One of the most famous rock formations in the park is Mule Ears.
Or as we like to call it, Nellie Ears!!!
Big Bend it very well known for the amount of birds in the park. The river provides the perfect place for a stop on annual migration, and as a year around home to many varieties. We are not birders, but must admit that you could hear them everywhere. Especially in the canyons the canyon wren calls were almost haunting. Did get this picture of a road runner – Beep Beep…
We did not see much wildlife in Big Bend, but the best viewing times are early morning and early evening times that we were not in the park. The wildflowers on the other hand were quite spectacular!!! Especially the Texas Lupine. You may remember that we followed the Lupine all thru new England into Canada this summer. Very similar, but much smaller. New England they were 3-4 feet tall where these are less than a foot (more like 6-8 inches). Joke of the week, they grow everything bigger in Texas except Lupine!!!
Other flowers included these yuccas. They grow more like Joshua trees around here than the east coast coastal yuccas we are used to.
And century plants or Havard Agave. They grow them really big around here. Not as many in the desert as I thought, but there were Lechuguilla Agave which only grows in the Chihuahua Desert. They are much smaller than the traditional century plant.
Typical Agave were more prevalent in the Chisos basin and in surrounding towns. Fact I didn’t know. They only live 20-50 years not a century as the name indicates. And they only bloom once because they die after blooming. I understand they have great yellow flowers attracting many humming birds, but we only saw decaying stalks, and lots of them. When you see one of the very large plants, you kind of hope it doesn’t bloom because you don’t want it to die…they can be very large 4-8 ft tall before the blooming stalk.
Also, some cool yellow ground cover and so much more …
Peace, love and justice for all!!!