USA 2014 - Zion Canyon, Wildcat Trail

For our last morning in Zion we chose to head up to the Wildcat Canyon Trail, again setting off just after first light.  The skies were partly cloudy but still the landscape was impressive:

The trail itself is in the least visited part of the park and there was only one other car in the car park when we arrived.  It is characterised by tall conifers, lodgepole pines I think:

Walking along the trail we found a cat pug in the sand, over a human print, which meant recent... thankfully we didn't actually bump into a mountain lion though...

A Spotted Towhee sang from a prominent perch as the sun started to burn through the clouds:

We reached the end of the trail and enjoyed the magnificent views of hills of petrified dunes:

Interspersed with forest:

Various tress and cacti:

And Grace's Warblers, a target species for this habitat:

The view over the rest of the park was most impressive:

On the trail heading back (it's an out and back) a Western Bluebird sat on a prominent perch:

From the Wildcat Trail we headed to another stopping point, on the edge of the park to start another trail, seeing this Green-tailed Towhee (though it took me age to work out what it was for some reason).  We realised we were tired having hiked and birded non-stop since our arrival in the USA (note for the future, plan some rest days too!):

This chap was amusing - 'I wish I could fly right up in the sky, but I can't'..

We headed out of Zion National Park and on further south to our hotel in St George, towards the very South of Utah State.  On arrival we went shopping for some supplies and tried a Mexican supermarket.  Very interesting experience and we bought some of the extremely large and cheap bakery products, some drinks and more trail snacks for the days ahead.