Tag Archives: Grosbeaks

August 3, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , ,

Never have I seen such a beautiful alignment of The Heavens as arranges itself on the low horizon of the East at 4 am, a while before first light … Jupiter … Crescent Moon … Orion … above them all, the Pleiades. The martins do not add their own vocal sparkle until 4:30 or so; something changes with them, they fill the air later, closer to sunrise which is itself coming later but not so markedly as to explain the change in the birds’ schedule.

The morning air is thick, thick with humidity, thick with Mourning Doves, thick with the whistling of dove wings. I find a single Kochia scoparia–“Poor Man’s Alfalfa”–a Eurasian amaranth brought in long ago in hopes of improving cattle grazing but now widely invasive on The River not far from Mason’s. It hasn’t been noticed right here before, and we may not welcome it particularly given the reports of its toxicity if not given tedious management. Oh goody, another weed problem. “Oh well, at least we’ve got the flowering stage Bull Thistle in here taken care of,” I gloat to myself of course just before finding one of those. Hubris, and payback.

As this humid day winds down, but long before sunset, I sit in the truck at the edge of The Stockpond and listen to the mellow whistles of a Blue Grosbeak still singing out his mating song and territorial declarations. Then, out from the grove of mesquite and hackberry to the right comes floating–for it seems barely to move, and is more suspended in the air with how it can fly with hardly a wingbeat–a bat larger than any I’ve yet seen in Arizona. Oh it is superb, of a strange color and pattern, flashing pale brown and darker brown and I suppose it is a trick of the light that makes its wings looked striped as it comes back and forth across the pond. In this flight it is slow and graceful, its wings whose whole span must measure at least a foot across are hardly pumped; it barely dips in its slow and level movement to the water for a dainty, quick sip. All this would be incredible enough, but the ears–the ears look impossibly large. They are very long, and stick out in front of the head nearly horizontally or at not much of a raised angle, with ends flipped out and up like a pair of antlers! After good long looks at it with binoculars, I see it alight in one of the little mesquites on the bank and swing there for a while, lick and groom its wings and body happily, with an uncannily friendly look on its face. It drops out into air and swings low back over the water for another drink, and does this repeatedly until thirst is quenched. [This habit before the light was gone will not match anything I can find on large Arizona bats with huge ears, but Nancy F. helps with the identification by contacting her bat biologist friend Ronnie S., who kindly gave advice and thinks it likely is the Townsend’s Big-eared Bat. Everything I read about the species does confirm this; I never see another, it is amazing luck to have been there for this one’s visit.]

June 18, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , ,

Lizardtail (Gaura mollis), a common but distinctive tall wildflower of irrigated pastures hereabouts, is coming into bloom with delicate small pink flowers. In Spanish its name is much the more poetic, less grating in both sound and meaning than in English: Linda Tarde.

Five Mule Deer of the herd of seven come to eat, in the pasture where they bed down in the Sweetclover. They’re a bit bigger than they were a few weeks ago, and more shy though they do continue grazing with me nearby. What has happened to the two missing ones? Some have fine sets of antlers, others with antlers only beginning to show.

Today The Stockpond is ringed not with yellow birds (chats) but by a great number of blue ones (grosbeaks). Hummers galore zip down to the water surface, even more of them than I’d seen doing this before if that be possible. For the next two weeks–or until the sweeping in of the first couple of monsoon storms–The Stockpond will be The Place for birds. A couple of pairs of eyes pop up from below the pond’s surface, jut above and out into the air, and they seem to be taking a knowing look at the world. They are of frogs or toads coming up for air, and their monstrous size says that this must be the first appearance of the Sonoran Toad. Once the toads start splashing around in ponds and puddles, garden fountains and jacuzzis, it means the temporales are on their way and that, we hope, nothing will stop. As with the first showing of Gila Monsters, local people celebrate this moment of The Arrival of the Toads but also worry about it if they have pets that will worry this very toxic toad and mouth it.

