4:00 am, coffee with martins innumerable catching their own early breakfast overhead, the birds flying in the dark it sounds from one horizon all the way to the other in a frenzy no doubt born of some big Arizona after-the-rain bughatch. The patio is lit softly by Crescent Moon, and flickers of lightning. Thunder from far off rolls in to me, nudges into the notes of the martins …

[…] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLXcIFLzXWk

No birds again this early morning on the edges of The Stockpond, surely a change come with Monsoon. Quiet, very quiet. Just after sunrise there was no algae apparent on that water, neither red nor green–all was clean. Does it sink? Come back to activity with hot sunshine and rise to float again? Change color with the daylight and its level of photosynthesis? Later in the morning there it all is, the whole pond covered, this time half in red, half in green. A Great Blue Heron stands in water deep enough that its tail tip is under the surface … stock still, the heron waits for a pair of huge Sonoran Desert Toads that he has his eye on to drift unsuspecting within the range of his harpoon. The toads, though, only have googly-eyes for each other (in fact, their eyes popped out above the water is about all I can see of them) and stay humped onto each other and blissed-out mid-pond and away from the big bird. Didn’t take those toads long to be stirred by this new season that makes untold numbers of other lifeforms spring to life and love and song. I haven’t heard the Desert Toads singing yet, though I think I hear these two give out with, “Why don’t we do it in the toad?”