Anza-Borrego Spring Wildflowers and Desertscapes

Hi There,

It's been a few days since you heard from me, but I have been busy developing more photos from my visit at the end of March to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County. I have placed them all in a separate photo gallery now devoted to this one field trip. And there are not just spring wildflowers anymore; there's a grasshopper too and a shot of the long shadows of the setting sun on the hillside to the west of Plum Canyon where I spent most of the day.

Follow this link to see a slideshow of the flowers and desert landscapes of Anza-Borrego. Note that if you press the F11 key on your keyboard which hides your browser toolbars, the sideshow will also automatically resize the images to even larger photos.

If you are "bandwidth-challenged" you might prefer this static gallery of photos from Anza-Borrego.

Emory Rock Daisy

Going out on a limb here today and making a bold claim that this is an Emory's Rock Daisy [Perityle emoryi] (See Emory Rock Daisy at Calflor.org).

The impression I have gotten several times when looking at these photos of tiny flowers against a background of small rocks is that I'm looking into an aqarium. The only thing missing is the water and some fish.

If you look carefully at these photos you will notice that once you get past the sunny yellow face in the center of the white petals you will notice how many other plants there are around the daisys. I cropped this photo in two different ways. In the first there are some tiny pink flowers to the lower left, and in the second one, there is some grass sticking up in the upper right corner. Unless you pay attention in the desert you miss a lot of stuff like this since it is all on a very small scale.

See the full-sized versions of these photos of Emory's Rock Daisy in the Desert Flower Photo Gallery.

Song Sparrow in Spring Wildflowers

Photo of Song Sparrow in Spring Wildflowers

I love taking pictures of birds. This little guy, a song sparrow, was singing away very merrily when I was walking along the boardwalk at Moonstone Beach in Cambria, California last spring. I love how all the background yellows and pinks came out so well in this picture too.

(Note: I published a second photo of this song sparrow in a post dated June 26, 2008 - Song Sparrow in Spring Wildflowers -2)

This and other photos I have taken of birds can be found in the bird photo galleries. There's one for broadband visitors, and one for dialup visitors. Here are the links to each:

Bird Photo Gallery - Broadband Flash Gallery

Bird Photo Gallery - Dial Up Optimized