June 17, 2013

Nature Jottings,

The portable electric, car battery-powered fence needs to be stretched down Pasture #2(north)–the last of the growing grass blades of winter’s “small cereal” graze should be eaten down by the newly enlarged herd or it will be wasted, and the live fenceline will keep them in there (if I rub a lamp) until that’s accomplished. As I set up posts and string the single wire on them, I come along to the broad patch of Yellow Sweetclover in the center of the field, blooming and sweet-smelling all right, and find it pressed in here and there with the bed grounds of the deer that visit occasionally. There must still be quite a few. Stretching out from that side of the electric fence, too, are the older plantings of the winter grasses, now not much more than straw crowned with nodding heads of leftover grains. It is glittering with Blue Grosbeaks, feasting on the seeds.

Something new appears in Pasture #3, a single plant of a pretty composite, with small pink flowers on thin and ghostly stems. I take a sample to study at home, and over the course of a few hours that cut and dying sample in a panic revs up the production of seeds with little fluffy parachutes that become airborne in the manner of the world’s worst weeds, as buoyant and uncatchable as dust. By this time I’m jumpy about new weeds appearing, though this one turns out to be a native, at least elsewhere in The West: Lygodesmia juncea, “Rushpink”. The species has been moving this way for years down from far to the north of us. All this kind of stuff is just plain old evolution and natural change in phytogeography, though I even include humankind’s role in that as “natural” when a plant comes from across the world and then goes into takeover mode. Some references mention possibile toxicity to livestock, but information is minimal. I’ll write to the County Ag Agent, Kim, and ask if she’s heard of the plant becoming a problem or if it is even being recorded elsewhere in Cochise.

June 8, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

A sparrow-sized, sapphire blue bird landed at the edge of The Stockpond this afternoon–blue all over, unlike the Blue Grosbeak, which has wingbar and shoulder of russet. This was smaller than a grosbeak, and if it be possible was of an even more spectacular blue color than any of the grosbeaks (which seem closer to indigo to me.) “I wonder … that must be an Indigo Bunting,” I thought to myself. Sure enough, there landed next to it on either side two beautifully plumaged Blue Grosbeaks, as if this all were on a page in a field guide that instructs one in the differences between two similar species. The Indigo Bunting is something of a rarity here, however; this is only the second one I’ve ever seen on The River.

Golden Crownbeard (Verbesina encelioides, or as it’s known in this country, “Cowpen Daisy”) has come into bloom in the north wildling swath of Pasture #2. For bringing in butterflies this showy plant’s brightest of yellow flowers has few equals.

Quelites (here, Amaranthus palmeri) seedlings are sprouting in all the bare soil edges–who hasn’t tasted the young plants of this wild green to be gathered in plenty has really missed something delicious, and free. Prepare it and cook it just as you would spinach. The herd we have early today brought down the Cascabel Road half way to Mason’s from their winter range will still have lots of it to graze no matter how much I might harvest once the temporales begin, or rather, if the temporales begin.

June 1, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

The First of June … MidForesummer Night’s Eve was a cool, fresh 60 degrees, the day will soar to over 103 and soon far above that, and this is how The River will live until the first temporal breaks upon us with the most welcome, sudden violence some weeks from now. I must remember that $5 fine for whinin’, and try through those weeks to keep celebrating the extremes of this land to which I have said, “I do”, to whom I have promised to love on her own terms of heat and the kissing bug sickness that has not left me yet this morning. All that must either be forgotten or ignored or embraced and held in wonder, or a working hand will not make it. The heifer, Venus, who told me to stop complaining has caught the eye of the bulls with their Lolita Complex, and I’m going to have to spirit her away to El Potrero before she gets bred at too young an age for her health. In this life without time-clocks to be punched, there are enough such concerns and duties lined up that the challenges Foresummer throws at us while we make it through to its end fade to the mere cost of a freedom (of sorts) envied by so many other people …

I thank You, Lord, that I am placed so well,

that you have made my freedom so complete,

that I’m no slave of whistle, clock, or bell

or weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street …

–Charles Badger Clark, “The Cowboy’s Prayer”, 1915

The herd, though, holds us in thrall even if whistle, clock and bell do not, and so does the grass that must be kept growing for them. The Blue Grosbeaks continue to delight and distract me from those duties, they demand such attention that every sighting seems like the first. Their bodies are the very blue of Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, their wingbar and shoulder patch the very adobe brown Kahlo also used to set off her brilliant walls. Every time I see one fly past now, however, I can’t help but call it by Chris E.’s spoonerism, “Gross Bluebeak”! They are still accompanied by Lazuli Buntings that, while paler, are of a blue equally fine. This may be the last of this bunting to be seen for a little while: they don’t stay away very long in the north before they turn back our way and head then to party down in Vallarty for the winter.

