Two plants do brighten the desert scene in August and September. Most common is the rabbitbrush, a plant that grows almost everywhere. It is rather inconspicuous except in late summer when its brilliant yellow blossoms turn the whole shrub golden. The other is the bee plant of which there are two species: one has yellow blossoms, and the other has purple. These tall plants grow along washes, stream courses, roads, and irrigation ditches. Their delicate blossoms are always surrounded by insects drawn by the nectar the flowers produce in great quantities. These, then, are a few of the typical plants. Each has adjusted its needs to those limiting factors—winter cold, summer heat, and aridity. A great number of plants grow on the monument that have not been mentioned here, but they are like the typical plants and have similar ways of meeting the problems of survival. Many people who profess an interest in nature admit they cannot get very excited about plants. Such disinterest may result in minimizing the importance of plants in the general scheme of nature. That would be a major error. The plants of the world are the foundation upon which other forms of life are dependent. They alone are able to utilize the minerals in the soil and convert carbon dioxide and water to carbohydrates. Because of these abilities, the parade of life has been able to advance only when the plants advance. In the present as in the past, the kinds and abundance of plants set definite limits as to the species and numbers of animals an area may support. Thus, if man changes the plants of an area he will surely change the animals too, whether he realizes it or not. If you drive to the quarry in the heat of the day you will see only a few of the birds that live here. They don’t like to hunt their food during those hot hours. Frequently a turkey vulture sails majestically above the plains along the Green River. Sometimes so high he appears to be a speck, his telescopic eye searches the ground for the carrion upon which he feeds. Another bird that does not mind the heat is Say’s phoebe. He is usually found perched on a fence post, a wire, or a dead branch waiting for some insect to buzz by. A graceful, short flight, a pop of his beak, and then back to his perch to repeat the cycle again. As he sits motionless, his gray breast and darker gray head and back make him hard to see.