Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
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.
Taken a week before the other image of this face in the moss, this time during a cold snap that gave the moss a frosted look in the minutes before the sun began to warm the desert floor. I’ve been meaning to look for it again when passing on more recent hikes, to see if the moss has grown enough to cover the eyes and mouth, but I keep forgetting when I’m in the area (today included).
How lucky am I that the bird I most hoped to see when we moved to Arizona, I get to see every day. Sometimes rather close.
When I think of flower stalks I think of the delicate stems of the wildflowers I’d see on hikes through most of my life, like daisies or columbine or fairly slippers. The soaptree yucca, on the other hand, has a towering stalk that’s thick at the base like a tree limb before tapering into thin branches at the top. Even so it is a testament to how impossibly light birds are that this bedraggled thrasher only slightly depressed its perch as it sang on a sunny winter morning.
The wash wasn’t running. Neither was the car.
A flash of red
atop my head
because you said
you loved me.
Boolie 