Red algae is appearing in ever larger drifts on The Stockpond, though there is a lot of open water still.

May 25, 2013

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Full Moon is lowering itself towards the crest of the Rincon when I leave in the “dark” and thread the ridge above Pool Wash and slowly lower myself towards the canyon bottom and out on the Cascabel Road. The grand, bare cliffs are all in a glowing mist, a world that in this moonlight is there and is not there. Nighthawks are purring loudly and then softly, and from every knoll and canyon bottom rings out Whit-will-do! Whit-will-do! of Brown-crested Flycatchers … the early bird catches the cicada. On the road drive to the pastures the air is sweet and cool on my face. Owl is going home, Poorwills fly up from the gravel or flicker into my headlights, kangaroo rats bounce and jackrabbits try my patience when they decide that safety lies under turning truck wheels and not in the creosote flats they could peel off to instead.

My chest aches in the cold air, but then again it has done since I got knocked face-down flat to the ground yesterday afternoon by the electric fence when after crawling under and to the other side of it, I lost balance while I was getting to my feet and leaned back enough to lay the wire across the nape of my neck … bang! I long to direct the herd grazing these bottomland pastures from horseback alone, abandon the wires and the batteries and the electricity. The temperature and Moon are dropping, and I get the impossible pleasure of seeing four moonsets in succession, over this ridge or that, or when Moon snuggles himself into one gap in the mountains or other while I myself swing around north and south to drop cowboy gates and open hydrants out on the pastures …

[…]

Bright his smile may be, but his night at The Stockpond is far from a silent one. The dark of the mesquite bosque is all sound and singing–Cardinal, Yellow Warbler, Bewick’s Wren, Lucy’s Warbler, chats (lots of chats), tanagers, grosbeaks, Mourning Doves, Bell’s Vireos, kingbirds, House Finches, and a Vermillion Flycatcher that’s dancing mid-air. While singing out, he slowly crosses high over the pond, demanding of the avian world, “Oh, am I a stud, or what? Dig me!!” The fiery red little bird likely had done that through the whole night, dancing in Moon’s follow spot. The pair of Mexican Mallard swim around each other, painting yin-yang symbols with silvery water.

Later in the bright morning sky three Purple Martins, two males and a female, are sewing patterns on the blue, letting out far-carrying notes, twings and plangs in a courtship danse apache among two rivals and their would-be mate. Below in the mesquite edges and the weeds growing ever taller fledgling Lesser Goldfinches are complaining to their parents that not enough bacon has been brought home lately, “you don’t expect us to go out and get it ourselves … do you?” My life as ranch hand with its shocks by electric fences and lightning seems as tenuous as that of the baby bird whom I’d just saved from a pool of irrigation water in which it had wet its feathers thoroughly. I can decide to rescue it if I can as validly decide to leave it to drown, though all I probably did was save it as a fresh meal for a coyote. So be it. I put it way off into the grass, where it will stay hidden at least for a while, could dry out after all and end up changing the entire course of Evolution.

May 23, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , , , ,

Dawn brings with it temperatures in the upper 40s still. Chunks of cobalt, chunks of lapis take wing–many Blue Grosbeaks, and Lazuli Buntings. In the gray light, a Lucy’s Warbler is jumping in and out of the cavity in the railroad tie gate post in which one of those birds was busily putting in a nest a bit less than a month ago; I thought it had been abandoned. There are many chirping babies around and if I remember, Lucy’s fledge with a startling quickness.

While I sit in the pickup sipping coffee after completing irrigation rounds, a Gray Fox comes along to get a drink at the pond. A beautiful animal, it is–red fur on its legs, and a swath of red that runs diagonally from its red ears down the sides of its body. It sits over there for a good long while, black-tipped tail draped elegantly, but acts nervously about something beyond it most of the time though it didn’t seem to care about me. Around him many swallows are flying in for quick on-the-wing dips of their bills into the water, and there’s a real “mess” of tanagers, of both species, coming to drink as well. One of them is a first year male Summer Tanager in that peculiar transition to adult plumage: green, blotched with red all over like either I’m seeing spots before my eyes or he has some dreadful tanager pox.

