Category Archives: Nature Jottings

September 2, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

Summer temporales look like they’ll bless us still, the whole southern horizon flashes lightning in the dawn, the north horizon flashes over there above Phoenix where even at this still-dark hour the temperature is at 89 degrees, the radio tells. Here on Firesky Ridge, 68 degrees.

It’s a day to ride range out of El Potrero, on my way there I pass two Swainson’s Hawks perched in a mesquite along the Cascabel Road. The calls of Yellow-billed Cuckoo come from the bosque as I saddle up Loompy, and I wonder how much longer I’ll hear them (it turns out this is the last time) and that the bird is telling that summer is over even if I don’t see the truth of it. For the cuckoo, it’s time to leave for South America.

September 1, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , ,

Before the first sun lights silver the granite crowns of the Rincon, those broad peaks hover high in cool purple, across the fresh dawn air filling that vast gulf between the truck and them, as I chug and slide down the ridge to the arroyo bottom. The Great Cliffs on the River that frame my workaday world by the time I get to the Pastures are so dazzling in their alabaster that I must squint if I look over that way before the sun has got high enough to put shadows on them. Early September only hints Fall here, but whispers there are, of a change from the comfortable lullaby of Summer on The River. Towards noon the air is 100 degrees–and then on a Mallow as I make the rounds I see some species of caterpillar that looks like a Wooly Bear, mostly orange, but with a long black stripe running its length. Surely this is some kind of Tiger Moth and maybe special to Southeast Arizona, but on seeing it I am standing again outside grade school of fifty years ago in Pennsylvania, full of regret over the loss of vacation freedom but taking solace in that bit of wild that was a Wooly Bear crawling over my shoe. (I remember too another little boy who had noticed the delighted attention I was fixing on the caterpillar, and who raised the toe of his shoe and brought it down in a way he knew would display to me with stabbing effect the squishing out of bug guts to either side–he hoped to keep the world safe from the scourge of future masculine sensitivity that he must’ve divined was on the increase.) This Wooly Bear today is awfully hairy, no way would I think of touching it.

At workday’s end (does a work day end?) I finish those rounds turning off water, come to the darkling Stockpond, from the unending work take solace in the myriad bats and the many Nighthawks coming to drink. I scare up a sunset Great Horned Owl at the Green Gate as I leave, and further on see another in silhouette in a mesquite on The Lane. Poorwills flutter up, and call in the warmth of dusk.

 

August 31, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , ,

The clearest sky before dawn I have seen in I don’t know how long–been two weeks since stars were out at all. The madrugada shines with stars, a quarter Moon hangs in a sweep of constellations. Poorwills call from all the little valleys, their numbers must be added to now by many others steering their way to Mexico … an owl hoots down in the River bosque. Coyotes all give out together in pep talk and howls, and yips. Cool–65 degrees.

In the River bottom as I arrive to look over the cattle herd, I pass the Swainson’s Hawk that is there most mornings in the topmost branch of a large, dead mesquite tree at the roadside edge of #4 Pasture.

Snakes have a reputation for being more on the hook come this time of year, the way young ones are out exploring and learning through trial-and-error how not to waste venom on a human blundering through their haunt of the day. I nearly leave my boots below me on the ground when the grass moves next to my ankles, but it turns out only to be one of those huge Sonoran Desert Toads pushing its way through the stalks.

The end of this month always stirs a question: how many more temporales, chubascos, “male rains”, will Monsoon bring? One more flash flood to humble us, that will give us no choice but to stop and smell the desert? Is it over, so fast?

[…]

Chilly and cold Autumn winds do not sweep into this blessedly mild Land Below the Rim until the year itself drifts towards its time to die, after our delightful second Spring comes to a close. Our love for this place–this San Pedro, this gravel road, these quirky inhabitants human and winged and pad-footed, this Monsoon beautiful and frightening and thrilling and–is ever new, cannot grow old so long as there is a sense of wonder

August 30, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , , ,

Another three-quarters inch of rain. Every tenth of an inch is recorded, celebrated.

A Gray Hawk glides through the bosque branches, not far above the ground. These birds will only be with us a few more weeks. A gray Diamondback is coiled in one of the truck tracks in #2 Pasture, I almost trample it as I move along in my sunrise bliss but the cascabel appears to be in a cold torpor. Well, the temperature is only 71 degrees. I’m only gone a few minutes to attend to an irrigation hydrant, but already the rattlesnake isn’t there when I return through. There are lots of them in this northern end of that pasture, and we’re also seeing lots of small (two feet long) ones crossing Cascabel Road. … an oriole family group is still acting very clannish in the trees of the alley between this and the pasture to the north, Vermillion Flycatchers seem as bright as they did in the spring when they arrived, many kingbirds are hanging out together and trying every new air-borne trick of the wing they see or that occurs to them.

A for-sure–and handsome–Wilson’s Warbler comes to The Stockpond, I suppose that was indeed what had been there yesterday. I am not going to let go of summer with much grace, but the appearance of this favorite bird is solace.

Poorwills calling at sunset tuck the day into bed.

August 29, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , ,

A little before sunrise at The Stocktank, the first Teal take wing. I’ve been lulled so long into endless San Pedro summer I didn’t expect the return of waterfowl so soon (it’s later than I think), and did not approach the water carefully enough to be able to see which species of these famously jumpy duck they were. Too large for Green-winged, they’re either Cinnamons or Blue-winged. A set of owls is gossipping still, probably saying about the human with no stalking skill, “Now there’s a lubber!” A lone Summer Tanager calls out its pik-tuk-tukk, but doesn’t sing. Was that a Wilson’s Warbler already? Something yellow, small, bright.

