July 20, 2005

Hooray! The monsoon has finally arrived! It started two nights ago wtih a tremendous thunderstorm that brought little rain (here, anyway) and tons of lightning and thunder. There were trees down all over the city, some of which we saw today on the riverwalk. Also power outages, though not here. Although we had one of our own a few days earlier.

Still plenty of quail around. Yesterday I saw a gorgeous white spiny lizard with a blue collar and belly and tan and gold stripes on its back and flanks. It is possibly leucistic, though spiny lizards are capable of changing color to match the ambient temperature: the hotter it gets the lighter they get.

And I just saw a very intelligent white-wing dove (a seeming oxymoron). He was clnging to the perch on the cardinal feeder and trying to insert his beak into the space between the feeder cover and the feeder hole. He obviously got how the thing worked, but wasn't able to figure out how to beat the system.