Farewell, monsoon!

According to NOAA, we are about to experience a virtually unprecedented weather phenomenon in which, at the height of the monsoon, the whole southern wind pattern will shut down, the air will dry out, and temps will rise to Junelike highs. This starts tomorrow, and they don’t say when or if the monsoonal flow will return.

It’s been very humid. This is the first year we turned on the a/c at the beginning of the monsoon season (in mid-June this year). I’ve noticed that I have NO connection to the actual weather. No scent of creosote from the rains, no sense of how hot or humid it may be outside. Opening the door and actually going outside is a big surprise, every time. I think I like it better using the swamp cooler, at least in a psychic sense, but must admit that the a/c is more comfortable. [Click on the picture for a closer view of the startled whitewing at the upper left.]

As the quail turns…

But first—have I mentioned that my pond is infested with bees?

They come to soak themselves, then fly back to the hive, where they act as living cooler pads, standing around while other bees beat their wings, creating a cool, moist breeze. The ones that soak themselves gather on rocks in the pond, and, lately, around the mouth of my spitting turtle. There are hundreds of them.  Click for a really gross closeup.

As for the quail, I think I will quite worrying about them. Despite a few really strong storms, the numbers of chicks seem undiminished. The families literally line up to use the quail block, and they come in waves, with one, two, three, a dozen chicks. After they eat, if there’s no squabbling, they all drink their fill, then wipe both sides of their beaks on rocks. If there’s no territorial squabbling, they then fluff and groom themselves almost like cats.

But first: fishook pincushion cacti are blooming all over the place. These little guys (mammillaria grahamii) are just a couple of inches tall, but they have big, candy-colored pink blooms.

And now the Darwinian moment: A family of eleven was at the quail block (nine chicks). The parents stopped feeding and looked up, alert, then rushed over to the corner of the garden, where they started frantically scratching and pecking at something. They moved closer to me and I saw they were pecking at a little chick. It must have gotten lost, and been calling for its parents.
The other chicks gathered round while their parents continued to attack the abandoned chick, then the whole family left. The abandoned chick just stood there, looking dazed and confused, but was apparently unhurt because it began to look around, I suppose searching for its family. It pecked a little at the quail block. I was thinking this wouldn't be a bad place to live alone if it could avoid being killed by the adult quails. But then a female adult showed up. They showed no recognition of each other, but after a few moments the female left and the chick followed her, so I guess she was its mother.

Monsoonarama

The weather service has been forecasting a major heat wave that will dry things out and temporarily stop the monsoon. So I expected no rain yesterday. Around 6 PM the wind picked up, thunder began to roll, and the definition of torrential unspooled itself before our eyes. It was raining so hard you could barely see the cactus in the back of our property. The wind blew all this rain sideways. The backyard quickly turned into a lake.

When it was all over, I checked the rain gauge: over .60 of an inch. Most of it fell in about twenty minutes. The wind blew my pomegranate tree down, but it didn’t break and the roots didn’t come out, so it may be okay. We tied it to the fence with some torn strips of bedsheet. We’ll stake it later.

The only real downside is that yesterday I saw a quail  family with THIRTEEN newly-hatched chicks. I fear they may not have made it through the storm.

Quail update

No pictures—just a quick update. There have been many quail families feeding at the quail block. The largest have about ten chicks, the smallest one. I’m guessing three is about the average.

One family with eight chicks has one that is crippled—its left wing was dragging on the ground when it first appeared as a hatchling. I’ve been watching, expecting it to disappear like the little one-winged chick did last year. But lately, as it grows older, the chick seems to be healing. His wing no longer drags and is starting to look normal. Maybe he will be okay!

On the other hand, that same family left this morning with three chicks still here, feeding on the other side of the quail block. When they noticed they were alone, they finally took off too, but in the wrong direction.

Tohono Chul Cacti

Tohono Chul is a prime example of beautiful Sonoran desert vegetation. The gorgeous saguaro above is just off the trail we followed to see the cereus. The white-wing on top of the saguaro is one of many, many species that live in or visit the park. During this trip I also saw an oriole and a nighthawk as well as dozens of normal desert birds.

Many cactus besides cereus bloom at sunset or at night. This is an evening-blooming staghorn cholla:

And below, a backlit teddybear cholla and its blossoms:

Quail Mayhem!

I have noticed that adult males will attack straggling chicks. Today I saw something even scarier, though it was preceded by a very cute incident.

There have been a lot of baby quails lately. This morning a family of ten hatchlings showed up. This afternoon, a family of nine hatchlings plus a single mom appeared. I don’t know if it was the same family as this morning. Anyway, the mama started to lead her babies to the quail block, but saw another family there—both parents and three somewhat older chicks. So she led her little band onto my porch, where I was able to take these pictures through the screen.

