Trading with Native Americans

Another 8 days on the river.  This time we were further south in some restored wetlands.  Saw some cool birds.

 Saw this Burrowing owl while we were moving between sites.  I chased him around for about 30 minutes. He never went far from his hole, but every time I got into position to take a decent picture he'd take off.  Punk! 

Lots of wading birds on the wetlands themselves.
Black-necked stilts

and White-faced Ibis (ya they don't have a really white face) were around

But the freaking Black Birds were the headache.  Red wings and Yellow-headed.  They were EVERYWHERE, and constantly chattering.

This guy is trying his best to make doing the splits on two small branches look easy.

We were still finding a lot of crawfish in the canals between wetlands, but decided against eating these.  They probably would have been fine, but the water wasn't all that inviting.  These wetlands were much closer to the main Colorado River, so now we were seeing bullfrogs too.  Another introduced exotic species to AZ, they have really taken off and beat the crap out of native frogs. 

Saw a sidewinder one night while looking for frogs.  Lil guys, but that sideways movement thing is pretty fun to watch.  I really liked the horns above the eyes.  They are thought to be able to fold down over the eyes when they burrow in the sand (since snakes don't have eyelids).  I just think it makes them look evil :)

Poked him with a stick for a while then went back to my frogs.  I hope I can spot one in the daytime at some point and get some cool pics of their sidestep through the sand.

We also looked around a bit on an Indian reservation that sits on the river. 

We were checking traps and calling for frogs when my headlight caught something larger run across the trail in front of me!  Middle of the night, in the boonies, with probably some sacred Indian burial ground nearby, of course I chased after it!  I'd get close, then it would sneak away further.  I was pretty sure I knew what I was chasing by this point though, so I pulled my camera out.  At one point I snuck up close enough to smell him (yup a him, and he smelled like he was chasing girls), snapped this crappy pic...

Pretty Kitty!

After taking that pic I backed off and we just watched him with our spotlights for nearly 30 minutes.  I've never been able to watch a bobcat for that long before. 

So the next morning was our last morning on the water for this trip so we were pulling our traps off the reservation.  Well some Native American apparently needed funnel traps more then me because we had four taken in the night.  Do they still trade for stuff?  Cuz that's not how I thought it worked.  Shouldn't I get a blanket, or some beads or something?