Masses of swallows are over the pastures, probably on that ethereal path heading south. A large flock of large blackbirds shoots past on high, too high to figure out what they are but I’m guessing they’re the first Brewer’s returning or passing, could be going to winter anywhere from here to Tehuantepec, truly a “North American” species. So many of the birds of this place are restive … coming, passing, or thinking of leaving. Overhead are silhouettes of many I’m certain are on the move, with bills pointing south.

The Sonoran Desert Toads smug in the knowledge of how they’ve arrived uptown there in the much-watered native grass seedling field have grown to silver dollar size.

August 28, 2013

Nature Jottings, , ,

Huge, very colorful grasshoppers, the “Horse Lubbers”, are piling up in roadkill masses and slimed into the paved road off to the south, others of their kind cannibalizing the corpses and being squashed into corpses themselves to add to the buffet–a circle of death, a true desert noir story. Not many of them in the pastures yet. The name, Lubber, is intriguing–I ponder the etymology of the entomology. A big, blundering person who hasn’t got his sea-legs yet?

[…]

Green Walking Stick insects are moving in the grasses. One Yellow-headed Blackbird flies over, now that they can be considered common here, as opposed to the ones that’ve been visiting all summer when authorities say they’re rarer than rare.

The Great Blue Heron at The Stockpond has become much less scared, the frogs become more so at least while the monstrous bird is around. They’re nowhere to be seen while the heron is on the hunt.

August 27, 2013

Nature Jottings,

Purple Martin ways, they are a-changin’. Though they’re still content as can be, we are given to know that we are to enjoy them while we can. Summer grows long, the year will be growing late, but still it’s 95 degrees this afternoon. Within days the Martin kind scattered over much of the country and Canada should begin passing on their way to another America, America del Sur, and pick up to go along with them our local martin-folk. They are not up there singing any more in the dark before sunrise. In the mid-day they are high in the sky, so high I cannot see them but can hear their chatter. In that richest of late day light, each round separate cloud chimes with bells of Martins unseen, then the birds all drop and swoop and play in the winds low just above my head, then swirl up and around the family saguaro standing on its ridge crest against tall white cumulus that have cried out their Monsoon tears for now.

 

August 26, 2013

Nature Jottings,

Cuckoo is calling.

An American Snout Butterfly, fun to see even when common, visits the summer Composite wildflowers. This is the only one I’ve seen a-wing this year: yet another species that seems to have been badly affected by something. Not by a lack of rain, I think at least that much can be safely said. Perhaps there will be a migration of them through here in the Autumn when the Burroweed is in bloom.

 

 

August 24, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , , ,

Dawn raindrops are falling on The Stockpond, 68 degrees feels cool, Killdeer call out mournfully from the native grass planting beyond the pond fence and the circle of mesquite trees is full of the music of young Yellow Warblers trying out their repertoire. The pasture itself is dark still, the sun not having got high enough above the ridge to shine down onto the grass, but the cottonwoods in their line along The River are dazzling and quivering in those first rays that also make the cliffs glow startlingly white, while all this brightly lit landscape is backdropped by the black sky of a very promising temporal.

Chris E. and James C. in their digging the endlessly thorny mesquititos from the bermudagrass in #1 Pasture come upon one of the showiest lepidoptera larvae any of us have seen, apparently feeding on mesquite leaves. It is green (of course) and looks to be some extreme hornworm with not just the one horn on its posterior but also with horns in clusters and singly along its length but especially on the head. It is like something from “Where the Wild Things Are” … the hornworm horn, not quite at the end of the critter, is curved, purple with a yellow tip … a bunch of such horns on the head … and most amazingly, rows of glittering silver-foil decorations all down its sides, as if inset by a Navajo jeweller. We suspect this is the larva of some moth, and can only wonder over what the adult could look like, and suspect that it will be just as magnificent a creature as its younger self had been.

Rain is never assured no matter how dark and promising the sky (we almost never use the word “threatening”, not out loud anyway, afraid as we are of offending the powers that bring us this life), and though it may come down hard in a real chubasco later today or tonight, that is not assured and the pastures are irrigated anyway. If the promise of those clouds does hold true, waterings after this will be decreased proportionate to the amount of rain that falls by the end of the rain wetting. Kingbirds, mostly Westerns, are having their mad fun on all the barbed wire fences, and Rough-winged Swallows in a flock are low over the pasture. Under the swallows I push through the waist-deep Barnyard Grass, out to a nozzle that’s jammed itself stationary on one of the tall grass inflorescences. The whole pasture is a waving sea of these pale seed heads caught in the sun, just below this glowing blanket is an under-wave of bright green leaves, themselves glittering with the morning rain that has passed. We don’t have to have a Monet on our walls, because we live in one.

I read the sky later, know I must flee if I am not to risk being swept away by a flash flood coming down an arroyo that crosses the gravel road, or just as irritatingly, having to watch a flood’s lapping edges for hours as the calculation is made that it is safe enough to enter and cross and then get home. In the next twenty four hours another wild storm leaves us with almost another inch of moisture. Our offerings must have been found acceptable.

August 23, 2013

Nature Jottings,

Baby Gambel’s Quail spill and tumble and roll out of the border shrubs on The Lane, swept along with and trying to keep up in the panic of their parent flock.

A large Black Swallowtail butterfly with wide yellow bands set in its dark upper wings, teeters over the pasture wildflowers, a large species of White is there too. At The Stockpond, which now has floating in it chunks of malachite-colored algae, the dragonflies are getting more diverse and today there is a miniature gold one, and a bright red damselfly.