Category Archives: Nature Jottings

May 1, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

The month when arrives Ferocious Foresummer, or, “your Hell” as our human snowbirds think of it. Northern species of real bird will all soon have followed similar instincts that tell them to get out, too, as drought and temperatures increase and the humidity drops and drops, and meanwhile summer birds (“neotropicals”) will continue to make their first arrivals for a while.

Fragile-looking, small grasshoppers fly up as I walk through the grass and I go about attending to wheel lines–these insects are a delicate, dusty and pale mauve color, with wings edged neatly in black: Victorian widow ladies still in crepe trim. (Except for the next day, I would not see this species again. Such a life history is to be wondered over.)

A male Phainopepla on The Lane, giving out his breeding-time song privy to those few people who live on the desert every day much as he does. It has a quality like no other, like a rill of water splashing shortly over one set of rocks and then another in some narrow slot canyon where droplets fall through secret Maidenhair Fern and vanish softly into moss.

The ant-circles have come awake, a warning that it’s time to beware of one’s every footfall and especially where not to stand absent-mindedly. Giant ants the rich color of polished Honduran mahogany, are marching out in a quickly expanding territory and stripping every last leaf and seedling, and are carrying back to their cavern in the center of their bare circle such booty got from the still flourishing winter pasture. I’m more than happy to leave them alone to do their so-valuable service of turning and aerating soil packed by cow hooves, and to their plowing of compost into the ground. I’m very glad they leave me alone as well but one does have to learn a certain knack (and healthy wariness!) of living with them.

A single Blue Grosbeak, gloriously colored, comes to balance for a few moments on a wheel line pipe close to me. The bird is usually rare this early, and its full numbers should probably not be expected to arrive on the San Pedro for weeks but all bets seem off this year.

 

April 30, 2013

Nature Jottings,

The glory of Arizona April ends with one last Meadowlark, who looks forlorn: surely he’s thinking of other climes and the bubbling companionship of his vanished mates. The pair of Mexican Mallards there on the Stockpond again today will probably stay on with us, this being their own Far North.

April 29, 2013

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Queen butterflies and a very large Blue (what species? and we think sandpipers are a challenge to tell apart …) are seen here and there, not much yet. Too early for Monarchs. What there are a lot of are Kingbirds, I have never seen so many in one place yet it’s reported to me there aren’t many elsewhere on The River. Here on the fencelines of Pasture #3 was a Konvocation of Kingbirds, a dozen or more, the acrobatics of their flight a thrill to watch as always–each one more beautifully plumaged than the last, grays, olives, blacks, clean white, shimmering yellow. Almost all were Western Kingbirds, among them a single Cassin’s, which is growing to be one of my favorite birds. Still a few White-crowned Sparrows in the brushy alley that borders the pasture, and overhead, recently arrived for the summer, a flock of burbling and bubbling Brown-headed Cowbirds, their notes dropping to the ground with the sound of water splashing into the Stockpond. I’ve read that it’s a mystery how the birds learn these sounds and songs, given that other species with other things to teach their actual young are who raise the cowbird from egghood. More mystery here, to let be.

Heading back to the Stockpond, I opened a “cowboy gate” to get out of that pasture, and noted a Lucy’s Warbler very near in the mesquite branches and unruffled by my presence. It had dried grasses in its bill, and was obviously heading towards a nest being built somewhere, then right in front of me it dropped down to the massive old railroad tie post onto which the gate was hung. It vanished for a few moments on the other side of the tie, then popped back up into sight, looked at me again and flitted off for more building material I presumed. Once I got the gate looped-up and closed, I went around to the other side of the post and sure enough, there seen easily within the rotting out heart of the railroad tie was a nest appropriate to the size of this sprite of a bird. It wasn’t very enclosed by walls of wood, in fact it was in more of a ledge that had formed about a third of the way into the body of the tie, with a wide crack above for entry–one would be able to see very easily the eggs that would come, and the nestlings. It still was no place one might imagine a cowbird getting into and in there wedging its outlaw egg, but it’s reported that this is just what happens. The nest I found today is at least the fourth I have come on in exactly this sort of place–a railroad tie gate post with some degree of decay–over the years of being a ranch hand, and invariably the birds have raised their broods despite my constant coming and going on one chore or another that demanded opening and closing their gate, and the babies and parents have been completely at ease with my getting glimpses of their progress. I don’t see any mention of such a thing, such a nesting site, in the professional literature, and Cornell states flatly that the species does not use nesting boxes. I would sure describe these railroad ties as such! or at least they could inspire the design of one that the Lucy’s Warbler would be willing to accept.

