Today has been mostly a driving day, the first for quite a while. And it occurs to me that I won’t see the Pacific Ocean again on this trip (unless I get very very lost!). My last view was while looking at green hairstreak habitat restoration with Liam near the top of a hill in San Francisco.
I now have to head south and east. Heading east in the USA always seems slightly odd to me – ‘Go west young man, go west! And grow up with the country’.
I’m heading for the Joshua Tree National Park, but I haven’t got there yet, where I have unfinished business with roadrunners.
On my way I have seen Altamont Pass and its eagle-killing wind turbines, commented on someone’s accent and identified that snake I told you about.
Altamont Pass is across the Bay from San Francisco and has the reputation for being the raptor-killingest windfarm in the world. When you see it you aren’t surprised as it is chock-full of windfarms – hundreds, actually thousands, of them. And they are mostly small and old and they appear, from the road, to form an almost impenetrable barrier to birds migrating through the pass.
And birds do migrate through the pass although my knowledge of west-coast raptor migration is very slight.
Interesting to see and the impression is that there is nowhere remotely similar in the UK (and long may it remain) as there is nowhere with the density of turbines (as far as I know) of old design and in a migration hotspot. So, Altamont Pass is a warning for us all but it doesn’t translate very easily into the UK situation.
I filled up with gas on the freeway and as my UK credit cards rarely work in the pumps outside I usually have to have a conversation inside. This time it was with a Hispanic-looking lady who had an accent that seemed as if it was off the west coast of Scotland. This was how our conversation went:
Me: ‘Interesting accent’
Her: ‘Got hit by a car a long time ago’
Me: ‘Sounds quite Scottish’
Her: ‘Get told that a lot’.
Her first answer had made me feel a little uncomfortable for raising the subject, but I’d thought I was just being friendly, and her second answer made it clear that this wasn’t a subject on which to linger.
Fair enough. I wonder what it is like being Hispanic in California and sounding as though you are from Oban?
And further on I decided to stop at a ‘Rest Area’ for a rest and to use the facilities. Amazingly thee was a poster outside entitled ‘North American snakes’ which revealed to me, and I have done some internet checking too, that the snake I saw the other day was a copperhead – pretty, and pretty poisonous too. Good job I didn’t give it a cuddle then.
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