Tag Archives: Butterflies

May 31, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , ,

One night of warm and tender breezes coming through the windows of the house was a delight, but the second (last night) brought … them. Cone Nose Kissing Bugs. Every year I forget about this when the sweetness of that first truly soft summer night comes along, and then–well even the sound of a toy wind-up helicopter buzzing the bed in the dark, then a sudden silence as whatever big insect it is lands on the wall over there doesn’t jog the memory of the little horrors yet. The sudden sharp pains that come later do, though, and the flicking on of the light that shows six, eight of them scurrying under the sheets or between the mattress and boxspring or disappearing into the open end of a pillowcase, and then there’s that one that still has its assassin bug snout deeply plunged into my big toe. Before night’s end I’m burning under most of my skin, feeling like a turkey in a pot of brine with a flame being turned up slowly below. By dawn a fever sets in, and I start out the day’s labors trembling a bit and worn as if I’d put in a day’s work already. About as limp as a tortilla that’s been patted too much, I wander unenthusiastically among the herd, watching what they’re eating now, looking for jaw problems if they’ve got into too much foxtail grass heads … […]

June is bustin’ out all over, with the welts of Kissing Bugs that is, but I’m hoping not with Chagas’s Disease which pathogen has been increasingly found over the years carried by those hateful insects in southern Arizona. What will global warming bring us next? Vampire Bats, I suppose, which are already only 170 miles south of The Border.

One of the little greeny-yellow flycatchers hops around in the mud on the far side of the pond, too far away to tell whether it be something rare for this week of the year, like a Pacific-slope Flycatcher, or a common transient like a Willow Flycatcher. Neither does it make any sounds that’d help get an identity for it, so I just enjoy it and make no attempt to “nail down” one of that group of birds that the professionals have been having the most fun with splitting and then splitting again into one species and then subspecies and another.

It seems in past years that by the last day of May there were many more butterflies to be seen, and I check around the edges of a large pool of leftover irrigation water for them, in Pasture #2(north). On the mud there is a beautiful hairstreak, species unknown, and Queens sailing around (not a single Monarch yet) and the tiniest butterfly I think I’ve ever seen, or some authorities say, that anyone’s ever seen, a Western Pygmy Blue. I’m stooped over so I can get within an inch of it (with my glasses off I can focus that close in), when there is a short, quick, angry rattle from a snake as huge as that Pygmy Blue butterfly is small, and I catch sight of the Diamondback as it pulls into a coil over where the grass can hide it a little after it had tried to strike me. Although it missed by four feet, I am “rattled” nonetheless. I suspect the rattler hangs out near the edge of the water and waits for plump House Finches to arrive to drink and that are distracted in thirst, House Finches that to a hungry rattlesnake could look appropriately dipped in bright salsa, or rich red chili paste, so brightly colored are they. I bet he’s thinking, “mmmmm … finch! Tastes like chicken!”

Back at The Stockpond, it’s too early to turn off the irrigation so I watch the lots and lots of Barn Swallows sweeping in for drinks. Haven’t been able to figure out what it is that brings the Song Sparrows in such numbers to this deep mud. I don’t see them drinking often, but they do pick tiny things from the open water’s surface and at times they act more like shorebirds than Emberizids what with how they wade out til they’re belly deep. They go for things that look like seeds (but, of what?) and they also sneak up on apparent insects back in the mud flats, pounce on them and chase them first, but again, I can’t make out anything. I wouldn’t think you’d have to sneak up on seeds, so it must be a life form that can escape; the shore is often nearly completely ringed today with these sparrows.

Out in the fields the exhuberance of young sparrow-hood and the primavera has passed for the Lark Sparrows, which are to be seen here and not attending their packed finchy raves. All their “rowdy friends have settled down” and the big flocks that were so entertaining now dispersed, gone off to raise families. Farewell, what’s left of spring, what’s left of youth. […]

May 15, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

Dragonflies are reappearing this year in rather slow fashion, not very many of any one species are there over the water of The Stockpond. Too many ducks eating the larvae? Not as much underwater tangles of roots and stems of rushes and cattails as formerly, for the aquatic stages to hide in and hunt from? (The cows have developed quite a taste for the green parts of those plants.) One of the most beautiful of our dragonflies on the San Pedro, a “Desert White Tail” put in its first appearance today. It’s colored in dark red-browns and white, in pattern looks like a saddle shoe from a 1950s Catholic girls’ school.

As with the dragonflies, the butterflies this year are also coming back into sight slowly, sometimes a single even common species only being seen once or twice and then not for a long time after that. A single Buckeye was low over the pastures, but I don’t know which of the two Arizona species it was because I failed to look at it closely enough and I wasn’t aware that a tropical species reaches north to the state. A large and already much-tattered and color-smudged Black Swallowtail also came past–it looked like it may have had a hard time of it with so many kingbirds around. Field Bindweed has suddenly become the most abundant flower for butterflies to visit, in the grass there are many of these in bloom, and they have the nostalgic look of appleblossoms drifted down from orchard branches. This Convolvulus is another adventitious plant that cows at least in the Southwest make great use of, and many ranchers welcome its presence so long as the vines are grazed back enough to keep the (reputedly) poisonous seeds from developing in numbers, or getting into cropped hay … […]

As have so many other migratory bird species this year (perhaps every year?), Purple Martins arrive at Mason’s a week after being seen first to the north, in the Pool Wash area. They remain far overhead, but their high-pitched, tight guitar-string twangs are unmistakable, and hearing them makes me smile.

