Rudy: Bryce Canyon National Park in Red Rock country of southern Utah allows us to look at the beautiful effects of erosion on an old lake bed.

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♪ (Soft Music) ♪ Jim: Hello and welcome to Nature Scene outwest surrounded by the incredibly beautiful landscape of Southern Utah at Bryce Canyon National Park.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke.

And we're at Fairyland point, the elevation here about 7758 feet.

Rudy: And we're gonna have a wonderful time today, just with beautiful views, if nothing else, and yet there's a lot more to see here, too.

The geological story is wonderful.

I think we need to start with that.

Talk about the past a little bit and how these formations came to be.

But then the plants and animals that we're going to find here should be interesting because there's a great variety of habitats.

I like to mix at this place.

It's really not that large as far as national parks go, but it has a lot to offer.

And of course, what really brings people here is a view like the one behind us of Bryce Canyon itself.

Jim: Now this is called Fairyland, I guess because of these figures, which take on strange shapes.

Hoodoos the Paiutes called it.

Yeah, Rudy: that's a pretty neat name.

And really, they they're formed because there's hard rock on top protecting the rock beneath it from erosion.

Lake bed sediments is what this is thought to be basically Paleocene, an age around 60 million years ago, there was a lake here filled with sediments.

Basically, these are limestones and a few siltstones varying in their hardness.

So that, you know, allows them to weather differentially and give you these little, little Hoodoos things that stick out.

And then the Colorado Plateau, we know began to be uplifted 10 15 million years ago, when is the uplift started, there were rivers running on that rock.

As you lift them up, they began to cut down through the rock and give you beautiful canyons like this.

And of course you see other plateaus.

Look at them in the distance Jim: Way out there is Aquarius Plateau, the highest plateau in all of North America that's between 10 and 11,000 feet.

Rudy: Yeah, it's amazing, because we're not sure exactly what brought the Colorado Plateau up.

And of course, it's not one thing.

It's a number of plateaus together.

But it's interesting to see the effects of it.

And those little lines sticking out of formations are usually called fins.

And sometimes those actually break through and you get natural bridges and other things will be looking for signs like that.

But again, this is the work of water.

Not only streams now but water getting in cracks, freezing expanding, and causing the rock to to weather away.

Jim: Here.

There Lone Tree hangs on.

Rudy: Yep.

And isn't that neat?

Because again, that tree you think at first well, it's holding everything in place.

In fact, it's not.

It is to a degree but it's causing cracks in the rock.

water gets down in there freezes expands and causes the edges to fall in.

And of course, this is a work in progress.

It's continuing to form.

Really streams are cutting headward slowly but surely wearing these edges away.

Jim: The average annual precipitation here is about 16 inches a year but even with that this edge recedes about one foot every 50 years.

Rudy: And it's amazing to see work like this and realize the hand of man had nothing to do with it.

That makes it even more spectacular to me.

Few plants coming in here.

Here's one we're going to see probably all day in a great variety of habitats.

Greenleaf Manzanita and that a beauty Jim: Name comes from the Spanish for little apples and fruit I guess looks like a little apple.

Rudy: Right and you can see that reddish look on the stems of that plant that makes it easily identified and the leaves stay on year round.

probably grow up no higher than the snow level you know was during the the last winter.

The other plant up here that's pretty common it looks like is Curl Leaf Mountain Mahogany.

Member of the rose family.

There's another species here that I bet we'll see later on.

But took both of those seem to dominate as far as shrubs are concerned right here on the edge.

Gosh, there's lots to see.

Let's get started.

Jim: 35,800 acres in the park this Ponderosa Pine Habitat is one of the zones that we might visit but this tree Rudy has really... Rudy: Seen better days.

Jim: Much better days.

Rudy: That is a big old tree and you see that kind of yellowish look that's left you see of course the damage that fire has done here too.

They get to be monster trees here and I think Ponderosa Pine is a pretty good name for those things.