I didn’t snap it, but when the babies first got to the porch all of them—who must have fed at the quail block previously-- pecked at the brick wall, obviously expecting it to yield yummy seeds.

The mama quail must have been pretty hungry, because she eventually tried to feed by herself, but the papa quail attacked her fiercely, jumping on her and pecking the heck out of her.

The last I saw of her, she was heading off away from the quail block with her tiny chicks following her.

HUMBATH

I water our young mesquite tree with a hose running slowly over a flat rock, to avoid digging a hole in the tree well. The other morning as I did other things around the garden I noticed a female hummer (maybe a Costa?) bathing on the mesquite rock. She laid herself out flat and wriggled around, making sure to get all parts wet. It was adorable. I managed to get a picture of it and another of her in the tree, doing contortions as she groomed herself.

HAWK UPDATE
The hawk is still around, though not nearly as frequently as before we put the shelter up. The other afternoon it appeared twice. Once, all the doves and quail exploded out from under the shelter about ten seconds before the hawk appeared. The second time, same thing but not everyone got the message. A couple of quail and one rabbit were caught under the pomegranate tree. All three remained absolutely motionless. The hawk looked closely everywhere he could see, but apparently the birds and the rabbit were invisible to him. He flew off and the quail skedaddled, but the rabbit remained there for quite a while.
Above are a male quail and a rabbit that allowed me to photograph them a couple of mornings ago, and below is one of a number of babies that showed up with the daddy quail and his mate. This is the first time quail have actually appeared while I was out on the porch.

More from Tohono Chul

The cereus are all over the park, but most of them are along a circular trail (maybe 3/4 of a mile long) that winds through desert hills and washes. The path was illuminated by luminarias, paper bags holding candles.

Many of the cereus have nameplates. The one above is named “Dorothy,” after a former girlfriend of the curator. He said it was not nepotism, as they are named after the person who finds them.

Before the buds fully open, they look like eggs or cotton bolls:

Younger buds look like bumps. I think there may be an immature bud on the end of one of the branches above.

More night blooms:

Queen of the Night

Last night we went to “Bloom Night” at nearby Tohono Chul Park. This event is held every year to celebrate the once-yearly, one-night-only bloom of the Night-blooming Cereus, an otherwise unprepossessing cactus.

I will have more posts about our adventures at Tohono Chul. According to the Curator of Plants, plants have a “chemical intelligence” that allows them to communicate with each other. There are several hundred cereus in the park, and they need to bloom in unison so they can be cross-fertilized by the sphinx moth, their only pollinator. Not all the cereus bloom on the same night, but most do; others will bloom, also in unison, on one or two more nights during the monsoon.

They start blooming at sunset and continue into the night. After an hour or so they emit a heavy, almost cloying scent. When it’s not blooming, the cereus looks like a weed:

Please check out the Tohono O’odham legend of the cereus, which the curator read to us. The very touching story, “The Legend of Old White-Haired Woman,”  is about two-thirds down the page: http://www.tohonochulpark.org/Art/NBC.html

My scummy pond

My pond gets overrun with string algae, and there’s not much I can do about it. It’s worst in the early summer when the sun shines all the time.

The algae look as if they’d be slimy to the touch, but they are not; they are soft and fibrous. The only way to get rid of them is to remove them manually. Every morning I spend a few minutes raking the pond.

Smart birds!

I have a cardinal feeder that is weighted so that only birds of a certain weight—cardinals and pyrrhuloxias—can feed from the perch.  The bird lands and the perch drops to just the right height, opening the feeding window. Heavier birds like doves cause the perch to drop too far, while lighter birds like finches and sparrows can’t get the perch to move at all.

The other day I saw that a pair of house finches had figured it out. Somehow they learned that if BOTH got on the perch at the same time it would drop to just the right height. It was a little awkward, and required some fluttering of wings to maintain balance, but they repeatedly mounted the perch, taking turns feeding.

 

House finches (above); pyrrhuloxia on feeder (below)

Gorgeous Desert

It’s getting hot early, and soon all the vibrant colors will be gone. So here are a few looks at what I’ve been seeing lately.

Above is the palo verde in our front yard; below is a view of the neighborhood from our back yard.

I realize that saguaro looks as if it could use some Viagra. And finally, a white-wing dove on a saguaro at sunrise.

Major Bird News

Well,  the big thing is that the baby quail have started appearing. I have one family of five or six, in which the chicks are all kindergarten or first grade, just starting to get their mohawks. Another family only has one chick, a little bitty thing that looks as if it hatched maybe a couple of days ago. I wonder what happened to the rest of the eggs?

I haven’t seen the mockingbird again, but yesterday morning I had a beautiful orange male Bullock’s oriole (it had a mask like The Lone Ranger) and  parent and chick curved-bill thrashers have been on the porch and at the quail block. The adults have amber-colored eyes, while the babies have grey eyes. They are almost the same size, but the chicks are fluffier and constantly begging for food.

