Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Last year in one glance on a spring morning I was reminded of my former home of two decades and my new home of two months. The softest of rains fell on the desert, reminding me of the gentle winter rains of the Pacific Northwest. The raindrops collected on the sharp spines of the saguaro, giants in this intoxicating desert that have drawn me out time and time again. I’ve long since grown accustomed to seeing saguaros but may I never tire of them or take them for granted.
What’s better than spending sunrise in the desert? Spending sunrise in the desert with a sleepy lizard. Taken in late September, they’re hard to find now that the weather has cooled.
I didn’t read comics as a kid but I watched the Superfriends on TV and was enamored with Aquaman’s ability to communicate with animals. It would have come in handy on this morning in May as the master blister beetle was trying to move from one blossom to the next but finding it too far out of its reach. I would have loved to tell it to sit still and that I’d gently push the stem closer to the other flower, but alas I could not. Rather than scare it I left it alone, eventually it gave up and moved back down the stem. While I didn’t know it at the time there’s an extra reason not to lend a literal helping hand to these beetles as if they feel threatened they can cause caustic yellow blood to ooze from their legs, which can blister human skin. Lovely to watch though!
It was two years ago today that my team got laid off, setting in motion the events that brought us from Oregon to Arizona. To me it feels like we left Portland much longer ago but that we’ve been here much shorter. I haven’t ventured further afield than my local trails, that will change with time but for now I’m content to enjoy the pictures people post as they travel the state. While Ellie was with us I didn’t want to be away from her more than I had to be, then with the new house and a lot to learn at work it’s left me a bit thin at times. Thankfully I am blessed with an abundance of local trails, to the point that some mornings I have difficulty choosing where I want to go. And there is so much wonder to behold in the Sonoran Desert, such as this Harris’s hawk I met in June with the blossoms fading and the sun rising, one of the adults that helped raise the two young hawks in the saguaro nest further up the trail.
A Gila woodpecker takes out a lump of poop from her nest, generated by her ever-hungry babies, a necessary cleanup the parents must occasionally do after bringing a steady stream of insects to feed the little ones. Taken in May on the Latigo Trail.
Taken last October in the Buenavante neighborhood of Scottsdale.
A female Gila woodpecker is for the briefest of moments in free fall after jumping from her nest in a saguaro. It took me a while to notice this behavior, everything happens so quickly when they enter and leave the nest, and took even longer before I could find the right conditions to photograph it. It looks rather unnatural when frozen in time, one foot still sticking out below her while her wings are tucked up tight, but the nest is high off the ground so even though the fall is brief she has plenty of time to put a little distance between herself and her sharp-spined home before throwing out her wings.
A female Gila woodpecker, the mate of the male in the previous picture, prepares to land at the nest with a moth in her beak. They fly in at full speed, throwing up their legs and flaring their wings at the last moment, it’s a delight to watch.
Boolie 