Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
I was a bit surprised to see birds building nests in cacti when we moved here as it didn’t seem to be the most comfortable place to raise your children but I can see how it might keep ground predators at bay. This nest in a teddy bear cholla looked out over the desert from atop the debris field along the Marcus Landslide Trail. The nest was no longer in use as I took this at sunrise on Christmas Eve, I’m glad I didn’t wait as over the winter the nest slowly disintegrated.
“No, no, you’re totally hidden behind the bush.”
Taken last year, got to watch this one for half an hour, have only had fleeting glimpses this year.
In Oregon we got occasional heavy downpours but mostly the summers were bone dry while the winter had frequent drizzly showers that kept everything damp and preposterously green. In Arizona we get some rain in the winter but it’s summer that brings the monsoons. Rain may be rare but when it arrives it often pours down in buckets, perhaps accompanied by high winds and thunder and lightning (I can count on one hand the number of lightning storms I saw in two decades in Oregon). I haven’t seen much rain this year, when it has rained I’ve either been at work or it’s been dark, so I still haven’t seen a wash run. Our neighborhood is on a hill so there are washes running through (one beside our house), some more natural looking than others, so one day it will happen. This chair would have an excellent view of a running wash, sitting in the middle of a desert wash along the Gooseneck Trail, and by the looks of it has probably seen its fair share of summer storms.
The trend of being too tired to go hiking in the morning continues with one exception, I woke up early on Monday and couldn’t get back to sleep so I went for a short hike before work. I was rewarded with my second look, and first good look, at a tarantula since we moved here. I’ve just started researching them but I think this is probably a male, and probably out looking for a mate. If so, he’s not got much time left on this earth. Given that I saw the bobcat on a quick hike before work, perhaps next time I’ll also see something unusual. Fingers crossed, maybe the Sonoran sasquatch aka the desert yeti!
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.
Boolie 