NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Vic and I have made a number of birding and flower-finding forays into the desert recently. From Joshua Tree National Park south to Anza Borrego State Park, this has been a great spring for desert wildflowers. Our latest desert trip was tent camping with 18 others from the Orange County chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology at Butterfield Ranch Resort in the Anza Borrego area.

I’ve come to a stage in my life where sadly I spend more time in camping stores than actually camping. The REI store in Bella Terra happily helps feed my addiction to purchasing camping equipment. Because we were going to be with a group of conservation biologists, I wanted to make this camping trip as eco-friendly as possible. To that end, I bought some reusable Lexan wine glasses. The bases unscrew and store conveniently in the bowl of the wine glass. No more disposable plastic cups for us.

I have been dissatisfied with the comfort level provided by our sleeping pads, which date back to the Pleistocene. I was pretty sure that better options were available here in the 21st century. We had tried an inflatable double bed camping mattress, but it was a nuisance to inflate. The time-consuming, noisy process used an electric pump that ran off the car battery. And when one of us rolled over, it woke the other with the water bed-like movement.

The nice sales people at REI had just the ticket, auto-inflating Thermarest sleeping pads. I bought two of the thickest ones they had. I was skeptical about this concept of self-inflation, but they really did blow themselves up. They provided great thermal insulation from the ground and were amazingly comfortable.

We stuffed our Highlander with a tent, sleeping bags, the new pads, folding camp chairs, collapsible camp stools, flashlights, camera equipment, both celestial and birding telescopes, and pertinent guide books that ranged from flowers to geology to desert legends of lost gold. Plus, I have everything except a kitchen sink and a microwave in my camping cook kit. It was definitely overkill for a one-night trip.

What a contrast we made to a carload of our fellow campers. Five 20-somethings unfolded themselves out of a small Honda CR-V, which also contained all of their camping gear. Vic and I used to be able to carry everything we needed for a week of camping on our backs, but those days are long gone. Now that we’re “of a certain age,” we want our creature comforts.

Coyotes serenaded us as we ate dinner by the campfire, and a barn owl screeched in the tamarisk trees above. After dinner, we set up two celestial telescopes and looked at the rings around Saturn and its largest moon, Titan. We gaped at the ghostly clouds of celestial dust and gas that make up the Orion Nebula. This huge formation is 24 light years across, and is the closest region of new star formation to earth.

The next morning, Vic led an early morning bird walk. Jessica and Riley Pratt, the trip organizers, made delicious vegetarian breakfast burritos for everyone. After striking camp, the group headed north to the Anza Borrego Visitor Center for a hike up Palm Canyon.

However, Vic and I went south, planning on visiting our family in San Diego. We paused at the Vallecito Stage Stop to photograph cactus blooms and wildflowers. We also stopped along the road whenever a particularly photogenic ocotillo or indigo bush coincided with a good pullover spot. The ocotillos are spectacular this year, with their blooms forming a suffusion of saffron that seems to float above the desert floor.

Vic and I hiked up Mountain Palm Springs, where we saw painted lady butterflies and a new butterfly species for us, the Nicippe Sulfur or Sleeping Orange. This small orange butterfly lives mainly in the Colorado Desert of California and Mexico, but visits Orange County occasionally. The butterflies were clustered around a fresh water seep at the palm oasis.

On our way back to the car, an anthill caught my eye. I had watched black harvester ants at a similar hill in camp that morning as they labored to move storkbill seeds in a circle around the opening to their underground colony. Storkbill or red filaree plants are members of the geranium family, and common in disturbed and waste areas in Huntington Beach. The ferocious overnight winds in camp had scattered the seeds randomly. The ants seemed to want a clear area around the opening, with a thick ring of seeds about 8 inches from the hole.

The ants at the Mountain Palm Springs hill apparently had completed their cleanup chores and were nowhere to be seen. I speculated that they had gone underground to escape the heat of the day. I thought that they might like some water, so I poured a bit on the burrow opening. Large black ants came pouring out.

Then the most amazing thing happened. The periphery of the seed ring began to move, but there were no ants there.

The corkscrew-shaped storkbill seeds had responded instantly to the presence of water by swelling.

This swelling resulted in a corkscrew action so that the seeds twisted themselves into the ground. Like our self-inflating mattress pads, these seeds moved on their own. We had heard of this phenomenon, but had never witnessed it.

There will probably be a few more weeks of desert bloom before the scorching heat of summer sends the plants into dormancy once again. Go see the show while it lasts.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].