Of course they start off kind of small.

Here's a little one right in front of us needles, usually in bundles of three sometimes two, but usually three and rather long.

Jim: But 100 to 130 feet is nothing for Ponderosa Pine.

Rudy: Absolutely right.

Well, you can see some big ones all around us here and they dominate on this ground that's a little bit higher and then sort of peter out as you get down a little lower with with a little extra moisture.

One little shrubby plant that comes in here now pretty, pretty heavily Bitterbrush is one of the common names for that thing.

Antelope Brush is another name for it.

Both of both Pronghorn antelopes and Mule deer browse on it and see the little leaves and there's the fruit on it kind of an odd fruit and it is very bitter to the taste but rodents love it.

And usually strip most of the fruit away I don't see much fruit on it Jim: right in there Rudy, also Indian Paintbrush and see beautiful Rudy: Yeah, with flowers on and really the most colorful parts of that are not flower parts, per se.

They're a little Brax that surround the flowers.

That is neat.

Right there in front of us.

Jim: The deer over here and you will deer Mule Deer Rudy: right there female Look at the size of the ears and again browsing, doing what we said they do going to the to the Bitterbrush to recycle those leaves.

That's a beautiful animal nice and healthy.

And again, the size of those ears give it the name.

Mule Deer.

Jim: over here on the edge is a young one.

A fawn, this years fawn.

Yeah.

Rudy: Black on the tip of the tail there is pretty typical of those deer sometimes called Black Tailed Deer for that reason, because the little black on the tip somebody spots.

Yeah, just foraging.

You see a little bit of the spots left.

There's another little wind down on the ground right there.

Look at that feeding Jim: right in front and that will be a twin.

Rudy: Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, usually they're two after the first.

First time they give birth to young or two every time look at get up and bouncing away just boing boing boing between... Just like a spring buck.

Oh, there are a lot of interesting things here.

I noticed some movement right over here.

Look at the female Western Bluebird perched up there and dropping What is that on the ground?

She's got something in her beak.

Earthworm pulled up an Earth Oh yeah.

Working with a slowly but surely tried to get it in her mouth.

You can see she's kind of having a hard time doing that but eventually getting it all in and changing it into Western Bluebird.

I see a Dark Eyed Junco to down in the grass is there it looks like just fluffing up, preening a little bit maybe.

Jim: Used to be called the Oregon race of the Junko.

Rudy: Yeah, that's an interesting one there.

There you see it rubbing around a little bit there.

Jim: Rudy look over here on the ground.

White breasted Nut Hatch.

Usually you see them coming down the tree but this one is foraging on the ground.

Rudy: That's a neat animal a lot of bird activity in the forest here.

Jim: Well, it's harsh habitat but 164 species are listed here in the park.

Rudy: Oh yeah.

Good variety of habitats to little lower area next to us.

Let's look at it next.

(Relocating) Jim: This time of year cools off very quickly with these breezes, especially at this elevation.

We're between 8 and 9000 feet up.

Rudy: You know it's interesting to the way habitats change so quickly.

You know, we talked about that a moment ago into a sagebrush area here from Ponderosa Pine Forest and really the world does change in a place like this.

The plants obviously change but look at the little Prairie Dog mounds out there and the Prairie Dogs themselves active in a little bit of sunlight coming out to get a meal.

Jim: They disappeared in the 1950s due to the ranching, but they brought them back in the mid 70s And they were established again.

Rudy: Utah Prairie Dog, one of the white tailed Prairie Dogs will probably be able to see a white tail as they move around foraging for food.

You see the way they snip off all the plants out in front of their burrows.

A couple more of them over here, very, very alert, looking at those things and looking around.

Jim: That body short, short legs and short tail, Rudy: Red Tail Hawks, Golden Eagles, coyotes would probably prey on them.

But they do very nicely in situations like this, a threatened species is now making a bit of a comeback, we gotta go in the hole real quickly.

That's how alert they are.

