"It's like my very own nature show!"

A few weeks ago I traveled to the Campo Reservation in southern California to perform general wildlife surveys for an environmental document I'll be helping put together. The Reservation is on the California-Mexico border in east San Diego County. It was by far the closest I've been to Mexico, but alas, I still haven't officially been there. In the picture below, you can see a fence - that is the US-Mexico border (the site of one of my bird surveys).

Since it was May, we had really great weather. We had a Native American escort who knew a lot about the land and the wildlife, it was definitely helpful having him accompany us! The trip itself was a little surreal, the US Border Control came whizzing by often and there were many signs of past illegals trying to make their way into America. For example, we kept finding pieces of canvas cloth and rope everywhere - aparently they tie these to their feet instead of shoes, because it makes it harder to track their footprints. At one point, an old van came driving up to our parked car and started honking. Our escorts went running to the vehicles. We thought it was someone trying to meet up with them, but when they returned, they said it was one of two things - they were either doing a "pick up" where they park, honk, and people come running out of the bushes for their ride, or they were honking to see if anyone was nearby so that they could break into the cars (if no one came running). This isn't Kansas anymore. It wasn't a scary or dangerous situation at all, just surreal and definitely eye-opening.

Okay, back to my bio-nerd ways. ALERT: snake pictures below (but it was so pretty, you should look if you're not terrified of snakes!)

My new favorite flower (of the week): Pride of California (alptly named!), related to sweet peas:

Our new friend, a gopher snake. Even though they look eerily similar to a rattlesnake (but non-poisonous and without a rattle), they are so very opposite in disposition. Take this guy - it's 4 1/2 feet long and took my coworker picking him up and moving him to get him off the road. He was just too happy sitting there and soaking up the sun. We didn't bother him in the least. A rattlesnake would have been PISSED off.

Remember those woodrats I used to trap during my days at Cal Poly. Here's a similar species' nest at the base of an oak tree. You can see the entrance very clearly.

We saw this centipede the day before in Palmdale. They are awful if they bite you but they're so slow, you basically have to step on them to get bit. This one was out during the day, which is very rare.

The highlight of the trip was talking to our Native American escort - he said his favorite days at work are when he escorts biologists around the site, because he learns so much and as he put it, "it's like my very own nature show!" Now that was the ultimate compliment you could pay a biologist :)