Elusive Desert Critters

I don’t need an excuse to go to Joshua Tree–I love that place–but apart from the fact that it was time for a vacation, I’d weirdly had bighorn sheep on my mind. Years ago, I was hiking in the desert and spotted a bighorn sheep scaling the rock piles. At the time, I wasn’t a wildlife photographer, didn’t have a telephoto lens, and was slow to react. Knowing the chances to see this California native are few and far between, that moment still haunts me.

It just so happens that I’d recently been watching a few YouTube videos featuring bighorn sheep, and that itch that started a long time ago felt like it needed to be scratched. Sometimes, if you do enough digging online, you can shorten your odds of getting the image you’re after by learning the best time of year to witness a species during daylight hours or regions where it’s most commonly spotted. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t pick up any leads on bighorn sheep at Joshua Tree, so I figured I’d go and search. Incidentally, I learned that Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada was a better place to look, but I’m currently focused on wildlife in California.

When we got to Joshua Tree, I asked a ranger at the Twenty-Nine Palms visitor center about bighorn sheep. He immediately reframed them as the elusive bighorn sheep. He was kind enough to tell me the handful of places he’d seen them in his time working there, but he wasn’t exactly building up my hopes.

To cut a long story short, we hiked and drove around the park for a couple of days, but we didn’t glimpse a sheep. We had a great time anyway, and it’s a reason to return. Regarding wildlife, my highlights were Great Basin whiptails, white-tailed antelope squirrels, and a rufous hummingbird.