Another close encounter

  Of the snake kind, this time. As I came home from walking I saw a teeny-tiny king snake on the steps outside the front porch. He was seven or eight inches long and the diameter of a pencil. When I tried to move him with my walking stick, he coiled and began furiously vibrating his little tail. “I’m a big, scary rattlesnake!” he said.

He slithered up the bricks and under the weather stripping, so I had to open the door and evict him from the porch. He continued to shake his imaginary rattles at me.

According to my reptile book, “some species are excitable when first encountered, and vibrate the tail, hiss, and strike.” I wonder how this trait developed, evolutionarily speaking. My guess is it is a mimicking behavior and maybe does scare some animals into thinking they have met up with a rattlesnake.

Below is a baby king snake from my rose garden, disguised as an irrigation hose; the picture above is of a more mature one I saw on the back porch a couple of summers ago.

Close encounter of the EWWW! kind

This morning when I picked up my watering can I felt something crawling on my hand and saw, from the corner of my eye, big legs. I yelled and dropped the watering can along with the huge tarantula that had been on it or in it.

Luckily, the spider wasn’t hurt, and I watched it for a while then ran for my camera. It walked fast, but very gently, as if floating. The two front legs, which are probably called something else, reached out ahead of it, as if they were canes, testing the surface. There was something very delicate about the way it maneuvered.

An elephant’s eye

My yellowbells are as high as an elephant’s eye. An African elephant. That would be ten feet tall (the elephant is eleven feet). I looked it up.

In other news, the monsoon has gone missing again. It’s supposed to be back for a few days, then go away again. It has the guys at NOAA all flustered. One day last week one of the weatherman posted in the weather discussion: “Strange goings-on.”

No more tragic quail tales. There are  a lot of hummingbirds around. I think they are migrating through. I know it’s at least two months till things get cool, but there is a feel of fall in the air, and the light now has that slanted quality that means summer is ending.

As the quail turns, continued

 

But first! Barrel cacti are starting to bloom all over the neighborhood.

Quail update: my babies are growing up.  Many of the adorable little fuzzy chicks have grown into gangly teenagers. In the very large families it is a crowded table around the quail block. The chicks still follow their parents, but you can see some of them striking out on their own, particularly when they aren’t ready to stop eating when the rest of the family leaves.

This can have tragic consequences, as my little abandoned chick showed. Yesterday I saw another recently-abandoned chick in the yard outside the French doors. This one was fairly young, and he was running back and forth, clearly looking for something (his family). It was very hot, 107 degrees, and I expect he must have been exhausted. Whenever he saw a quail-sized bird, including doves, he ran toward it. The doves ignored him, the adult quails chased him. He ran over to the pond garden a couple of times, looked around, then returned to the central part of the yard. The last time I saw him, he was being chased and PECKED, by an adult male.

Survival of the fittest. Cruel. I guess the message is, don’t strike out on your own before you are ready. Always obey your parents. If you get left behind, you are doomed.

R.I.P., Brave Little Quail

I was going to post—today! about the adolescent quail who was abandoned at some point and has apparently been living on my porch, where he can dart out to the quail block or pond between visits from hostile adult quails. I wasn’t sure where he was roosting—didn’t see any signs, but thought he might have been sleeping in the olive tree, behind the porch.

This morning when I went out to water I found a dead little quail of about the right age lying under the olive tree. There were no obvious signs of what might have killed him. I would have photographed him, but he was already covered in ants.

August is the cruelest month. Today I discovered that the leaf-cutter ants have come out. They stripped ALL the leaves off my climbing rose and are after the pomegranate tree, as well as a few other plants. I’ll have to get up very early tomorrow and find the nests. I wish they would just stick to eating the desert vegetation.

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.