Cool Things at Tohono Chul Park the third week in August

The weather has been extremely humid and hot, but I’ve seen a number of really wonderful things at the Park during my last few visits. Every bird walk has resulted in at least one beautiful and sometimes unexpected bird. For example, a couple of days ago a visitor and I saw and heard a gorgeous curve-billed thrasher. She was new to birding, and was thrilled to see a bird she’d only heard about. On that same visit, we saw a huge gopher snake near the Desert Living Courtyard.
  It was curlicued alongside the path, with its head just resting at the edge of a large rodent hole. It was so quiet at first I thought it might have been dead, but then I saw its tongue flick, as it smelled its breakfast-to-be.
On the way out of the Park, we saw a Greater Earless Lizard, the first I have seen in the Park. It was near the Overlook, and at first I thought it was just a large zebratail. It has actually lost its tail. Except for being tailless, it looks quite a bit like this beauty I photographed at Catalina State Park: The lizard at TCP is much brighter yellow. Quite a good-looking reptile. And speaking of yellow, on our bird walk Monday, my colleague Marcia and I saw a mystery flycatcher. I think it was a brown-crested, because of the size of its bill and the very yellow appearance of its belly, but it might have been an ash-throated. Those guys drive me crazy. Take a look. What do YOU think?

HEARTBREAK!

I’m very sorry to report that the whitewing dove’s nest, so lovingly built by the hardworking parents, is no more. When I got to the Park yesterday morning, I saw that the winds of the previous night had shredded it.
Then I looked down, below the nest, to see a sad sight:
                                                                             
While I was photographing the broken eggs, the male dove arrived and did a double-take when he saw the nest (and his mate) were gone. He then sat on the crossbeam and began cooing, repeatedly, the saddest sound I’ve ever heard a bird make.

White winged dove and nest

                                                                                                                     
I hope they rebuild soon, in a safer spot.

Whitewings nesting

A big tentlike canvas structure shades the Overlook, which is where we meet for all Park tours, and where we hold Reptile Ramble. Yesterday I watched a pair of whitewing doves building a nest atop one of the pillars that holds up the shade.

White winged doves building nest

Daddy’s on the left; mom is on the right. She stayed on the nest the whole time I watched, alternately moving the twigs around, fluffing the nest, and resting.

Female white-winged on nest

Meanwhile, her mate went searching for twigs to bring her. He was very, very particular—one might even say a bit OCD. I watched him pick up and reject dozens of twigs from several gardens around the Overlook. When he found one he liked, he would take it to her and place it on the nest. She always immediately moved it to a different spot while he took off to search again.

Male white winged dove

“There’s got to be one around here somewhere….”

Male white winged dove

“Nope. Nothing in here.”

Finally, he made his way to the area underneath the nest, where a handful of dropped sticks lay.

Male white winged dove

“Say, these look good!”

Male white winged dove

“This one is perfect!”

Male white winged dove with nesting material

He’s got the goods!

“Here I come, sweetie!”

Male and female white winged doves on nest

Finis.

The Costa’s Brothers

Last September, I wrote about these two juvenile Costa’s hummingbirds who were uneasily sharing a feeder in our rose garden that hangs from a clothesline. This is such unusual hummer behavior that I thought they might be nest-mates who still shared a bond of sorts.
This week, a pair of full-grown Costa’s hummers were sharing the same clothesline and the same feeder. See the picture below. My speculation is even wilder: could these be the same two birds from last year, still traveling together and still “sharing” to the extent that a hummingbird can share?

Butterfly first aid

This gorgeous butterfly is a giant swallowtail, also known as an “orange dog” for laying its eggs on citrus leaves. When I was out watering yesterday I saw this insect crawling on the ground. Clearly it would not survive out on the ground like that, so I picked it up and put it on my fatsia plant, in the shade and relative safety of the porch. It crawled onto a leaf and hung there as you see it.
I believe it had just hatched and hadn’t had time to strengthen itself for its launch into the world. I may have knocked it down while watering. I went back a few times and it hadn’t moved, so I thought it might have died.
Then, I went out later, and saw that its wings were open. I went for my camera, but it fluttered to the end of the porch:

Then it flew into the garden, landed briefly on the pomegranate tree, and fluttered off into the breeze and its destiny.

