Jerry Broadus wrote:

>Clarice and I are also VEGAS bound in MARCH, for a business convention, so I
>hope that suggestions are posted to tweeters.
>
I sent this to Larry Cown initially, but here it is for larger
consumption:

Larry,
My wife and I went down there over Thanksgiving for a family reunion,
and managed to get away a couple of times. The first place we went was
a reserve 10 or 15 miles straight west of town (I think we went out
Charleston Avenue near the downtown, which turns into the highway that
goes directly to this reserve. The reserve is on Bureau of Land
Management land and is a red rock canyon. There is a visitor center and
a one-way loop road that is quite pleasant. I picked up a little book
at the visitor center on where to find birds in southern Nevada that
proved useful. It led me to Sunset County Park, which is right in Las
Vegas (near the south end), where I saw my first Abert's towhee (they
were quite common). It said you should be able to see one of the
thrashers - I forget which one (LeContes?), and don't have my book here
at work - there as well, but we didn't see it. There was a nature
walk in the park through thick mesquite brush, lots of Gambels quail,
etc.

There is also Desert National Wildlife Reserve about 30 miles NW of town
that is apparently the largest NWR in the country south of Alaska, but
the roads past the entry station are rough. We went in a little ways,
then my elderly father complained about the bouncing and we turned back.
Roads that head up into the high country around Mt Charleston(?) start
near the entrance to the NWR also.

If you head south out of Las Vegas toward Hoover Dam, you get more into
the Mohave Desert and some of the birds associated with that.

There is really a lot of beautiful country outside of Las Vegas. I hope
the town doesn't continue sprawling so much and overtake it all.

Hope this helps, let me know if you need more details,
Mike Seamans
Seattle, WA
a-mikese at microsoft.com


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