Easter At Morongo Basin

I just returned from a birding trip to Morongo Basin and had a beautiful time outside. The wildlife sanctuary has a fantastic boardwalk that covers many trails throughout the valley and makes for a great hike. Boardwalks always seem artificial, and can sometimes keep you removed from the actual wildlife of the park, but this one is done so carefully that you don't realize that you're on a civilized path. You really do get the feeling that you're hiking through the desert.
Birds? Well, that's another story. It was blowing around like crazy today, so any birds that are in the area are nestled in reeds and nooks in the rock walls lining the canyon. So if I put together a bird list for this trip, it would be amazingly brief. I heard plenty of feathered fellows out there, but only saw one hummingbird and one hawk.
I identified the humming bird with pretty good certainty (black throated), but the hawk was gone before I could get a good bead on him with the binoculars. He wasn't riding a thermal, he was heading out to somewhere else. So he whipped by pretty quickly. I don't think it was a Merlin, but am not sure what he was exactly.

There are tree frogs in the area, and again I could hear them but didn't see them at all. I'm going to have to look for them next time.

There was a huge fire that raced through the canyon about 4 or 5 years ago, and there are still lots of signs from it wherever you look. Lots of black twigs and husks poke through the valley bottom and there's a slight smell of smoke that is evident around some bends. But the trees are making a comeback and the grounds are very lush. So although the fire was horrible it didn't decimate the reserve and the birds and critters are coming back.