Ash-throated flycatcher

Another trip to the Grand Canyon today, this time to a lower elevation down by the Colorado River where there were cactuses such as this flowering ocotillo.

The river in the background is brown here from all the sediment it has collected along the way. However when it reaches Lake Mead (the huge lake formed in the 30's when the Hoover Dam was built) the sediment is deposited and the water is turquoise again from the copper, as it was higher upstream.

Lake Mead irrigates vast amounts of the south west and northern Mexico, and the electricity generated at the dam powers all Las Vegas. A good project, in spite of the lives lost by workers during its construction.