Anza Borrego Desert State Park, CA

Late post today, as I took the red-eye from San Diego last night, and got home only an hour ago. I spent the day yesterday in and around Anza Borrego Desert State Park in California. My friend Bruce Aird and I stopped at the Visitor Center to get directions to the best wildflower displays and learned a bit of interesting natural history. When the rains fall at the right time, as they did this year, the desert fairly leaps into bloom. After only a few days, caterpillars appear, many different kinds, both butterfly and moth, and within a few days more the flowers are completely gone (eaten by the caterpillars). When the caterpillars come out, hundreds of Swainson’s Hawks arrive over Anza Borrego to gorge themselves on the caterpillars! We found large blooms of wildflowers, but locals say the earliest blooms are already gone. We did see lots of caterpillers among the plants, busy. And we saw 3 different kettles of Swainson’s Hawks…maybe 50 hawks in total, in just a few moments of looking. And the cycle goes on!

Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.