That is a neat animal and forming little colonies, little towns they're called.

So typical of this part of the United States.

And right in front of us, you see the plant that's so typical of this area, the Black Sagebrush you see scattered all over the place.

not growing very tall, you can see some leftover flower stalks sticking up there.

One of the composites pretty widespread quite a few varieties of sagebrush here.

Also see one of the Gentians look at the purple flowers in there.

Can you see that?

Jim: Oh, it's so tiny.

Rudy: It just pops right out really with all of the grasses around it.

That is a neat plant.

Again, a number of species, you would find here, Jim: indicator plant for this transition.

Rudy: See something else is kind of crazy.

Look at the look at this, these rounded, looks almost like tubes of mud.

So you stick it out there or soil.

Jim: What causes that?

Rudy: There is a Pocket Gopher that lives here that's normally digging in the ground.

But when there's snow here, they actually dig burrows in the snow, and fill those snow burrows with dirt as they dig burrows into the soil beneath the snow melts.

They're called gopher cores in that neat the way they look, sticking above the ground.

Jim: One of the 50 or so mammals that live here in the park.

Rudy: Yeah, see something else right down here.

That's a very clear sign.

Mammal now.

Pick that up.

Let's take a look at it.

Jim: One of the 50 species dropped this that's for sure.

Rudy: That's a shed deer antler.

No question mule deer young one now with just one fork there.

But look at the base as it comes around in that neat, with that projection at the base or that little rim that cuts off the blood supply causes the antler to die and then eventually shed and every male two a year right and drops them and often much much bigger.

Yeah, and usually not on by some of the rodents.

I guess the rodents haven't really gotten to that one yet.

Jim: Mule Deer is very common here.

But one mammal that isn't is the Pronghorn because they disappeared late 1800s due to hunting and disease.

They're coming back now.

Rudy: Yeah and habitats like this.

Now you would expect that and when you remember earlier, outside of the park, we saw a group of them just grazing nice and easy.

One male with those large horns prong sticking forward giving it the name Pronghorn.

The outer horn covering the shed, the bony part stays on yeah, and both sexes grow those things usually, but they were just filling up with food there.

And again, the male has his little harem of females with him.

This time of year, that animal is exclusively North American.

Jim: almost 2 million people a year come here to see Bryce Canyon National Park.

And this rim trail gives them a chance to get close to some of those beautiful works of erosional art.

This is Sunset Point about 8000 feet.

Rudy: It is amazing when you see the the work of water really, as Lauren Isley said there's power in raindrops there's no doubt about that.

And when you think back in time of sediments that were deposited in a lake way back in the past, and then the uplift of the Colorado Plateau and you can see the tilt that happened when the rock was uplifted.

Basically they're still relatively flat beds, and then along the edge of the plateau erosion began, water began to do its work.

There were already streams here that were tilted as the rock moved up whittling away slowly but surely.

And then the falls that little valley area down there between this plateau and the one in the distance.

Jim: This is Bryce Canyon National Park named after Ebenezer Bryce who settled in 1875 down there at the base.

Way off in the distance Rudy with a visibility like this you can see Navajo Mountain almost 100 miles away Rudy: Isn't that neat two right there the way water a pretty substantial stream of water it looks like actually carved a pretty nice v shaped valley in the in the rock there and all the green trees down below you can see the cap rock below us to the harder stuff see up above the reddish material that allows those hoodoos to form and then on the side over here, some recent erosion you see the little gullies and look at all the colorful Quaking Aspen young trees that have come in here and and set up house there pioneer species that can out in the open spaces like this, I imagine they won't do terribly well there even a few Ponderosa Pines slipping out in.

Common Raven over here Jim just flew up and landed on the side looks like it may have something in its beak scavenging ravens that's what they are finding food that people leave behind and animals that are killed on the road that's a neat bird good sized and really plays with the wind here.

And then you can see the fins that we were talking about earlier forming.

