“With only one season of rain our formerly desiccated Kern River has leapt to life. The banks are now thick with sunflowers, grasses, and — as I can regrettably confirm — nettle. Birds abound. I don’t know their names, only their physical characteristics: that duck with the blue bill, the black bird with the flash of red on its wing, the small white ones with the long, gangly legs, and (in one of the more spectacularly cute things I’ve seen in my life) a newly hatched duckling, about an inch and a half across, riding on the back of its mother. Rabbits leap out of bushes. Dragonflies, bees, hummingbirds and smokelike plumes of gnats fill the air.
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Bring Back the Kern — in conjunction with the Parkway Foundation, Kern Audubon Society, Water Audit California, Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club — has filed an injunction against the city of Bakersfield to prevent the city from drying out the river with excessive diversions.” [Read More]