Back at the irrigation riser that’s filling the pond, the temperature is climbing well past 90, towards 100 degrees. A female Broad-billed Hummingbird drinks from the hydrant leaks at the top, and what turns out to be the last Vesper Sparrows come desperately to the pools as well–another of those species that leave of a sudden as May’s heat comes in ferociously, to head for the Mogollon Rim a mile higher, and points north from there. The usual Black-chinned hummer males describe geometrics on the air, zipping around in almost impossible moves over the whole pond and in the noonday shimmer, a Common Yellowthroat and very red Song Sparrows come for sips, too. Most dainty of all are the gigantic (many would say, frightening!) Tarantula Hawks that land some distance from the edge on muddy footing, and carefully tread to where they may press their lips to the water. They take long draughts. Everyone leaves alone these extras from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for they’re packing heat like no other creature. A Summer Tanager that’s even more red than the wings of the Tarantula Hawk comes down, but perches on a rock out in the middle, and before he lowers himself to the edge of that rock to reach the water, has his perfect double reflected in the surface.

April 28, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , ,

There are no wrens taking wing before wheel line irrigators as I move them across the pasture–they are gone! No Western Meadowlarks–have they gone too? In their place a dazzling and minute Azure butterfly has scattered itself, searching out small flowers that are struggling back from the cold.

The “regular” Mallards are gone, too, their place taken by a “Mexican” Mallard pair–appropriate to a day that will reach well above 90 degrees, and appropriate to that romantic Sonoran AM-radio station that I tune in again this Sunday after the early irrigation chores are taken care of. A pair of Yellow-breasted Chats come down to the Stockpond shore and drink; we have I think the most brilliantly colored of any subspecies of this bird that ranges over most of the country. The usual many hummingbirds are sipping or sparring for king-of-the-pond, the White-winged Doves cooing and calling in even greater numbers than before, in the bosque all around and the mesquites overhanging the water. Although I’ve read that it has spread through the South, the White-wing is still to me the embodiment of Sonora and these Spanish Borderlands we it must seem beyond reason love so passionately. The sound of them as winter ends immediately puts me at ease, assures me the valley of the Rio San Pedro is still a wondrous and different place. One hears their voice in the background of Tom Sheridan’s delightful book of the Sonoran village of Cucurpe, that place “Where the Dove Calls”, and I expect their sound inspired the huapango, “Cucurrucucu Paloma”. Joan Baez does a more than fair imitation:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xl84wjM8z8

Songs about Mexico, and Mexican music, avian and human, are whether or not Manifest Destiny wishes to face it a part of this very landscape stretching out beyond the Stockpond through monte and matorral to the Rincon and the Catalina and the Galiuro, and south to the Sierra Madre … […]

Me he de comer esa tuna, aunque me espine la mano … No matter the hand be pierced by spines, I can’t other than eat of that prickly pear. This is always sung with the exquisite pain of romance in mind, but it well sums up cowboy life as at least I have known it and still know it here, sums up the relationship those who make their living by ranching have with what is just another painful romance, one that in the end leaves you stove-up if not physically broken, likely penniless–but satisfied …[…]

April 27, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

A startlingly beautiful Black-headed Grosbeak comes to the feeder at El Potrero this morning, and now an ear must be kept out for their equally beautiful notes at Mason’s. In a more usual spring these will have appeared a full month earlier than this and again one thinks to one’s self, “what gives?”

A single Marsh Wren, which a little bird told me would be the last. It is 90 degrees today, and those wintry Savannah Sparrows have gone back to sulking and racing mouse-like through the tall green grasses; this, too, will be the last of these snowbirds-defined before they leave for the Mogollon Rim or go on up even to the Arctic.