Differential weathering you know rock harder than material around it and some of them pretty large and one with a window in it isn't that amazing?

Jim: So that's one of the window rocks I guess caused again by the action of water.

Rudy: Water and wind probably had an effect that with that too, and sometimes these little openings become big ones you know the natural bridge not too far from here really one of the arches formed that way spectacular views mainly it's water and wind working with sedimentary rock.

♪ Relocating and Soft music.

♪ Jim: Moving down into the 6000 or 6000 plus level gives an entirely different habitat community of living things as well as great looks around us.

Rudy: Yeah, and access to a little bit more water and this is one of those canyons that we've been looking down on it is kind of nice to get down in the canyon itself.

And really it gives us a chance to look back up at some of those spires that we've been talking about.

Layering so clear in there limestones and siltstones again and you can see the hard cap rock holding it in as we've been talking about colored by the iron oxides yeah and and other minerals in it.

And you can see the way water now has cut in those little gullies you can see streams up there little bits of water flow.

It's working slowly but surely to change it.

Jim: Well the creek, creek below us is Rudy too has such a silty muddy look runs on down through you can see it carrying the canyon away as we speak.

Rudy: Yeah, water see is collected in the streams of course as it runs off the side.

Few plants coming in there.

There's some more of those Ponderosa Pines that we've been looking at over there.

But frankly, when you get down at this level, you start thinking about another pine and it's Pinyon Pine.

Two needle or two leaf Pinyon Pine is the common name for that one.

And needles in bundles of two you can see that fairly clearly sort of a dark green color and a few Cones On, one of the conifers that that dominates here.

Jim: Now the other would be the Utah Juniper which gives us the habitat its name.

Rudy: Absolutely right.

And there's Utah Juniper No, no question about that.

With berry like cones on it, those things look more like berries than cones but in fact they are true cones, and Utah Juniper Pinyon Pine, as you've said, are the dominant woody plants but now look at all the shrubby things that are here.

Jim: What's the one that has very sharp points almost a holly like leaf to Rudy: it.

One of the common names for that is Fremont Barberry, you can see compound leaf with sharp edges.

I mean, if you bump into that it's gonna stick a hole in you.

There's no question about that.

And that protects that plant as far as the food and in water that it's got in those leaves.

Most animals don't tamper with that.

I see a little sign of fall there, reddish color coming in on what's called Skunk Bush sometimes.

Scientific name is Rhus Trilobata.

So it's one of the sumac three lobes see to the leaf.

And you can see that we've gotten a little bit of autumn color coming in.

And it's kind of nice this time of year.

One of the yuccas two over there.

Look at the Narrowleaf Yucca see it very skinny leaf sharp edge and even some some fruit on that you see a little bit of fruit sticking up on that.

Jim: The yucca of course a very common plant in the southwest and over 450 plants here in the park.

That one is one of the Oaks I'm not sure which one.

Rudy: Yeah, that's Gamble Oak, no doubt about it.

Look at the deep lobeing on those leaves and there's a little more fall color.

You know, you see a little bit of yellow and brown.

Those pigments were always in the leaf were masked by the chlorophyll and now they're beginning to show up as the chlorophyll goes away.

Little bit of fruit on that too.

Acorns in place and then something else it almost looks like fruit.

The red on it.

That is a gall.

That's one of those little insect caused growths is a little wasp living inside there.

I guess it would be easy sometimes to confuse that with maybe fruit on a plant but that's one of those parasite host relationships that's interesting.

I see one more parasite host relationship mistletoe up in that Utah Juniper there.

See that cluster of things growing there?

<Oh yes.> that's another parasite host relationship.

There are two plants now involved isn't that neat Jim: another shrub over here really the hands very small leaves.

Rudy: Alder Leaf Mountain Mahogany, we saw the Curl Leaf Mountain Mahogany earlier, Alder leaf because of the shape of those leaves, and just beyond it something called good common name, Utah Serviceberry.

