Sam in the picture window in the dining room of our house in Portland in March 2017. My Sony camera arrived a couple of weeks prior and on this day I photographed all the pets with a few of the new lenses, in this case Sony’s lovely 55mm f/1.8.
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Whiteout
A juvenile red-tailed hawk sits in a meadow in heavy fog at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Washington. The telephoto lens is exaggerating the whiteout effect as it is picking up all the fog between my car and the distant hawk but it illustrates the point: for an animal that might normally hunt by soaring high above the meadow and looking for voles below, a thick fog changes the dynamic between predator and prey.
The fog didn’t have such an impact on an American bittern stalking the shoreline that winter morning as it looked and listened for small creatures both on the land and in the water. Sometimes it hunted by slowly walking up and down the shoreline, sometimes by standing still, but in either case the thick fog would not obscure the prey such a short distance away.
Raise Me Up That I Might Climb
There aren’t as many lizards in our neighborhood as I would like but we do have some.
Raise Me Up That I Might Howl
Under Tom’s Thumb
I met this rock squirrel back in April a few weeks after we moved here. One of the reasons I love a telephoto zoom like the 100-400mm lens so much (this is the Canon, I only got the Sony recently) is that you can zoom in and take a traditional portrait of a small animal far away, like the shot below, but you can zoom out and take an environmental portrait as well like the picture above (when the scenery allows it). In this case I vastly prefer the environmental portrait as you get a feel for the massive rock this squirrel is perching under. Given more time I would have preferred an ever wider perspective with a different lens to show that it was perched high off the ground between much more massive granite boulders above and below than you can see here, but the squirrel only paused for a moment as it ran up the rocks at the approach of a dog on the trail.
I was struck by how at ease this rock squirrel was in the rocks as it moved about the narrow passages and great heights as easily and gracefully as a tree squirrel in the trees. I was delighted to find both rock squirrels and Harris’s antelope squirrels in the desert as I had mistakenly surmised I was leaving squirrels behind when we left Oregon. I fell in love with chipmunks and squirrels at an early age, we had a forest behind our house as a child in Michigan, I can’t remember ever not loving them. They’re a rarer treat now than then, but a treasured treat always.
I LOVE BIRDS SO MUCH!
You know little Squeaks, the birds might come closer if you could restrain your enthusiasm a little bit. There’s a brave mourning dove that comes close to the sliding glass door that really gets her going, she flattens herself to the floor and whips her tail back and forth and chirps at her feathered friend.
At the Edge of Freedom
Sam on New Year’s Eve in 2007, a week and a half after we adopted him. He was on the brink of being given freedom to roam the house at large and thus meet Scout, who he adored all her life.
Joy at My Feet
If I could tell myself at 10 years old that in 40 years I’d be working on things in space and hiking with lizards at my feet, I suspect he’d wonder what took me so long to get here. I’ll tell him about a place called Oregon and I think he’ll understand, and if not he soon will. I don’t think I would have been ready for the desert without spending so long in the Pacific Northwest first and will always be grateful for my time there. I’ve been hiking as much as I can since arriving in Arizona, I love seeing lizards in the desert even though usually they’re scurrying out of sight as I walk past. Sometimes I get a longer look such as this past weekend with this common side-blotched lizard on the Sidewinder Trail in Phoenix Sonoran Preserve, my first hike outside of Scottsdale.
Scottsdale
In Portland my favorite things to photograph while walking Ellie were the neighborhood art and the old garages. It’s going to be more challenging in Scottsdale as while there is a lot of art around, most of it is up against people’s houses and out of my reach. There is some art accessible from the street but I might have to settle for mailbox decorations more often than not. Of course the other limitation is Ellie wants shorter walks these days so the streets she chooses determines what I see. Which is fine, it’s walking with her I treasure most.
I like this garden we pass on our walks, these aren’t the native cacti I see on the trails and not the kind I’d plant in my own garden, but I like the variety of shapes and textures from the different plants. I’m assuming the statue is St. Francis of Assisi because of his love for the natural world. I’m hoping when we’re ready to buy we find a house that already has native desert landscaping but if not it’s something I’d like to add. I do appreciate the little strip of grass in our backyard because Ellie loves rolling around in it so.
Sniffing the Saguaro
This cottontail kept sniffing the base of the old saguaro and hopping up where there were no spines, hopping down, and sniffing some more. Cottontails are the mammal I see most frequently both in the desert and in our neighborhood. Fortunately our dog Ellie pays them no mind, she’s never cared about wildlife even in her younger years. Although we still see them on our walks it’s been a week or two since one has been in our backyard, is there a number I can call to complain about this?
Boolie 