The Big Chill

We have just gone through two of the coldest nights EVER in Tucson. Here’s my pond:

Here’s the poor dead hummingbird that succumbed to hypothermia yesterday:

There are a few hummers around today, fighting and feeding. I think my grapefruit tree is dead. It looks really awful. I can’t even bear to think about the hummingbirds out in the wild that have no source of nectar but frozen flowers. Sad, sad, sad.

How birds avoid cactus spines

Did you ever wonder how birds like cactus wrens and curve-billed thrashers navigate cholla cactus without getting stuck? A couple of days ago I watched a curve-billed thrasher check out a cholla, probably seeking a good nesting site. Right after he landed on the end of a cholla segment, but before walking in and out of the cactus’ depths, he first folded his wings in an X in the back, making himself much slimmer. I plan to watch closely to see if cactus wrens do this too!
NOTE: I did not take the above picture, and don’t know who did. But wish I had.

The Year of the Rabbit

I consider it very good luck that on the third day of the Year of the Rabbit, I saw a jackrabbit for the first time ever at the Park. At first, I thought the huge thing bounding away from me was a coyote. But bounding? And then there were the huge ears. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture, but I did snap this portrait of hare poop, which is bigger and lighter in color than bunny poop:

About an hour later, on the South Trail, I caught a beautiful male cardinal posing. All in all a good day!

Leaf-cutters and birds

On Mondays I rove from 8 AM to 11. This week the temperature started in the low forties and went up around twenty degrees. It was a beautiful, cloudless, windless day, and there were lots of birds all through the Park: pyrrhuloxias, Abert’s towhees, black-tailed gnat-catchers (a pair), a Cooper’s hawk, possibly a juvenile red-tailed hawk, and all the usual suspects: housefinches, lesser goldfinches, cactus wrens, Gila woodpeckers, phainopeplas, a curved-bill thrasher, one of the first seen in ages, and probably others I’ve forgotten.

In one of the main wildflower beds we saw this leaf-cutter ant nest, clearly displaying the ant hill, the pieces of leaf, the trail of cut leaves. I get aggravated when they destroy my ornamental plants (they seem to love roses and pomegranates), but boy are they efficient! They do not actually eat the leaf and flower bits, but rather feed the bits of plant to the colonies of fungus that they tend. Then they eat the fungus!

Tough Little Grossbeak

The juvenile grossbeak I wrote about last week somehow made it through the hard freeze, and has returned to the area in the Park where it was originally captured, the Sundial Plaza, near the center of everything. I saw it this morning hopping around on the ground, and also jumping from (very low) branch to branch among some bushes. Its broken wing protrudes awkwardly from its side, but doesn’t seem to be in the way. One of the groundskeepers who’s been keeping an eye on the grossbeak says that it has the strongest legs he’s ever seen on a bird.
Everyone in the Park who knows about it is rooting for this brave, tough little creature.
I tried to take a photo, and will try again, but the grossbeak is very fast, and has amazingly good protective coloration. So the photo above is of some flowers in the plaza near where I saw the grossbeak this morning.

New Focus

I haven’t been posting here often because so many of my nature observations are now made at Tohono Chul Park, where I’m a docent. I have decided to change the focus of my blog, and include what I see and hear at TCP.
(This beautiful male Gambel’s quail was photographed at the Park.)
Quick quail update: we regularly have more quail than I can count roosting in the front yard now.  Literally dozens. They fill the dorm tree, the pyracantha bush, and the bougainvillea, though since we’re having a hard freeze tonight the bougainvillea may no longer be a suitable place to bunk.
 
