Today Kay and I headed east for what we planned to be an overnight 2-day trip to the Joshua Tree area and other places nearby.  Turned out that it’s a very popular weekend everywhere near Palm Springs, rooms were hard to come by and high priced, and we decided to just drive home tonight.

We started at 8 AM at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve where we met Brad Waggoner who is vacationing in Palm Springs for March.  It was nice for Kay to meet him, and we had a very nice 2 hours birding the preserve.  Birding highlights were few specific species, but I did add one new CA life-list bird, Brown creeper.  Also had RBNU and a variety of the expected birds. A very tame WESJ followed us for a while.

After Brad left about 10 AM Kay and I walked over to Covington Park, an adjacent property where we saw Vermilion flycatcher

and Lawrence’s goldfinch before we walked back into Big Morongo.  We then walked back into the deeper parts of the preserve where we saw a Black-throated sparrow, lots of WCSP, BEWR, and HOFI everywhere, and on reentering the area near the parking lot found another LAGO.  It seems we can’t not find them now that Kay has it on her life list.

We spent the afternoon at the Joshua Tree -Black Rock Canyon Campground

with the goal of locating Pinyon Jay.  After discussion with the ranger it seems they often forage thru the park in the AM and later afternoon.  We had lunch, birded the campground, took a drive on back roads nearby, and came back about 4 PM to wait for the flock to arrive.  It didn’t show. I did have fun showing a little girl and her parents how to use brand new hot-pink binoculars she had just bought from the campground store and helping her ID a few birds while I waited for the no-show Jays.

We headed home after Priceline, Kayak, Google and Hotel Tonight apps failed to find a reasonably priced room that had reviews that suggested we might not want rubber suits.  Good Mexican food at a roadside strip area and now home.  Too tired to get the camera from the car, will add photos in the AM.