A Five-Eagle Day

Today we went on a wildflower excursion to Bear Valley in Colusa County (one of several dozen Bear Valleys in California), travelling through scenic country which though relatively nearby we’ve never visited before. Our first stop was Granzella’s, a prominent deli and restaurant in the Sacramento Valley town of Williams—we had to pick up a jar of their famous olives. And then we went westwards into the Coast Ranges, stopping at a geologically-oriented geocache at the very point where the rocks of the Great Valley Sequence at the east side of the Coast Range first become exposed.

Taking the narrow and practically-deserted over the ridges to the north end of Bear Valley, we saw somewhere between four and six golden eagles! A pair near the south end of the road, another pair (one of the birds immature) near the top of the ridge, and another couple of eagle sightings closer to Bear Valley.

Bear Valley is a fairly remote stretch of rangeland, all privately owned though much of it protected under a conservation easement, that has some of the most spectacular wildflower displays in Northern California. According to the California Wildflower Hotsheet (a wonderful little page with status reports on California bloom displays), it seems we were a little early for the peak in Bear Valley, but there’s still quite a lot up there already. At right is a photo of an owls’ clover, with lots of yellow asters in the background.