Sapphire blue damselflies are alighting on the irrigation hoses wherever the units have put out enough water to build little ponds that will of course drain away. The air has heated to just short of 100 degrees, and the grassland birds have discovered quite the way to stay comfortable: with the humidity at 4%, the seventy-foot wide zone of wet soil dwn the center of which the wheel lines sit becomes a giant evaporative cooler, and the upper spokes of the wheels of the units are crowded with birds who get as high as they can up under the wide, flat aluminum “tire” so it can shade them. Close up under one wheel canopy alone there were stuffed a Lark Sparrow, a Cassin’s Kingbird, and two Western Kingbirds, obviously enjoying that shade and “cool”!

May 11, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , ,

The Spotted Sandpiper is gone. A tadpole looking up through the water where the sandpiper had stood might this morning be fooled into thinking it was seeing an innocent white cloud rather than its doom, a cloud that can fling out a mortal bolt at lightning speed to grab the tadpole for breakfast. It is a Snowy Egret come to spend a single day with us. Wearing golden slippers it walks across the muddy bottom with consummate grace, a mist of aigrettes suspended over its back and all this beauty doubled perfectly by its reflection. This picture on a 1950s Florida postcard is jumpy, and flew off with a sharp bark, landed for only a moment then took off in panicked flight as if it had seen a plume hunter. When I came back a long time later to turn off the irrigation, though, it was much less bothered by me and I could watch it at leisure while it was cleaning up the pond of every vertebrate and invertebrate that could be snagged.

A first migrating Western Tanager arrived for a drink, to remind me that it is one of the most beautiful of North American birds and one on a par with any of its spectacular wholly tropical relatives. A Lesser Goldfinch alights on top the pond-filling riser, and sips from the dribble there.

Out on the pastures other Lesser Goldfinch graze on Wright Saltbush, (“Saltweed”) which plant happens also to be my favorite spring green and a pleasure peculiar to these Borderlands, delicious with a little olive oil drizzled through … gather it early while it’s tender and not very tall, with a tug of the fingers at the tips of the sprawling plants the best leaves and shoots will break naturally and these be thrown in a pot with a little water, brought just to the boil then heat turned off and left covered a while but eaten while still hot. The cows go crazy for it, and, happily, they find it in abundance …

[…]

Numbers of javelina are out there too, but what they’re grazing is the bolting wheat and barley and like the grosbeaks with whom they’re in competition, the animals are about mad for those grass heads coming into seed. The plants are so tall that all that can be seen of the javelina are ears and noses, as they reach up as far as their bodies allow them to get at the crop.

May 9, 2013

Nature Jottings, , ,

The Lucy’s Warblers continue the symphony, broadcasting from the Concertgebosque at those same northern double gates at first light, though this day it’s all drowned out for a moment by a Stiffwing Hawk carrying passangers high overhead towards Tucson.

The Northern Mallards are gone, but Mexican Mallards have come back to The Stockpond. (This pair will be on the water most every day for the rest of the month.) White-crowned Sparrows have become rare enough that any lingering here are notable, this morning a pair of them drink at the pond’s edge; Lark Sparrows have by and large replaced the many wintering related species that’ve now left for the Plains or the Tundra or summer life Above the Rim.

Blue Grosbeaks, my … oh … my. There was a single one here for a day a week ago, but this morning the pastures are from out of the “blue” filled with them, they sit all along the wheel line axles taking in the luxury of this their Summer Place though the records have it that this shouldn’t have come about for a few more weeks. With them are many Lazuli Bunting (Nancy F. pointed out that the two birds, grosbeak and bunting, are in the same genus) no less beautiful or calling of one’s attention, and these should soon become more uncommon as they also leave for lands north of the Mogollon Rim but for now, they still seem to be everywhere I look.

In an afternoon Monet light, the gross of grosbeaks works over the heads of barley and oats going now to gold and going to grain, and that grass is alive with the birds who flutter while climbing the stalks from the ground to reach the fruiting spike, there pick out the goodies and are slowly lowered back to the ground as that stalk bends with the weight. A lone and very handsome male Redwing sits atop a wheel and watches all that going on below him.

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.