Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Looking east at a great horned owl looking east. Perhaps enjoying the fading sunlight falling on the distant mountains, perhaps keeping an eye out for a meal below, perhaps looking out for the hawks living further east. As an adult its primary threats are no different than mine: age, injury, illness, humans.
This whale and I share a special bond, it always breaches the desert’s surface when it sees me on the trail, often bringing a favored friend along like a lizard, ground squirrel, or in this case a curve-billed thrasher. Taken on an early fall morning in 2022.
Taken while walking Bear in April, had my 100-400mm with me.
A quick snap from the spring of an owl atop a boulder with wildflowers blooming in the desert below. I was busy and didn’t look closely at the picture until much later, when I realized an owlet was also looking out. And it was months after that as I finally edited the picture I realized an antelope squirrel was running down the rock on the right. I took other pictures as we circled around the loop, some with compositions I like better or with softer light, but I love this little slice of life. This section of the desert has few saguaros and the wildlife is dominated by small mammals and those that eat them.
You won’t see Bear in the picture but I do, not only was he standing beside me but I only found this trail because of him, as it is the easiest to access from our house and a great place to hike with him when I’m short on time. So for me this picture is as much about a slice of my life as theirs.
Far and away my favorite rock is folk rock but Cathedral Rock is pretty nice too (given how many made up names I use for my favorite places in the preserve, I should point out this is the official name of this massive rock formation at the foot of Cholla Mountain). This visit a couple of weeks ago was Bear’s first, I’ve been here before but not in a while as the potholes can hold water long after it rains, which tends to attract my arch-enemies the bees. I had a wonderful experience here with two desert spiny lizards in 2018, and in the same year saw two of the three Gila monsters I’ve ever seen on the trail leading here, which is a good reminder to visit more often when the rocks aren’t buzzing.
While walking Bear I noticed a large mural painted across a boulder in the desert and wondered who the artist was. While I don’t usually bring the telephoto zoom on dog walks, I had it on this occasion and there’s a nice spot on the trail here to stop for a snack break. As Bear lapped up his water I trained the lens on the rocks and was shocked to see the artist-in-residence was in residence! Bear isn’t much of a birder, especially not when they’re this far off, he’s more fond of mammals. There are lots of jackrabbits here, when he sees one his eyes light up as if to say “Giant rabbit!”, which isn’t quite true but I’m not going to split hares with the pup.
A pair of Harris’s hawks look out from a large boulder as the setting sun colors the rocks red. Earlier in the evening I saw a family of five on one of the big electrical towers but I’ve not seen the birds on these rocks before. From a distance I could see three forms on the boulders and couldn’t imagine what else they could be, by the time I got close the third had flown off but these two stayed to watch the sun set with me.
I love watching whales when they break the surface of the desert, their faces are covered in barnacles but sometimes they have an extra passenger along for the ride. In this case it was either a desert spiny lizard or a very tiny mermaid, there’s no way to be sure.
One of my favorite moments is when the rising sun first sweeps its light across the desert. I’ve played around with different ways of photographing it on days off when I manage to get up before sunrise, which is rare these days. I love simple scenes and when we moved here made a mental note to photograph this one next to the trailhead, only to realize the other day I had never done it. I thought I’d prefer the scene when it was more strongly lit but my favorite three images were over a 40 second span when the rising sun just fell upon the boulder and tree and left the foreground in shadow. At the moment this is my favorite of those three.
In late July I had a quiet moment with our not-so-quiet state bird, the cactus wren. The sun had mostly dipped below the mountains as it posed for a moment before flying off with two others. More robin-sized than wren-sized, they don’t seem to cock their tails like their smaller cousins, but their personalities remind me of the ever-entertaining marsh wrens I watched in the Northwest. On recent hikes they’ve kept me company calling out from either side of the trail while mostly staying out of sight.
Boolie 