The adult, full-plumaged and handsome Vesper Sparrow is still here! It’s hard not to think this is the same bird of June 2nd, which was a rare-enough occurrence then. There is no record of the species having been seen in southern Arizona in July, will this mean something beyond global weirding? Has the constant and herculean effort of improving and restoring these river-shelf pastures so paid off for grassland birds that this species didn’t feel the call of its cooler summer home above The Rim this year? In the era before the great degradation of the Southwestern desert ranges by robber cattle barons and this endlessly fickle climate, would the Vesper Sparrow have been here–if sparingly–in July? Or is there a factor in play, of not many binocular-toting observers being on the ground outside an air-conditioned car, or tractor cab? Would it have been here now if so many Cascabel people and Saguaro-Juniper members and Tucson folk and even visitors from far away States over so many hours of the past ten years not dug and pulled and pricked their hides on the mesquites of every size that had to be removed if this grassland were to become whole again?
Category Archives: Nature Jottings
July 13, 2016
Sprawling over the ground in #2 Pasture, a spectacular star-leaved melón de coyote gourd is in bloom; the fruits to come may taste beyond horrible but the yellow flowers are gourd-geous, worth a spot in anyone’s garden.
The Tarantula Hawks are still mad for the nectar of that Graythorn at the gate of the Botteri’s Pasture and the whole bush flickers with their wing shimmer–and aha, two adult orioles fly across that grassland, an almost-adult cowbird in aerial tow cheeping petulantly–the three disappear into the mesquite edge, more cheeping, they all come out again with the “parents” trying every move they can to ditch the pesty baby, all of them fade out of sight towards the far gallery forest along the San Pedro.
July 12, 2016
Spotted Sandpiper still in smart breeding plumage pokes and teeters around the marsh-edge of The Stockpond. And so it is here: Summer is already winding down like a party whose hosts you notice with sudden regret are giving hints are getting tired. Summer lets go sweetly here and we will have it for a good long time yet, Summer is kindly but it does know that there is also woven within her height the end of her glory.
The Ducklings have been gone about a week now …
July 7, 2016
A single heron this time, but then it is joined by the other (I’ll presume it’s the same pair as yesterday’s); they appear to be immature siblings still together.
A huge, impressive squadron of Tarantula Hawks masses over the flowers of the large Graythorn at the gate into the Botteri’s Pasture, sipping nectar … a beautiful, unsettling sight and sound.
July 6, 2016
Chat
on a wheel line sprinkler
beetle in bill
Cuckoo
kuk-kuk-kuk-kaow’ing
in the Sunrise
but Bull’s a-Moon-in’
and a-spoonin’
the cow, Flame,
“Come wiz me to de cowzbah!”
he chortles to his latest squeeze …
birds, and bees
The first maturing mesquite pods are turning color, the cycles of the years come around faster and faster and it is time already to keep the herd sequestered here or there so that the seeds are deposited where we’d like them to be, either in the path of the big rototiller come September (if it comes) or where the winter pasture a year from now will be laid out and cleaned of its erstwhile bosque-ette before that cultivation and seeding of grasses is done.
A pair of Great-blue Herons fly away from The Stockpond.
July 5, 2016
The scolding and hissing of Black-tailed Gnatcatchers comes from the scrubby mesquites and the Graythorns, the bird rather uncommon from my observations on this side of las Rincones Altas.. There are lots of little notes and clicks from other small birds, a pack of Bushtits are fluffing around (they look like dustballs with bills) and many immature Black-throated Sparrows are opening green mesquite pods for the still-tender seeds. They leave the chaff on the ground like peanut hulls on a honky-tonk dance floor.
I look down into the opening at the top of that iron gate post in which the Ash-throated Flycatchers have set up home, to see if that big baby had fledged yet from its solar oven nursery. I’d certainly want to get out of there! What?? … the bird is indeed gone, but I realize what I had been looking at a week ago wasn’t a baby, but the mother–I’d forgotten about Myiarchus moustaches! This time I had a better entry of light into the shaft to see, and thought it was sweet that she hadn’t shot upwards then with bill aimed into the eye of the cyclopean monster. Curiosity could have at least blinded this cat prying into their affairs but the pair of flycatchers have got completely accustomed to our coming and going and working right there, and seem undisturbed by our being near, even this near. What I did see this time charmed to no end: three beautiful small speckled eggs, perhaps just the beginning of a clutch.
Immature Hooded Orioles enliven the mesquites and the tall grass and forbs in the north of #2 Pasture, and among them is a large “baby” cowbird (cue the villain music?) begging and seeming to be communicating with an answering adult oriole but, I don’t witness enough to be sure it was that bird who raised it.
July 4, 2016
The Cassin’s aren’t singing. They are gone from Mason’s, looking for greener Pastures elsewhere I guess.
July 3, 2016
The Cassin’s are singing, a third day …
July 2, 2016
When Monsoon after her opening fiesta lifts the hem of her skirt of clouds enough above her ankles to wade in the arroyos she’s left running, all this land lies drenched and steaming.
Over a half inch of rain begins High Summer and the temperature soars from the delight of a cool 80 degrees yesterday to well past 90 today. The smallest of effort to push myself into #3 Pasture to listen for Botteri’s Sparrows pulls sweat to wet and darken the work shirt. No, no Botteri’s–but yes, yes! for a second day comes the rich, descending, see-sawing whistles of Cassin’s. They may have been here already but they do not let go their songs until rain actually falls for if it doesn’t, why waste the swagger and the aerial dance of courtship? Will they stay even if the much rarer Botteri’s has abandoned us and apparently withdrawn to their more usual range closer to The Border? The presence of the Cassin’s Sparrows is exciting and deeply satisfying enough to us and the Forest Service and the pastures, now after so much work of the past few years has turned the wide almost sterile Burroweed flats into the kind of mosaic of those shrubs and the native grasses that this “Species of Concern” might want to call home.
Those overgrown “ducklings” of the Mexican Mallard pair head for the shore whenever the Silverado appears at The Stockpond, move up through the weeds away from me crouched almost flat to the ground, quickly and more like lizards than large birds that can fly off if they want to. Black Phoebes have appeared again in good numbers through the pastures but especially in the branches overhanging the open water, after having been absent most of the Foresummer and early Summer. Where do they come back from?
June 28, 2016
Just before midnight the sky comes undone, its seams rip open and great flashes of lightning loosed from its rents and even greater booms that shake the window glass–then the wall of rain slams into the Ridge House from the north. Everyone I know is up and figuring they might as well enjoy the drama of the first storm even if the lights of the valley have gone out soon after it all began. The world on our Desert and how we dance with it is changed, utterly, the empty glasses of a thousand thirsts forgotten in the rage of the downpours …
Merciless heat like a furnace blasting
desolate waste, no shadows casting
watch him–now his horse he’s leading …
horse is down, stretched out and dying
horseman kneels, to the sky is crying
watch him–hear the mournful pleading:
Demon Desert!…
–Sons of the San Joaquin, “Watch Him (Demon Desert)“