Today in the Park it was very cold, but I got to see a snake anyway (a day without snakes is like a day without sunshine). One of the volunteers couldn’t access his water valve box because a juvenile rattlesnake was brumating in it. This may have been one of the rattlers that hatched underneath our organpipe cactus in July (see above). Our herpetologist, Ed, asked that the young diamondback be left alone till Wednesday, when the night temps will be considerably warmer.
Last week one of the grounds crew caught a juvenile black-headed grosbeak with a broken wing. She was going to take it to wildlife rehab, but someone let it go. I heard today that it had been seen in a particular part of the Park, eating chiles and caterpillars (yum!). Then, before I left this morning, I saw it, in what looked like very good, safe habitat, hopping around. I hope it finds a warm place to sleep.

Odd Hummingbird Behavior

Yesterday afternoon and this morning I saw something I’ve never seen before: two hummingbirds seemingly co-guarding one feeder. The feeder in question dangles from a clothesline in our small “rose garden,” a patio that is covered with shade cloth this time of year.
I believe they are juvenile Costa’s. Both are often on the clothesline together. Sometimes they seem to take turns drinking from the feeder. Sometimes one will display at the other. Sometimes one will chase the other. Once I saw them “dueling” with their beaks.  But most of the time they just sit there, checking out each other and the general area. Sometimes they sit several inches apart, as in the above photo, and sometimes they sit right next to each other—once about half an inch apart.
Here is my theory: I think they are nestmates, and there is some faint memory that keeps them from inflicting total mayhem on one another. They are obviously uneasy with the situation, but do accept it.
Other hummers have tried to horn in, but these guys so far have chased everyone else away.

My Shade Garden (and quail update)

I have added some beautiful colored pots to my shade garden, containing only hibiscus, Chaparral sage, and chiltepin, all of which I’m pretty sure will live here. Outside the garden, life continues with the quails.
This was a very good year for them—many families are working on their second brood. Some of the large families are nearly intact, with near-adult chicks now. It’s quite amazing to see so many huge birds in such a small space.
A couple of days ago a largish family of high-school age chicks (6 or 8) was feeding, when another similar family approached from the west. Most of the first family cleared out except for two chicks who continued feeding, perhaps hoping no one would notice. Father #2 did notice, and chased those little chicks, one at a time, all over the garden until they were able to escape through the chain-link fence.
I can’t help but smile when I see quails, here or out on my walks. I love those little guys!

Major quail update

Wish I had newer quail photos. Oh, well.  A quick update. First, in the backyard, I have several families, not sure how many, ranging in size from 3 chicks to 15+. The chicks in the large family are probably junior high age by now. It’s amazing to me that the parents have managed to raise and protect so many. I’m assuming this is the family that started out with around 2 dozen hatchlings a few weeks ago.
In the front yard, my dorm tree has turned into a sort of bird concentration camp. I swear I don’t know how so many birds manage to sleep in the same fairly small space. A whole bunch of little birds—I think finches and sparrows, and some young cactus wrens, occupy the top branches. Then the quail come. One quail family, with six kids in high school, come every evening just before sunset. The chicks still aren’t very good at flying into the tree and actually landing in the branch they’re aiming for, but they all get it done. I’ve seen a couple of other lone adult birds go up there too. I haven’t spent enough time to know if there are others or not. Between the quail and the songbirds, the racket is quite impressive.

Just across the driveway, in one of the palo verdes, a family (?) of whitewings are nesting. I think it’s the mom and the two chicks she just fledged, plus another dove—maybe the father or her bff.

Snakes, squirrels, and pupfish

Just a quick update on the critters I’ve been seeing at the Park. This beautiful snake

is about a third of a longnosed snake I saw on a trail the other day… .
These little guys

are a family of round-tailed ground squirrels. The pups chase each other and wrestle like kittens or puppies. And speaking of pups,

here are Pupfish, an endangered species we are breeding at the Park. They can live in water up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit! And the males become fluorescent blue when they are in the mood, as these ones obviously are.