I have not seen the hawk ONCE since we put up the shade over the quail block.

MOUNTAIN LION!!!

…or maybe not. We got home from errands this morning to find a flyer in our mailbox:

MOUNTAIN LION SIGHTING ON CAMINO PADRE

• 26 lb dog killed on Thurs Apr 30th
• Sighting Sat morning while walking
• Officer from Game and Fish came out and found coyote, Javelina and Bobcat tracks.

There was also a photo of a mountain lion (like the one above, from the AZ Game and Fish Dept.) and contact info.

I was really excited at first, but then I started thinking. A 26 lb dog is not all that big, and I’m pretty sure that one or two coyotes could kill one. The officers from Game and Fish found coyote, javelina, and bobcat tracks—which makes sense because those animals are very common around here. But no mountain lion tracks.

I think someone saw a large bobcat and let her or his imagination run away. But… it’s possible. Mountain lions have been spotted in this neighborhood in recent years. Our street, Camino de los Padres, is only about 1/2 mile long, so maybe if there is one around I’ll get to see it. Hopefully from a safe distance.

What Else Is Blooming

Mexican Bird of Paradise

      

Orange Bells (related to Yellow Bells and to Cape Honeysuckle)

 

Pink-flowers bush (I don’t know its name but it is in the back yard.)

Hanging geranium.

And last, but not least:

 

Purple prickly pear (at the neighbors’ house)

Miscellaneous bird notes

QUAIL. Last night I sat on the porch and counted quails into the dorm tree. I counted eight, but at least two sneaked in from the side. These days the birds I see, including these, are mostly paired up. So I guess they haven’t started their broods yet. I’m assuming they would sleep on the nest.

ROADRUNNER.  We see roadrunners pretty often on our walks around the neighborhood. The other morning, while walking alone, I encountered a very young roadrunner at the intersection of two small streets. It was comparatively small, but otherwise looked like the one in this picture, a stock photo from www.fotosearch.com. I don’t think it had encountered a human before. It started running down the street ahead of me, frequently looking over its shoulder. Whenever it seemed to think I was gaining, it speeded up. We went about a block that way. Finally it figured out that it could peel off into a driveway.

BEAUTIFUL MOCKINGBIRD! I had one in my garden this morning. It was repeatedly shaking its feathers, and it took me a moment to realize that it was a juvenile, calling to be fed (I couldn’t hear it through the closed glass door). Mockingbirds are my favorite birds (along with hummers), and I keep hoping that one or two will set up housekeeping in our yard. Maybe this guy will when he grows up. This mockingbird is from my old yard:

ORIOLES. This morning I also had a pair of orioles in my garden using the pond. I don’t know what kind they were. I believe one was a juvenile, and my best guess is Bullock’s Oriole, or possibly Scott’s Oriole. The other, which I only glimpsed for a second, was a female, maybe the mother.

Hawk shield and Buddha

We put a hawk shield up a few days ago. It consists of a small frame with a roof of shadecloth. The quail block is underneath it. We were worried that the birds would no longer use the quail block, but they apparently love the shade.

I haven’t seen the hawk since we put the shield up, but that may be a coincidence. When startled, the birds all explode out from underneath the shelter. I am holding my breath to see what happens when the baby quail start arriving.

In the corner of the shelter, by the porch, I have placed a garden Buddha. Below are the view from my desk and a closeup of the Buddha.

 

Got lemons?

After giving away literally dozens of lemons from our two lemon trees (one, the dorm tree, is a Meyer lemon tree), and after removing untold more dozens of lemons that had fallen on the ground, and after having used a few dozen ourselves, we turned the trees (and a small orange tree) over to a harvester from The Community Food Bank. It took him about five hours, but he told us he took away nearly 350 pounds of fruit!

The tiny orange fruit remaining on the tree are NOT kumquats. I think they are ornamental oranges. They are too bitter to eat. They are actually on a second tree that is intertwined with the Meyer Lemon tree.

Sabino 2

Sabino has changed a lot since I moved back here twenty years ago. So many big old trees are gone, but this is how nature designs it.

The damage from the floods has been pretty much repaired, but if you look closely you can see where the huge rockslides occurred,

and there are a number of places where the rock face has been bolted down, like this (next to the water):

Still, of course, a glorious and beautiful place.

What’s blooming

These are some of the flowers that are blooming around our house these days:

Salvia

Brittle bush

Yellow bells

Roses

Bougainvillea

A bunch of other things are also blooming, including the citrus trees, the pomegranate tree, aloes, ocotillo, and several things that I don’t know the names of. The best are the citrus trees because they smell so beautiful.