1924

AiwaIII „

DEPARTMENT OP THE INTERIOR NATIONAL PARK SERVICE YOSEZTE NATIONAL PARK

-N=A'TUE,N OTFS

iurnst 3Q, 1924 Number 18 Yosemite Nature Guide Service C. P. Russell, Park r?atlrali st This is one of a series of bulletins issued from time to time for the inforrcation of those interested, in the natneel history and scientific features of the park and the educational opportnnit3es the park affords for the study of these subjects. Utilization of these bulletins by those reoeivinG them to the end that the inforcation co4tained therein ttit,ht be as extensively distributed as possible will be appreciated. 6Z B. tewis, Superinteulent

IMPRESSIONS

There are two kinds of impressions, as related to Yosemite visitors. One iS the impression made on the visitor, and the other is the impression left on the Valley. This note refers to 4he impressions left by the visitors. S;Qst visitors come in an automobile. The machine stirs up a cloud of dust and is Lone. The lust settles in a new place, and the record is soon rewritten by another machine..A hundred thousand tourists may leave no Lreater impression than this. There is the Mariposa Batallion, which came up here in 1851 - the first white men to visit the re;i.on. This was only about seventy-five years acn e yet any record of their visit is a curiosity ae is on exhibition at the Yosemite Museum. And the Yosenite Indians! Uhat of them? The only evidences written in the Valley are the mortar holes where they used to.;rind acorr+i for meal. Here and there one may find a chip of obsidian that t Caked off when they were fashionin,' error. heads. The rest is handed down in mfr.h and story. Nay it not be said of Yosemite, "what is man that Thou art mindful of him? 71

The visitor which made the greatest impression came some 20,000 years at;. It appeared silently without the sound of a trumpet or the glare of steel. There was a snow storm up on the summit of Mt. Lien. Then there was another snow storm, and they kept adding to the accumulation until a great snow nail covered Lyell, Clark, Hoffman, and the others. It became nearly a thousand feet thick and so massive that it moved down the mountain sides to the valleys. This huge ice sheet picked up the loose granite debris from these summits and quarried the sides of Tenaya and Little. Yosemite. It polished Liberty Cap and Mount Broderick and hewed out granite rock basis for Emerald Pool, Merced, and Boothe, and other summit lakes. All markings on the granite were erased, and, when the Great glacier retreated, the walls were as new. The first post Glacial visitors were descendants of-the old inhabitants. They marched into the valley in single file. At the head of the oak column came the huckleberry oak because it was more congenial for it to live nearest the glacier. -. Then up out of the dry country came the Golden Cup Oak and, when the talus formed, it took a stand near the cliffs. The Kellogg Black Oak came about the same time and stood sentinalali e; zon the open plain of the old lake bottom. The march of the oaks was up hill work arid 'was accomplished witb; t a assistance of squirrels who-burled the acorns. The pines came by the wiz express usually on the afternoon up-valley 'schedule - each seed being a monoplane. The foremost in rank of the pine battalion < was the white bark pine. Then came the mountain pine, with the Jeffrey close on its heels. The sugar, lodge pole,. And yellow were later arrivals. The conifers are only nOw beginning to etch their record upon the granite cliffs and domes. With the - acid secretion of their roots they make sketches upon the rocky walls and with the expansion of growth they flake off new pages. The story that they are writing, is one of plant succession and today is but the first chapter of their.impressions. The glacier coaxed some plants, like the Alpine willow and the sorrel, up into the high spots and then went off and left them. The weather is still congenial to these cold-seeking plants, and they live in islands, so to speak, way up in the high Sierras. They do not visit and mingle back and forth because the valleys are too warm for cross roads. Shen the refrigeration was more general, these plants may have paved the valleys. Now they are marooned mountain high - stranded as it wareon a stern and rock bound coast. And we must not Go on With our description of plant impressions unmindful of the lichens and mosses. Their work goes back to the time of the first Yosemite plants, ourious Growths that crept upon the rocks for a Ion;; time before man appeared. The lichens may have remained like magic when only the top of Half Dome and a few others broke the ice waves. It must have been a cheerless period of cold, yet these tiny plants may have cariied on during the age of the ioe and rock giants, and their wee writings are still going on preparinG the way for less hardy followers. The latest arrivals have only lately ventured onto the valley floor. They take up the coarse soil, live their span of life, and then die. They add a little bit of humus and thereby are slowly darkening the top layer. The common locust and the elm are such and were brought by the colonist. The curly dock, sorrel, and knotweed of the yards stole in with the garden seeds. So came the common plantain and red clover. And there are others like the white daisy, ohickory, and bouncing.. 2 -

het that have not reached here. Some like the burdock, beggars tick, and cookiebur are always hooking rides. They have not yet stolen into the Yosemite. Let it.be hoped that they will not be allowed within the park limits. May i'csemite be one place where the native granites may Jo wr. t pert upon b : iti {e pie s in a native tongue. For herein may visitors come aed see history being : er~.c•1eu in the American way - as it wa before America was known to b,'trop'i.