April 25, 2013

Nature Jottings,

With temperatures returned to the 80s, it is right that the Summer Tanagers are giving out what is the voice of the hot summer here, “Pik tuk … peek tuk tuk …” The bosque rings with bird chatterings, whitterings, and calls.

Ellison and I stop on the Cascabel Road at Pasture #3 to watch a Gila Monster cross from one side to the other with the assurance and swing of a bulldog, and one neighbor and another comes along, stops and asks what’s going on–everyone loves a Gila Monster, and this spring has brought out more of them than I have ever seen.

April 24, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

A few wrens in the wet pasture grass.

Scattered tanagers sing out from deep in the bosque and from its edge, but I do not see them–at this time they’re likely Summer Tanagers.

I watch for the Osprey that landed last evening on the electric pole while I sipped wine at the house where I’m spending the summer on a ridge high above Pool Wash. Will it come soaring over the River? It arrived complete with a large, obviously freshly caught fish in its talons which it spent the next couple of hours eating at great leisure! This was like a mirage in the sere desert and tall, arid cliffs stretching out in all directions from the patio, but somewhere were living waters and not just living waters, but waters with large fish in them. The bird flew in from the direction of the Muleshoe Ranch escarpment, so I’d guess the fish was from a stream in that area; mostly all it will find in the San Pedro right now is hot sand.

 

April 22, 2013

Nature Jottings,

After that appearance of a single Chat yesterday, the mesquite is full of them, all calling, all in competition I guess for the choicest summer territory; it’s a wonderful Voz del Bosque. Wrens still aplenty today, and Meadowlarks appear again in numbers, mostly in #3 pasture.

April 21, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , ,

The Mallard is out there, alone on the cold pond; in the 30s again. I sit in the pickup bird blind, the early Sunday “Domingo Romantico” out of Sonora bringing into the cab that finest 1930s and ’40s music of Mexico, while I watch Black-chinned Hummingbirds who seem utterly unperturbed by winter returning here right after they did. The males stream in and out from the bosque, land for the briefest moment in a bed of algae and pull single green strands from the floating mess, up into the air for a ways but then let go … or they try picking up a strand of it in the tip of the beak, as if they were pulling a thread to knot, but that gets dropped, too, though the bird can be high above the water before it lets go. Maybe the most surprising was the hummer who flew to the base of the tall riser that comes up out of the water near the pond edge, that is opened to let water flow in an arc from the top to maintain the Stockpond’s water level. As this stream hits the surface, a sort of ojo de agua is formed: a ring of water that rises with the impact of that stream. That hummingbird loved to hover just above this ring of flowing and bouncing water, then lower himself ever so slowly onto it with wings still a-whir above his back, and in this way he’d ride up and over and then slide into more open water beyond, then he’d take off. Humans are hardly the only animals that do things for the sheer enjoyment of them! I remember one Black-chinned last summer who’d come to the leaf tip of a millet plant that had sprouted from bird seed, if I had a sprinkler going and the leaves were wet and holding water in a bit of a cup at their base. That little bird played in the water, lowering himself onto the leaf tip when a stream would be running towards the base, and he’d “slide” all the way, then go back and do it again.

A first Wilson’s Warbler, a beautiful male, flies in, and numbers of White-winged Doves now coo from the bosque and from the wondrously large hackberries around the Stockpond … a probably long dead Mexican in gorgeous tenor croons with them, “Tell her … tell her I think of her, even though she doesn’t think of me … tell her that I die for her”–how different is that from what the doves are getting at? A just arrived Yellow-breasted Chat fusses and hoots, hidden deeply in a graythorn bramble.

I return throughout the day to change wheel lines and waters, and scare up a wren or two–today one showed the black stripes on its back as it flew off across the tips of the barley and oats, so I’m sure these are Marsh Wrens still.

The day ends with a Great Horned Owl silhouetted among the upmost snags of a dead mesquite, a black cut-out against the almost gone red light of evening, looking rather spooky.