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.

This and that

I have been ignoring the blog in favor of dealing with nature itself in my docent class. Most of the pictures I’ve been taking have been for purposes of plant identification. I hope to get back to blogging more regularly in the future. For now, here is some mistletoe

from the Park… and two items of interest.

First, the other night I counted 21 quails roosting in the front yard. One of the regular female roosters (odd word combination) is lame; it looks as if she might be missing a foot, but I haven’t gotten a closeup view. In the backyard during the day I see the quails are starting to pair up and the males are starting to get aggressive with each other.

Second, a troll has been leaving messages on my older posts, so I’m sorry to say that for the time being I will have to monitor comments.

Oh, and third: we got nearly two inches of rain this week. All the plants in the neighborhood look revived; almost as if they hadn’t come close to perishing from drought.

Plant sex

In my Docent studies I've been trying to learn all the plants in our yard. It's a big yard--nearly an acre--and there are a lot of shrubs, scrubby plants and trees that I can't identify yet. Among the things I can identify are a barrel cactus (fishhook barrel) which actually is crestate (see picture) and a yucca, which I believe is soap-tree yucca, a plant that had great value to the native Americans and the Tohono O'odham. It served as a source of soap, fiber, and basketry. In the spring it has spikes of gorgeous creamy white flowers.

Many yuccas are fertilized by a tiny moth that flies (at dusk) from flower to flower, gathering pollen in a little ball that she carries under her head. When she has created a pollen ball BIGGER than her head, she chooses a flower to fertilize. First, she cuts a hole in part of the flower's ovary apparatus and lays her eggs. Then she crawls up the stigma of the flower and deposits her ball of pollen. The pollen fertilizes the flower, and when the moth eggs hatch the larvae have plenty of seeds to eat. But they only eat a few of them, so the yucca is able to reproduce also.

I continue to sleep happily surrounded by lots of roosting quails.

Furry mammals

We had a lecture on mammals in Geezergarten this week, followed by a live demonstration of a captive bobcat by a wildlife rehabilitator. This cat was on leash, and spent a lot of time alternating between eating bits of chicken and growling. Sometimes it looked just like a regular house cat.

The rehabber told us that bobcats cannot be tamed, nor is this one tame. It has possible brain damage, which may be why it’s okay with being exhibited. They will not attack you. They have no feelings for people at all. They are WILD ANIMALS. But they sure are cute!

Grisly quail update

Holy maroney! A moment ago I saw movement out in the bird garden—a Cooper’s hawk had trapped a quail in the corner of the fence. Her belly was ripped open. She was struggling. He stood on her for a few minutes. She continued to struggle. He took a firmer gripped, hopped once, and flew off with her in his talons.

Quails, again

There are a huge number of quails roosting here. I haven’t counted any in a systematic way, but the other evening through the window I watched 13 quails go to roost in the olive tree outside my office window. Some walked up the longer branches and others flew straight up into an overhanging branch.

In the front, several flew into the pyracantha bush (two flew ONTO the pyracantha bush, then settled down into it). And there are the usual handful or more in the dorm tree. Some of them may even be from the brood in this blurred picture from last summer.

It’s a nice, comforting feeling to know that I go to sleep at night nearly surrounded by roosting quails.

Snakes and quails

First, I haven’t done an exact head count, but there are a gazillion quails roosting in the front these days. I have definitely seen some—smaller ones—flying into the pyracantha bush to the right of the front porch as you face it (the dorm tree is on the left). I guess I’ll start thinking of the pyracantha as the dorm annex.

Second, just had to post this photo from Geezergarten yesterday. This is a beautiful Common King Snake, the exact type of snake I have around my house, and about the same size as the one (presumably) that shed its skin on my back porch on Sunday.

Some of the other students were afraid of the snakes, so we had lots of practice handling them. Me—I was thrilled. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this snake.

More from Geezergarten

At lunchtime, I took this photo of a very small desert spiny lizard sunning himself. He has such great protective coloration that you may not be able to see him:

I also photographed a very calm male Costa’s hummingbird that allowed me to point my camera within a few inches of him:

I also got a photo of a crestate barrel cactus. The crest at the top is the result of a genetic mutation.

Quick quail update: a cold front blew through two nights ago. Just at sunset I heard a big racket from the front yard and looked out to see about twenty quail  squabbling and chasing each other. Eventually they all started flying into the tree, flying out, flying into the pyracantha bush, flying out. I assume they got it all sorted out, but I didn’t see how and I didn’t get a head count.

