Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
The early morning light falls on one of my favorite saguaros, I love its wavy pattern and look for it whenever I’m hiking Brown’s Ranch Road. If you’re too young to understand the reference in the title and never experienced adjusting horizontal and vertical hold on a television, consider yourself lucky. In my day …
This ocotillo had just started leafing out in the middle of July with the arrival of summer thunderstorms in the Sonoran Desert. The white-winged dove perched in the morning light is one of thousands I have seen, they are not only the bird I see most in our backyard but out in the desert as well, never more so when seemingly one or two or three were atop every saguaro as they devoured the ripening fruit. But after a self-imposed two week ban to allow a knee to heal, I returned to the trails twice last weekend and didn’t see a single one. Not one!
From what I’ve read, the white-wings arrived in the desert about the time I did and will be leaving this fall. So I suppose in a month or so they will be gone from our backyard as well. The smaller mourning doves and much smaller Inca doves will appreciate it, the larger white-wings are more aggressive, but our cats and I will miss them.
I couldn’t tell if this antelope squirrel was delighted because it was happy to see me or because I had walked into its trap.
A desert cottontail eats dried grasses in the soft light before the sun was up on a warm spring morning. I was back on the trails this morning after taking a couple of weeks off to let a sore left knee heal and didn’t see a single cottontail (or jackrabbit), most of the time I see at least one if not a handful so either today I was unlucky or perhaps they are not as visible in the summer. I meant to go hiking yesterday but forgot to set my alarm so I walked the pup instead, Ellie and I saw four cottontails on a short walk in the neighborhood.
This mailbox down the street has a weasel delivery slot and I’m a little jealous. Although maybe it’s not for delivery but to allow safe passage of weasels from one side of the mailbox to the other. Either way the Postmaster General seems to approve.
There aren’t as many lizards in our neighborhood as I would like but we do have some.
I met this rock squirrel back in April a few weeks after we moved here. One of the reasons I love a telephoto zoom like the 100-400mm lens so much (this is the Canon, I only got the Sony recently) is that you can zoom in and take a traditional portrait of a small animal far away, like the shot below, but you can zoom out and take an environmental portrait as well like the picture above (when the scenery allows it). In this case I vastly prefer the environmental portrait as you get a feel for the massive rock this squirrel is perching under. Given more time I would have preferred an ever wider perspective with a different lens to show that it was perched high off the ground between much more massive granite boulders above and below than you can see here, but the squirrel only paused for a moment as it ran up the rocks at the approach of a dog on the trail.
I was struck by how at ease this rock squirrel was in the rocks as it moved about the narrow passages and great heights as easily and gracefully as a tree squirrel in the trees. I was delighted to find both rock squirrels and Harris’s antelope squirrels in the desert as I had mistakenly surmised I was leaving squirrels behind when we left Oregon. I fell in love with chipmunks and squirrels at an early age, we had a forest behind our house as a child in Michigan, I can’t remember ever not loving them. They’re a rarer treat now than then, but a treasured treat always.
In Portland my favorite things to photograph while walking Ellie were the neighborhood art and the old garages. It’s going to be more challenging in Scottsdale as while there is a lot of art around, most of it is up against people’s houses and out of my reach. There is some art accessible from the street but I might have to settle for mailbox decorations more often than not. Of course the other limitation is Ellie wants shorter walks these days so the streets she chooses determines what I see. Which is fine, it’s walking with her I treasure most.
I like this garden we pass on our walks, these aren’t the native cacti I see on the trails and not the kind I’d plant in my own garden, but I like the variety of shapes and textures from the different plants. I’m assuming the statue is St. Francis of Assisi because of his love for the natural world. I’m hoping when we’re ready to buy we find a house that already has native desert landscaping but if not it’s something I’d like to add. I do appreciate the little strip of grass in our backyard because Ellie loves rolling around in it so.
This cottontail kept sniffing the base of the old saguaro and hopping up where there were no spines, hopping down, and sniffing some more. Cottontails are the mammal I see most frequently both in the desert and in our neighborhood. Fortunately our dog Ellie pays them no mind, she’s never cared about wildlife even in her younger years. Although we still see them on our walks it’s been a week or two since one has been in our backyard, is there a number I can call to complain about this?
Boolie 