Common Gray Fox

I was standing on the front porch a few days ago looking at song birds at my bird feeder out in the forest...I saw what I thought was a coyote coming up through the forest...It disappeared several times and I thought it had seen or smelled me and went back the way it came, but it suddenly popped out going toward the pond....I was pretty excited when I realized it was a gray fox! I had never seen one this close before...

He did figure out I was taking pictures of him and off he ran.....dang!

What a lovely tail he had...look at that black stripe going down to the tip of it!

Lower Table Rock-Sunday June 27 2010

The State of Oregon Bird - The Western Meadow Lark, greeting Mickey and I as we were about to start up the trail head at Lower Table Rock near Medford, Oregon.

The first sign that you see as you are walking up the trail....it makes you really think about being glad for having ankle high boots and jeans on...however more than that it made me really think about watching where I was walking!



This is a Lark Sparrow!!! I had never seen one before and this one allowed me to sneak closer and closer to finally get some really great close-up shots of him. There were several sightings of these birds throughout the day. They were low flying across the tops of the meadows and seemed to do a lot of walking within the meadows eating small seeds off the grasses.





On the top of Lower Table rock earlier in the spring there are what is called "Vernal Pools" If you want to read more about vernal pools here is a really awesome BLM pdf file url! enjoy!
http://www.blm.gov/or/resources/recreation/tablerock/files/vernal_intro.pdf

There was a small area with a tiny bit of water that the song birds came to drink from. Mickey pointed out a pacific tree frog to me as well...they are so tiny!!!
This green area below in my picture is where the vernal pools were located in during the winter and early spring seasons. The mountain in the background is Mount McLoughlin...usually by now there isn't that much snow at the top of it, but our winter hung on through spring this year.




There were many butterflies on our hike - unfortunately I filled up both of my memory cards so I didn't get to take all the pictures I wanted to of them. This is called Mylitta Crescent and I think it is a female....


This flower is from the Orchid family and is called Hooded Ladies Tresses or Spiranthes Romanzoffiana (what a mouthful!)

Here is Mickey hiking out toward the far end of Lower Table Rock. We didn't go all the way to the end because we got side tracked with the small flowers and insects around the vernal pool areas and then several families with children had arrived. It made me think back on when my boys were small and at 3 and 4 years old they did this hike with no problem. Kids have so much energy and for me this was a much harder climb than it was 15 years ago!!!! hah!

This little flower is Downingia Yina also known as Cascade Calico Flower...it was in many areas around the vernal pools.

We had a wonderful day hiking and hanging out - as usual! We made the drive to the town of Ashland and were one of the first people into Morning Glory restaurant for breakfast. We sat down and our waitperson brought us HOT coffee....mmmmm....I forgot my glasses so had to go out to the truck and get them....they have a new menu and as always there were too many choices - all of them sounding way yummy! As you can see by the picture below I ordered an Omelet...it was filed with this sour cream or probably creme fraiche, spinach, mushrooms, onions....and can you see the chopped up bacon on the top? and killer hashed brown potatoes that tasted like they'd been bathed in butter (no lie!). I also had a muffin that was perfect by itself although they always have jam that tastes home made at the table! Mickey had Coconut Macadamia nut waffle with lemon butter....we had some serious calories that morning!


After breakfast we drove up to Mount Ashland, it was a beautiful morning and along the road up to the ski area we encountered several folks armed with yellow bags picking up trash!!!! Keep OREGON green!!!!! I'm not sure if it was just local folks that lived on that road or what? Later on as we were parked and walking past a locked gate there was soooo much trash in the roads...lots of beer bottles and just garbage that people had obviously left after late night parties...soooo gross....

Below is a tree that I thought was quite beautiful. It must have been girded in some way in it's youth, but continued to grow and became large and lovely!

Here is a picture I took of Mickey -the thick fog was just blowing in for a bit....it was sort of unworldly and ethereal at times...not unlike a white-out!

In this picture below you can see the fog blowing through and the blue sky starting to appear!

We had an awesome day! I added two new lifebirds to my list of birds....and we are continuing our summer hikes by doing one of the Table Rocks tomorrow morning...it should be a perfect day!

Getting ready to do a hike this weekend with Mickey....I can't wait! We always have so much fun! We're going up to Mount Ashland...I hope most of the snow is gone....last year there were all sorts of butterflies and bugs...I'm hoping for more of the same! Breakfast beforehand as well at Morning Glories....ahhhhh....waiting for that first cup of coffee....