worth a visit in season!

    male Phainopepla--songbird of the desert

 

Cape May, New Jersey, 8-11 October 2025

 

    Cooper's Hawk trying to resemble a Sharpie (e.g., the short neck). Photo at top is of an Osprey overhead. 

I first visited Cape May, New Jersey to watch birds in late May 1970 with high school classmate Bill Johnson. The highlight of our field trip was birding the Cape May Point State Park with its bunker pond, where we saw several Least Bitterns (life birds for both of us). Last week, 55 years after that first visit, I was back at the Bunker Pond, which now features a nationally famous elevated hawk watch platform.

    female Northern Harrier high overhead with the owl-like face

The hawk watch now serves as the epicenter of birding activity at Cape May in autumn. On Wednesday afternoon I walked up the ramp to the platform and bumped into Cape May-based naturalist Mark Garland, who welcomed me and informed me of an exciting advance in his work tracking the migration of Monarch butterflies (I report on this important advance later in this blog). Soon after my chat with Garland, David Wilcove arrived from Princeton, and our fourth decade of autumn birding here at Cape May began.

    adult Bald Eagle overhead

The hawk watch was busy Wednesday afternoon with a good movement of accipiters, ospreys, and falcons. Coops, Sharpies, Merlins, and kestrels were particularly common. The word on the street was that the coming overnight hours would see long-awaited northerly winds and a cold front to produce great birding for songbirds and raptors on Thursday morning.

    Mute Swan

Wilcove and I walked the loop trail of the state park, encountering lots of accipiters, Merlins, and a single Peregrine.

That evening, Wilcove and I dined al fresco at the Blue Pig tavern situated at the handsomely ancient and oversized Congress Hall right on downtown Surf Avenue. Blue Pig is always a good bet, and we were not disappointed this night. Nice to be dining in comfort outside in October!

I retired to campsite 118, tucked into the woods of the Depot Travel Park, a well-managed campground in West Cape May (a little enclave of Trump’s rural America in liberal Cape May). I was excited to see that the men’s shower room gleamed from a total remake. The nice thing about the Depot is that, sited on Broadway, it is close to all the prime birding locations. Wilcove was bedding down at the West Cape Motel on Sunset—even closer to birder’s ground zero. The soft hoots of a Great Horned Owl greeted me that night, but no yips of the Coyote…

Saturday broke cool and breezy. After an obligatory run to Wawa for coffee and a breakfast sandwich, I set up scope and camera gear on the Coral Avenue dune platform of West Cape May. A crowd of eager and expert birders was already milling about, calling out the names of the birds racing by, some low through the pines and others high overhead. Lots of flickers, accipiters, kestrels, blackbirds, plus surprises—12 ravens (10 in a single group), a flock of dozens of White Ibis, tons of scoters low out over the water, and Myrtle and Palm Warblers.  Also Rusty Blackbirds, pipits, sapsuckers, the odd shorebird, plus Ospreys, Bald Eagles, and Great Blue Herons lumbering overhead, mainly headed across Delaware Bay to Delaware.

A late and hearty breakfast at George’s Diner downtown served as our lunch, which was followed by a nap. We then headed to the Science Center in West Cape May for a demonstration of the new butterfly tracking technology from Project Monarch and the Project Monarch app.

    Naturalist Mark Garland tagging a Monarch with a super-light transmitter

In the interior courtyard of the grand old edifice (formerly a convent), Mark Garland and a small group were netting Monarchs and outfitting them with tiny solar-powered transmitters. Each apparatus, a mere 0.06 grams weight, includes a miniscule transmitter, a short antenna, and a narrow solar panel (see photo just below). This device is glued to the back of the butterfly’s thorax using eyelash glue.

    Here is the solar tag for the butterfly

The transmitter sends geo-location signals to the Project Monarch app, allowing the app to track these winged waifs as they make their way to their Mexican wintering ground. 

                                  A Monarch with the tag attached to the dorsal surface of its thorax

The Monarch we saw tagged by Mark made its way across Delaware Bay to Lewes, Delaware that very afternoon. One of the Monarchs that Mark set up this day traveled from Cape May to Virginia Beach in a couple of days. Below is a sample map of a tagged Monarch’s movements. This little insect flew from Cape May to Louisiana, following a nearly straight path. How do they manage that??

This new technology will revolutionize the tracking of Monarchs, other migrating arthropods, and small songbirds as well. This will, no doubt, end the practice of banding birds with aluminum rings and tagging Monarchs with paper tags—which typically produce minimal results regarding the movements of the tagged creatures (because these individuals are very rarely re-trapped after being marked).  

    getting ready to take wing! 

We can shortly expect to see precise movement data on all kinds of migratory animals that will greatly improve our understanding of the movement biology of these species. Booyah!

    Off to Mexico! 