Quail update

I’ve been spending more time looking at nature at Tohono Chul Park than in my own backyard. But I am trying to keep an eye on the quail. There are still some roosting in the dorm tree out front, but I think most of them are with their young families.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen too many families, either here, or while out walking in the neighborhood, or in the Park. I don’t know if numbers are down or if, like everything else, quail baby season was somewhat delayed this year.
I have 1-3 families with 4-6 chicks each. I’m not sure. None of them spends much time at the quail block, though I’ve seen them drinking from the pond in the back. Above is  a picture of a quail couple I saw at TCP.

Flying and landing

There has been an active Costa’s hummingbird nest in a small oak tree near the education building at the Park. Everyone’s been saying for days that the two baby hummers are just about ready to leave the nest.
Well, today was the day, and I got to watch! The first baby out was already on a branch about a foot from the nest when I got there:

I watched it practice flying to another nearby branch: no problem. But it hadn’t given much thought about how to land, and spent a few comical seconds madly hovering before it figured out it needed to be ABOVE the branch before settling down. It continued to practice flying and landing while its sibling stretched its wings. Then mom came along and fed the still-sedentary hummer:

A fun morning!

Catalina State Park

More wildflowers! And a sex-crazed goldfinch! First, the wildflowers. Yesterday we went hiking in Catalina State Park, just on the other side of Pusch Ridge. About a mile and a half in and up a ridge, the hills are densely covered with poppies, lupine, and lots of other flowers:

The crazed goldfinch is one I snapped in the parking lot at Tohono Chul. He was repeatedly attacking his own reflection in the rear-view mirror of a truck:

In other news… doves and quail are pretty much all mated up and either nesting or looking to nest. I love the spring!

Spring this and that

We have a new five seasons garden at Tohono Chul Park. These lovely flowers are in the Spring Garden:
The pink ones are penstemons, tiny trumpet flowers. We have some at home. The other evening I watched (through the living room window) as a hummingbird worked the penstemons methodically, going from flower to flower, top to bottom of one stalk, then moving to the next stalk, bottom to top, and so on.
That same evening I watched the quails gather to roost… quite of lot of them. But then I got distracted by a bobcat in the yard. It just wandered around a little then headed for the wash in back of the house. I was thinking the quails didn’t seem too disturbed… until they started to fly out of the palo verde trees where they’d taken refuge.
Finally, the baby hummer raised by the mama (a Costa’s, I have had confirmed) in a previous post, has flown the nest. But I got his/her picture before he left:

Bird sex

It’s starting up… the male quails are doing their aggressive chest-bumping (which they must have learned from watching the NBA), cardinals seem to be paired off, all kinds of birds are flying around with nesting materials in their beaks.
At Tohono Chul Park, in a little gazebo in an undisclosed location, I photographed this lovely little mother hummingbird. I think she is a Costa’s but am not certain. Since I took the photo the eggs have hatched, and if I’m lucky I may get a picture of the babies.
Interesting bonus fact about hummingbird nests: they are elasticized with spider silk, which allows the nest to expand as the hatchlings grow.

Back to Nature

I’m finally finished with my docent studies and will be working as a docent at Tohono Chul Park. So now I have time to return to nature blogging. Let me start with my bees. A swarm (which I found is actually called a cluster) of bees landed in our palo verde tree nearly three weeks ago. Based on reading, we assumed the bees would find a new place to live and move on soon. But they didn’t count on the weird, cold, rainy weather we’ve been having for a few weeks. After a couple of days of freezing rain, the once-robust swarm was reduced by about half:
 
The second is a closer shot, but shows about the bottom half of the original swarm. What happens is the bees on the outside freeze and fall off…
Anyway, against all odds the remaining bees managed to pull themselves together almost two weeks to the day from when they arrived. That morning they were very agitated, with a lot of bees flying in and out of the cluster. By midafternoon they were gone.

…. except for a tiny handful of scouts that didn’t get the message. A few of them are still buzzing around, looking confused, wondering where everyone went. Without the rest of the colony they are doomed.