Snow Canyon State Park

Today we visited Utah’s Snow Canyon State Park, which features both petrified sand dunes and lava flows, and the views were spectacular.

As soon as we arrived, I spotted a sextet of Gambel’s quail, and here’s the hen that was too slow to avoid my camera.

The canyon wrens from Zion were replaced by rock wrens, and here’s the boldest one.

We spotted another cliff chipmunk.

There was a flock of white-crowned sparrows, just like the ones we see in Estabrook once in a while, and this individual was still too busy with its morning grooming to flee my camera.

The Woodhouse’s scrub jays were as present as ever, and here’s one more.

We finally spotted our first raptor of the trip, and it was this red-tailed hawk.

Lastly, there are already flowers in bloom, and this one is common stork’s-bill, aka redstem filaree, redstem stork’s bill, or pinweed (Erodium cicutarium), which I read “is native to Macaronesia, temperate Eurasia and north and northeast Africa, and was introduced to North America in the eighteenth century, where it has since become naturalized, particularly of the deserts and arid grasslands of the southwestern United States.”