Post demonstration, Wilcove and I moved on to the state park and visited the hawkwatch platform, then walked the dune trail and circled back through the woods on the main walking track. The back of the dunes produced large flocks of sparrows and Myrtle Warblers. The sparrows, mainly White-throats but also Songs, White-crowneds, and juncos, were arrivals from overnight’s cold front.

    juvenile White-crowned Sparrow

The park woods produced the prize of the day (with expert assistance). We came upon a young local naturalist on the boardwalk who quietly informed us that he had just watched a Connecticut Warbler foraging in the understory brush of this woodland patch. This is a bird I had been trying to locate in my autumn visits to Cape May for 3 decades without success. We worked the area and were able to get a couple of half-decent looks at this elusive songbird, which is not rare here in autumn—just super-tough to locate or observe because of its retiring habits.

    Connecticut Warbler (BB image from Ontario)

It is, no doubt, the highest-priority songbird to pass annually through the Cape May environs.  Most are seen in flight from the morning-flight platform at Higbee Beach by a sharp-eyed naturalist with identification skills that exceed our own. Watching a Connecticut Warbler fly by overhead from the morning watch platform is about as satisfying as taking a cold shower while fully clothed.

We ended the afternoon at the TNC South Cape May Meadows, which is always a nice place to walk at the very end of the day. Ducks, geese, herons, shorebirds, and songbirds all are there, and the vistas of the lighthouse are pleasing to the eye. We saw no remarkable species but the walk was relaxing and pleasant.

    View of lighthouse from the South Cape May Meadows

Dinner at tiny Louisa’s restaurant downtown provided a perfect ending to a good day of birding. Flounder (Wilcove) and scallops (BB) were prepared to perfection. We were able to get a reservation because it was a Thursday. Louisa’s and Freda’s are the two tiny eating places in greatest demand in downtown Cape May. Both are worthy.

Friday broke gloomy. East winds (bad). Wilcove and I tried the hedgerows of Higbee Beach, joining a large crowd of expectant birders. Apparently, the birds did not get the memo. A few accipiters and a few warblers, but a solid disappointment. Coral Avenue was crowded with birders  but not crowded with birds. We instead spent most of our time chatting with old friends, folks like Amy Donovan and Tom O’Toole, devotees of autumn birding in Cape May.

    The Platform at Coral Avenue stocked with eager birders

The state park offered a change of venue, and shortly after arrival we got word that there was a Say’s Phoebe out on the war-time concrete bunker (Fort Miles Battery 223) just southeast of the Hawkwatch platform on the big broad beach. We headed out there and joined the crowd admiring this western vagrant flycatcher that has rarely been recorded from New Jersey. It is a species that Sibley does not even mention in his birding guide to Cape May.

    Say's Phoebe on the concrete of the WWII Bunker

On Friday PM Wilcove retreated to Princeton and I hunkered down at the Depot Travel Park. Word came down that a strong Nor’easter was headed our way, expected to hit on Sunday AM. I decided to shorten my stay by a day to avoid awakening to a flooded campsite on Sunday. Friday night I dined at Chen’s Garden, which is a carry-out. Luckily there was a tiny table where I could sit and eat. I did not want to carry my hot food back to the dark of my campsite. Chen’s is very basic, but the food was fine, especially if one has a hankering for Chinese, which I did.

    adult winter plumage Lesser Black-backed Gull

Saturday early, in light rain, I broke camp and headed to Stone Harbor Point, a half-hour’s drive north of Cape May. The rain shower having passed, I walked the beach down to the point and back (about 2.5 miles), savoring the solitude and the autumnal weather (strong easterly winds, waves, cloud, passing Scottish mist). I encountered only two other solitary walkers. But plenty of birds.

    adult winter Great Black-backed Gull

A single Peregrine patrolled the Point.

    Juvenile Peregrine on beach (photo from 2023)

Lots of shorebirds worked the shallows.

    Sanderlings, Dunlin, Black-bellied Plovers, and dowitchers.

Oystercatchers roosted in the protection of the back inlet along with cormorants and a scattering of Marbled Godwits.

    Oystercatcher flock and at least one Marbled Godwit and several cormorants (and Caspian Tern in flight)

Gulls dominated the shoreline—Great Black-backed, Lesser Black-backed, Herring, and Ring-billed.

    Herring Gull adult atop dune (Stone Harbor Point)

A large flock of waterbird passed by in the distance (cormorants? geese?).

 A tight flock of a thousand or so Tree Swallows swirled about, doing their autumn thing.

    Tree Swallow swarm

Back near the entry trail to the beach, I came upon a small assemblage of resting shorebirds up on a dry section of beach—7 Semipalmated Plovers, several Dunlin, and a single color-banded Piping Plover.

    color-banded Piping Plover

Monarchs settled on the Goldenrod that lined the path back to my car. It was time to drive home. The trip produced 104 species of birds, not bad for mid-October!