Leaves look a little like that Mountain Mahogany, but they're wider you see in the Mountain Mahogany Leaves, Jim: Rudy right here at the edge of the trail, some bones.

Rudy: Oh, my goodness, and these bones.

This is perfect.

These two bones will give us an identification without any trouble at all.

Jim: Rudy how can you so quickly say it's going to be easy to tell what it is?

Rudy: Well, this is one of the bones called a metapodial bone and look at the end of it as you go down the shaft.

You see this hand right here, there's a little articulation area with one little read right in the middle.

This is one bone that leads to three toe bones.

And when you've got a single one like this, there's only one toe at the end.

And there's only one animal that we've got that has one toe with the head.

And that's a horse.

So this is one of the bones, basically like the palm of your hand bones a metacarpal that was in the lower leg of a horse.

Let me turn it over to I'll show you something else interesting horse runs on its middle toe so to speak.

Here's a remnant of another toe, see that right here.

See that running along the side.

And then there's actually a little space on the other side where there used to be another remnant of another toe.

What's the other bone in your hand.

The other one is called an Astragalus.

This is a very, very hard bone.

And you see those two little ridges on it.

And you'll see the way they're tilted at an angle a little bit.

It's either tilted a little in an angle, they're not straight up and down.

They're actually coming off at an angle like that.

And the only animal that hasn't astragalus like this is a horse.

So this is a domesticated animal that was once right here, Jim: A horse has a single hoof the cow a cloven hoof.

So it would make it much different.

Rudy: Yeah, this bone would be split at the bottom instead of single.

Jim: Where to from here?

Rudy: Well let's put these down in head back up top.

Jim: We've come to the lowest point in the park at 6600 feet all the way to the highest point at over 9000 feet, also the end of that 18 mile park road.

Rudy: Now this is amazing too, because of the habitat changes that we've already talked about.

And look at the big trees right in front of us here and I bet you this was Douglas Fir that grew to be a pretty good size, but not very old really when you compare it to other tree species right on this point.

Bristle Cone Pine is the one that's I guess known worldwide because of its age.

It doesn't seem to die back one part'll die and it continues to grow and grow and grow Jim: So unique tree and said to be one of the oldest trees on earth as far as that species.

Rudy: And the way those needles grow it almost looks like the tail of a fox or something on the end pretty easily identified.

Jim: That tree in fact, they say 1600 years old Rudy.

Rudy: It's amazing.

Here's another Douglas Fir now that is living alive and well I see a few cones on it with those little little cracks between the scales that are so interesting and so typical.

And then one that's typical of this forest, White Fir is the common name for it.

The needles on that turn up you can see pretty clearly on the end of the branches there that was in trouble here because of a little moth it's it seems to be killing it back.

Jim: So name for the zone could be the Canadian zone.

Rudy: Yeah.

And look at the Quaking Aspen their beautiful white bark on it.

Leaves just twittering in, the in the breeze trembling or quaking in the breeze.

So the common name.

Now the plant here.

That's so typical of northern climbs and higher elevations, Ground Juniper or a Common Juniper related to that Utah Juniper that we saw earlier, but low growing.

And then of course, the views when you get this high, you can see the stairstep of plateaus, and the canyons off in the distance.

Jim: One of the men most responsible for the park was J.W.

Humphrey in 1915.

When he first saw this view, his friends had to pull him back from the edge at the end of the day.

Rudy: Well, this is a special place.

There's no doubt about that.

And thank goodness the National Park Service protects places like this and gives us access to them and some interpretation and the variety of habitats here is spectacular, good mix of plants and animals.

And of course, a wonderful geological story.

Love the mix.

Jim: Truly an incredible landscape here at Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah.

Thanks for watching, and join us again on the next Nature Scene.

(♪ Soft Closing Music ♪) Narration: Nature Scene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper, where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

And by Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

A community committed to preserving the natural splendor and cultural heritage of the Lowcountry.

And by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

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