May 14, 2013

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The Stockpond is perfectly still, and perfectly reflected in its dawn-pink mirror is the pair of Mexican Mallard … in the bright green mesquites all around the chats are doing what they do best, chatting. The air has a comfortable coolness to it but by afternoon will reach nearly to 100 degrees.

At lunchtime a Pine Siskin alights in the branches of one of The Stockpond mesquites, just above Tom O., Nancy F., and me, while we eat lunch on the bank.

A first cicada for this place (they were active on range a week ago already) splits that afternoon heat with a long wailing rattle, this sound the faultline where spring ends and a summer begins that seems never will end. Blossoms on the spikes of Copper Globemallow (Sphaeralcea angustifolia) are beginning to open, now the plants finally have recovered from those two deep freezes that had killed most of them to the ground, if not altogether. (In other, milder years there can usually be found a flower or two on the plants in every month of winter.) This much-favored browse of our herd and the deer who also live with us is nutritious for four-leggeds. It and other members of the genus Sphaeralcea are important to livestock from here down through the Mayo lands of Sonora and far into Mexico and they respond in a positive way to the animals’ pruning.

Small Azure butterflies, showing copper on wings above, and below a sheen of silver-lavender laid over black zebra striping, are coming to the yellow Sweet-clover flowers.

Western Tanagers are becoming much more noticeable, and in patterns of black, white, yellow and orange-red they flash down The Lane in front of the truck.

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 5, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , ,

Song Sparrows, and Lark Sparrows, in increasing numbers come to drink or are seen in the pastures. The Song Sparrows are furtive and slip through the grass though also the wide-open edge of the Stockpond is much to their liking. The Lark Sparrows are bold and chatty, loud, with canary song to delight; they rise from the dirt tracks in a swirling cloud with the dust.

Almost a week on from when they’d started coming to the hummer feeders at El Potrero, a Black-chinned came this morning to hover over the middle of the Stockpond, drop to its surface, and take a long draught and then whir off. Yellow-rumped Warblers in elegant courting plumage came to the muddy edges to sip, too, and while Chris E. and I were lounging on the bank eating lunch, a completely unbothered Cooper’s Hawk also landed, and drank its fill, while a first spring large red dragonfly sailed out over the middle.

Not nearly so many Meadowlark as before, but still they’re here giving out their fluting notes and working over the grassland in shifts. A single Western Kingbird tells it’s about time for those meadowlarks to move away north. The wrens, meanwhile, are paying no attention to Kingbird’s hint that the bell’s rung and it’s time to change classes: the wrens are still well at home, and their species remains as mysterious in both pastures of green winter grass.

A species of White (butterfly) has emerged; they are few in number yet.

March 25, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

One of the mystery wrens flew up from the winter pasture edge and into the low branches of the mesquite that stands alone in field #1: longish barred tail, wide but pale eye stripe, white throat, buffy belly–none of the illustrations in Sibley matched it well enough to say exactly what at least this individual was.

A small black Papilio(?) appeared, with powder blue sheen on its hind wings, also the first Checkerspot butterfly.

A handsome male Common Yellowthroat (whose beauty is anything but “common”, our Southwestern race of this bird seems the most brightly colored of the species on the continent) ducked in and out of those banks of dried tumbleweeds in the old River lane between #2 and #3 pastures, and a little later, I saw a female in a field border closer to the stockpond, off to the south. Will they find each other, and find love? Stay tuned.

March 20, 2013

Nature Jottings, , ,

At last the return of those endearing winged friends, Lucy’s Warblers, at the stockpond. Should’ve been long before this that the mesquites be alive with their songs, but the branches have remained silent. Maybe they’d finally realized if they just waited that they wouldn’t have to suffer through deeply freezing mornings, especially in the bottomlands? “How could those neotropicals stand those cold spells that come in for a while after the birds usually do?”, I often wonder, and it looks like they won’t have to this year. It isn’t a species that I’ve seen straggle in a few at a time, no, either the edges and bosques are empty and quiet, or all around the bush is alive with the birds flitting or “warbling”, as if the whole lot of them arrived on the same wind in the night and were completely unpacked and at home by sunrise. Global warming at the bottom of this change, both the lateness of the arrivals and the difference in the patterns once they’ve got here? It’s happening with other species that are part of our lives on the River. I’m reminded of how Jamaicans lamented and accepted their island’s world in the 1970s when I was there: “Eb’ry’teeng change-up!”

A Sulphur butterfly alone in the wide sweep of the fields, and it’s warm enough to have a single frog push off from the mud into the open pond … the last paperthin ice of three weeks ago seems as gone as the Ice Age.

The male Vermillion Flycatcher that has been the cock of this rock for a little while found he had a rival this morning, how disappointing for him. The two of them had a showdown in a tree top above the edge of the pond almost overhead of where I sat in the truck … went at each other in a spiral of claws and bursts of red feathers and slowly dropped to the ground, where they corkscrewed deep into the dust and almost disappeared in the brown cloud. A “dust up”, defined!