Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
A xenolith provides a handy perch for a Gambel’s quail to survey the surrounding desert. This xenolith has tricked me many times as at a distance it looks like it could be a spiny lizard sunning on the boulder, and even though I know better I often can’t help from looking through the long lens, just to be sure. It’s not an entirely bad instinct, it’s how one day I went back for a second look and turned a cactus into a bobcat.
This black-throated sparrow, nestled back in a buckhorn cholla, almost seemed reluctant to emerge and greet the rising sun but perhaps I was projecting.
I was off on Friday but woke with such a severe headache I didn’t even get out of bed for a neighborhood walk. Saturday morning I was mostly feeling better and ventured out for a gentle hike on a favorite loop. Awaiting me in the blue light, the sun still thinking of rising, was not only a male ladder-backed woodpecker but this female, perched a few feet below. I saw her briefly the previous week though I didn’t know it at first, while photographing the male I stooped down to get a drink and returned to photograph him, only realizing later while reviewing the pictures that his red crown disappeared in the second set. The old switcheroo! May you raise a lovely family, little ones.
With the sun rising behind me and Brown’s Mountain before, this is my more typical view of curve-billed thrashers, watching me watching it from high atop a saguaro on the wonderful Latigo Trail.
As we approach the anniversary of our first year in the house I added my 37th yardbird today, of all things a ladder-backed woodpecker. I saw 26 birds in our sixteen years at our Portland house, the urban neighborhood didn’t lend itself to the diversity of wildlife we see here. Equally as delightful are the numerous regulars we see despite the small size of the backyard, including the first bird I saw after we bought the house, the curve-billed thrasher. One is currently feeding a fledgling though we’ve not yet passed the Ides of March! As piercing as their yellow eyes is their song, while I was photographing some woodpeckers a month ago a nearby thrasher let out such an ear-piercing cry I’m surprised I didn’t fall over into the pool! More typically I hear their calls carrying across the desert as they are frequent companions on the trails, one of the many joys of the desert.
I never expected to see a Sonoran elephant but there she was, standing still with the sun about to rise. Smaller than her African cousins and without the trademark flappy ears, hers were long and rounded like her legs and trunk, swirling into the sky. I barely dared breathe for fear of startling her but she welcomed me and together we admired the rising sun. I like to think she gets up every morning before the others stir to stand there in quiet worship and the question is not so much will she be there, but will I.
One of the problems with hiking early in the morning, apart from it being early in the morning, is that several of my favorite trails go east from the trailhead straight into the rising sun. While I liked how it backlit this mockingbird high atop an old saguaro, maybe the sun could sometimes rise in the west? The south? The north? I’m willing to be flexible.
The first light of day filtered through the desert scrub, bathing a doe and her two fawns in orange light. I too was dressed in orange, my jacket a holdover from my time in Oregon when I walked to the train station and needed every advantage to be seen by drivers who weren’t looking for me. I stick out like a sore thumb in the desert and have thought about replacing it with something less distracting, but for the moment I’ve held off as it does make me more visible both from a distance and a glance to the cyclists I share the trails with.
Though she’s looking at me for eternity in this picture, the doe paid me little heed as I stood quietly and watched the trio graze as the sun rose. Suddenly to my right a young buck and doe crossed the trail and I stopped taking pictures for a while, obviously I was rather visible but I didn’t want to make any noise as the mother doe was slightly nervous at the new arrivals. She relaxed when the two showed no aggression and they all breakfasted together, coming in and out of view through the shrubs and trees and cacti, when suddenly they bolted and disappeared from view. I soon heard why as two cyclists came riding up the trail, we said our good mornings and they too disappeared from view. A lovely quiet morning on the Watershed Trail.
Even though Cavalliere Park is the closest to us I didn’t initially think I would visit as my favorite trailhead lies further up the street with a diversity of trails beckoning. But my mind changed when I discovered the small multi-use park has an advantage the other local parks don’t have: you can stay through sunset (and even later). Probably not something I’ll take advantage of during the high heat of summer but on this winter evening it let me photograph some birds in the last light of the day. I took this quick picture of the car as the light was rapidly fading, I was always happy to see my Subaru after a long day at work or a tiring trek on the trails and thankfully I quickly came to feel the same way about the Lexus.
I wouldn’t describe flickers as quiet birds though it seemed so relative to the pairs of wrens and thrashers and Gila woodpeckers that were making a ruckus around him on a winter’s morning. As I watched him watch the others he reminded me of a driver atop a massive vehicle and I wished the saguaros could slowly shuffle across the desert, so that where you found the old giants would depend on where the birds last parked them.
Boolie 