BIRD BATHS

The Black-throated gray warbler is one of the 'co ►on: summer visitants to the Yosemite Valley. It is. a bird of the oaks, part4dularly of the Chryso- ' lepis oaks, and therefore it is most likely to he even on the oat=--oovehea talus, slopes. During the latter half Of i:uguet, 1J24i hoveeer, it was _often `found An the willow thickets along the river. Perhaps the eaninmation of the unu:t•al behavior of the Black-throated gray is to he found in the eecessi7e dryness of the season, Like most birds, these warblers love their bath. The small streaks that tumble or trinkle down the cliffs in ' normal years,are this yeaf.;absolutely dry, and the birds of the brush-covered walla are forced ' to can to the main r.ti ae to drink and to bathe.'. The Black-throated gray warbler : like rang other kids of birds,r chooses a shallow pool at the ed.L;e of the stream in which to bathe, He squats low, dippinL; and flapping his wwings, to.thorough ly peat the water. through,his feathers. Recently a nature' class had.,the pleasure of watching' a Hairy Woodpecker tahe a bath. This bird did not choose a shallow pool but worked down a brans% o:°.-a fallen and partly submerged tree that overhung; the river.:-;'then the.a ogdpackar reached the water, he dipped,under and still olinglag to the branch he beat the water with his wing's,.taking; e,plunge rather t4an axshower bath.. The swallows, swifts, and some of the flycatchers have still a different System of taking a bath. The swallows an. e wifts skim low over the water, dippizy now and then to break the surface and scatter spray; they take their bath ors the wing, as it were, when satisfied with their : clung, the sv.a."_lows coma to a perch to preen, but the swifts must preen on the wing as they are never seen to come to perch. The flycatchers hover over the su_faoc e the water and.:s y cautiously take their dip., They 6e to a perch on a dead twig to do tiller _eleni.l but often it may take several of these cautious little dips to quite saeiel! then that they have. had a bath. Yosemite'S VdNIS= Z OUNTAJN SHEEP Fifty years ago, only a comparatively few prospectors, sheep men, and that devotee of High Sierra worship, John Muir, ever penetrated the Yosemite wilds that then harbored the most eplendi d of Sierra animals, "Big Horn, or Mountain Sheep {Qvis, eanadensi s sieii ). Yet the rifles of those few hun,ry miners and mutton fed sheep herders in an incredibly short tins wiped the native Yosemite sheep out of existence. IL spite of the 2. ct thet Mountain Sheep Pre,-. quented only the highest, most desolate, and inacoeesih'.e crests, they.ca.pid.ly became extinct so far al Yosemite was concerned. Probably early day sportsmen accounted for a few of the animals, but the extinction of the race can eoascnably be ohe.rged against the miners Who rushed to Tioga and Mammoth in 1007 and again in the seventies. Later when °omestic sheep invaded the hi;h mosses, the,3

herders did their bit in the,"2noppin; Up". Now the Yosemite visitor most be { oe itent with clixa ain=; into the former strongholds of the animals and hoping.. fair the thrill of finding a bleached skull. A number of such relics have coma to light in Yosemite. The Yosemite Museum possesses a skull with horns in a fair state of preserv::tion, found. in 1915 on Mount Dares by.Chief Haner Tow;nsley. Dr. Grinnell, while making hi s extensive Yosemite studies, came upon weathered portions of Big Horn sk±? on Parson. Peak and.7arren Mountain. Ranier Adair reports the finding of a skull with beans at the headwaters of Spiller Creek. This specimen was left where round. On auLust ' 23i'.19124; the ~ ark,naturalist came upon a broken up Mountain Sheep skeleton in a -- cirque at Helen Lake (north slopes of kuna Crest). The skull yet contained some teeth, but the horns had chipped from the bony acres that sup-aarted them. Lei hones ant vertebrae were strewn about and with the skull were gathered up and broui,ht to the Yosemite Museum. These specimens were at the end of a small residual.6laoier. Probably it has been m ny'year.s since the snore have melted sufficiently to reveal them. Undoubtedly, the remainder of the skeleton is held- 'within: the ice : s s. Probably the last reeor4 of Mountain Sheep in Yosemite was made by Job iiuuir when he wrote of a band, of three "discovered snow-bound in Bloody Canyon" (t 'east boundary of Yosemite) a few years previously to' 1874 and "killed with an axe by mountaineers, who chauoed tot tie crossint the range" in,winter". Reports and evidence of 'their former eaistenee in the Sierras as; far north as Mt. Shasta are available. Perhaps the most ndrtharly.records of;their present occurrence is that made by. ir. L H. Ober in 1921,.w he found small bands on lit. Gillette and. on Mount Tom, mirth of Sequoia Rational Park and. ay Dr. Grinnell", whe reports living sheep atMa> oth Papa '' will Sierra Nevada Mountain Sheep main inhibit.Yosei-.iite? 'ah-raay hope that eventually individuals from the south may invade 'the y Pa'tk and aLain take the prominent part that so large and. intersst,n;.an anima should. ha,-ie in the natural hiatoty of the re on. +. 4.-.