Alien abduction

Today in Geezergarten, we got to watch a rattlesnake in the exhibit area. This was a large diamondback that had been caught in the Park and will be let go after it shows off a bit more. Our facilitator kept the snake in line with snake tongs, and you could see it was terrified. It spent almost the whole time (at least half an hour) rattling and alternately trying to escape, striking at the snake tongs, and rising up in a defensive posture as the picture shows:

I imagine that this was like an alien abduction to the rattlesnake, surrounded by a dozen giant warm-blooded creatures, repeatedly approached by one of the creatures, and menaced by an instrument that didn’t yield when he struck it. Oh, the tales he’ll have for the other rattlers. And speaking of tails, here’s a close-up showing his, striped, with an impressive set of rattles:

Tohono Chul Critters

I have attended presentations about reptiles and a captive Harris Hawk (rehabilitated, but can’t be released to the wild). Here is the hawk, Sueno:

She is a gorgeous bird.

The snake below is a hognosed snake, the one that plays dead by lying on its back:

…and a coach-whip snake. The coach-whip can grow to be nine feet long, and is fast-moving, with bubble-gum pink coloration:

And finally, a molting Gila monster, the only venomous lizard:

Geezergarten

I’m going back to school. Yesterday was my first day studying to be a docent at Tohono Chul Park (http://www.tohonochulpark.org/gardens.html), a beautiful desert botanical garden near where we live.

The training is very rigorous and time consuming—basically all day Wednesday and a few hours the rest of the week. Yesterday was my first day, and it was so much fun! I learned a few interesting things, including the fact that international taxonomy rules have changed quite a lot since I last studied zoology in the sixties. These days some experts think birds (Aves) should be a subdivision of snakes (Reptilia). I partly like that, since it acknowledges that birds descended from dinosaurs, but I also think it disses birds.

In other news… the Docent Emperor told me that the reason I saw no pack rat nests is that they live-trap and kill all packrats they find in the park. I understand, but am a little creeped out.  Above, pictures from gardens near the education center, including a cement horned toad and a very elaborate sundial.

Quick Update

It’s fall! It’s cool! The white wing doves have all gone to Mexico! The baby quails are all grown! My only remaining problem is the nectar-eating bats, which have been draining my hummer feeders nightly. But this morning the two feeders I leave out still had a little fluid in them, so I think the bats are pretty well on their way to Mexico too. Yay!

Autumnal Quail Update

Today is the first day of Fall, and the temps are peaking in the low to mid nineties, with dry air, so it’s very pleasant. The baby quails are mostly grown up now.  Some families were very successful, and raised ten or more chicks. Some of the chicks have full adult plumage (and look very handsome), while others are still sort of mottled as their adult feathers continue to come in.

The hawk shield has apparently been figured out by at least one hawk; yesterday afternoon I found a big pile of feathers under it. I think the victim was a white wing.

The dorm tree is still open for business. The other day I counted thirteen quail heading for it (I didn’t see them fly in). I also, for the first time, watched from the room behind the tree as two quails flew into the tree. As soon as they reached the branches they disappeared, except for a little movement of leaves.

Monsooner or later

We’ve gotten a few calls from people back east wanting to know what we’re doing about the hurricane. The answer is: thanking the Universe for it. August went down as one of the driest and hottest on record. We did get one major cloudburst here producing over an inch of water in about half an hour, but that was pretty much it for the month.

So now, Hurricane Jimena’s remnants are moving in. Last night the clouds dumped half an inch of rain, which for us is a lot. It’s supposed to rain throughout the weekend. And temps will be below 100. I can’t wait!

Quail update: I just discovered that someone severely pruned the dorm tree behind without my knowledge. I don’t think there’s space for anyone to roost in it now. I’ll try to take a look one of these evenings.

Mating vortex!

The monsoon has returned briefly, and this morning it was incredibly humid before dawn. The air was literally filled with small flying bugs as I began my walk. A woman I encountered had taken off her hat and was using it to swat them away from her mouth.

The bugs—flying ants, as we used to call them—were headed for one of several vortices, like very high dust devils, made up entirely of mating bugs. I Googled this and found an excellent description with amazing pictures on the “Tortoise Trails” blog, which is written by a fellow Tucsonan named Pam: Flying Ants. I strongly recommend reading this. In it, Pam explains how these mating vortices form, and what happens to the ants afterward.  (Hint: they couple and fall to the ground still mating; I saw gazillions of them on the ground under one of the big swarms.)

I have no pictures of my own on this, so instead have given you a photo of butterflies getting it on, from last year.