Boolie

Williamson’s Sapsucker

A trip to New Mexico in 2007 provided my one and only view of the lovely Williamson’s sapsucker, this is a male perched on a favorite tree. They prefer Ponderosa Pine forests and that’s not a habitat I’ve been in much since. You can see the irregular and regular pattern of holes he’s drilled into the tree to encourage it to secrete the sap he craves. It was a wonderful trip although it had far more import than I could have known as when it came time to look for work a decade later, it got me thinking of New Mexico, which got me thinking about Arizona, and here we are.

Purple Crown

A Costa’s hummingbird shows off his purple crown on a winter morning. The color is based on the way the light falls upon the feathers, not pigment, so when he had his head turned his crown appeared black (as the rest of his face and throat does here, but they will light up too if the light is at the right angle).

All-Crab Breakfast

On a sunrise walk on the boardwalk through the saltwater marsh at Huntington Beach State Park, I met this yellow-crowned night heron hunting fiddler crabs in the mud while the tide was out. The hungry bird snared one after the other, tossing them down its throat, so it’s a good thing the little crabs seemed endless in number. Taken in the summer of 2007.

The Light Finds the Queen

Awake Trixie is sweet and affectionate and playful. Asleep she sometimes sprawls down the length of my legs, but sometimes I can’t escape the feeling I’m living with royalty.

The Tree in the Stone

Natural artwork in the stone on a rainy winter’s morning on the Slate Trail at Cave Creek.

Big Needles

My award for the cutest member of the desert that will still stab you six ways from Sunday goes to the diminutive hedgehog cactus with its almost comically long needles. I found this little clump in the slate at Cave Creek on a rainy winter’s day. Rain, I remember rain. It was wet I think.

It Started Early

Emma waits for me to toss her a string early in 2008, not long after we adopted her. She never tired of playing with strings throughout her life. My camera at the time really struggled to focus on her in low light so I have a lot of slightly blurry pictures of her, but that’s better than none at all. This one is OK because I pre-focused and got lucky with where she placed her head.

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