This female Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) is nesting in a plam tree on the campus of Borrego Springs High School. She has been sitting on an unknown number of eggs for about 3 weeks. The male Great Horned has been seen on roofs and in nearby trees
This photo, looking north, shows a series of wooden railroad ties that were part of a double track railroad. Until recently this was a railroad spur for short produce trains that frequently carried sugar beets. In the mid-1940s this rail line served as a vital link in providing supplies to a military base, the Thermal Ground Support Base or Thermal Army Airfield. The base was established as an Army training base as the US entered World War II. General George Patton trained troops for the invasion of North Africa at the base.
The Jacquelin Cochran Regional Airport in Thermal makes use of the two 5,000-foot runways that were also part of the base. Finally, the Thermal Army Airfield is on the official list of POW Camps during WWII.
Lute Ridge is an uplifted block of alluvium thrust upward as a result of motion on the Clark Fault, one of many faults associated with the San Jacinto Fault zone. The photo was taken at the top of the fault scarp, some 100 feet high. The scarp is about 2 miles in length. The San Jacinto fault, a right-latreal fault, trends northwestward to the top of the photo. The block to the immediate right has dropped down and the mountains farther to the right in the photo moving southeastward. Clark Dry Lake is in the distance.
"Lute Ridge is a classic fault scarp and the largest known of its kind on the North American continent, developed in recent unconsolidated sediments." (Lute Ridge, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, The Canyoneers, San Diego Reader, May 8, 2013; http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/may/08/roam-lute-ridge-anza-borrego-desert-state-park/)
1,038 toy vehicles assembled and shipped on November 14th by Woodworkers of Whittier.
