Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
I thought there might be a tussle when the thrasher on the right flew onto the saguaro as the other ate from one of the fruits but perhaps they were a pair as they got along fine. They had both been enjoying their breakfast as their beaks were caked in dried pulp.
I’ve struggled to keep up with music in the many years since I left school but this past year I’ve discovered a wide variety of singers completely new to me, such as this black-throated sparrow singing below the Marcus Landslide.
This white-winged dove had been eating a lot of saguaro fruit as evidenced by the juice and pulp caking its face, but its chunky appearance is because the sleepy bird fluffed out its feathers while perched atop its cactus.
A pair of Harris’s hawks with a good view of the surrounding desert on a hot summer morning in July, an adult on the left and a youngster on the right. Taken in a different section of the preserve from the two families I watched this spring.
A verdin pauses below its nest of sticks in a buckhorn cholla, a spider in its beak, hungry mouths inches away waiting to be fed. Taken in May, both parents were constantly bringing little soft-bodied creatures to the nest.
Taken with my telephoto lens at max zoom, plus a teleconverter, to keep enough distance so we were both comfortable.
One more bobcat photo, this is the first one I took of my second ever sighting. Though most of the sky was blue, there were low lying clouds in the east that were frequently changing the light. This morning it worked in my favor as clouds partially obscured the sun as I walked back to check out what initially looked like a coyote-shaped cactus. The clouds not only softened the light but made it more diffuse so that the left side of the cat’s face isn’t in such deep shadow. If I could only choose one I’d prefer the shot where it is peering over the rocks but I also like how here the bobcat’s lovely face is fully shown while it verified I wasn’t a threat before settling in for a nap.
If my former home in the the Pacific Northwest was a paradise of blue and green I could describe my current home in the Sonoran Desert as a paradise of blue and brown, but that would not quite be true. There is far more green in this desert than I was expecting, a dusty green to match the dusty landscape and not the lush blinding greens of the Columbia River Gorge, but green just the same. But it is true enough for this scene, the brown cat in the brown hills, the blue sky behind. There were three pictures I wanted to take on that summer morning, a close shot of the bobcat, this more distant environmental portrait, and an even wider shot showing the rocks down to the desert floor. The latter I didn’t take as since I’m only shooting with one camera I didn’t want to risk taking off the telephoto zoom in case the cat walked up onto the top of the rocks. Instead it settled down for a nap on the ledge in the middle of the frame, out of sight of both me and the rising sun.
A male Gila woodpecker takes flight as he heads off to search for insects, spiders, and other soft food to bring back to the nest. Both parents were relentless in catching food for their growing children. Taken in May on a sunny spring morning on the Latigo Trail.
I’m not the only one who thinks the sun rises too early.
Boolie 