Tag Archives: Mammals (Other)

November 11, 2013

A Great Egret–pure water-reflected magnificence in The Stockpond–hunts delectables in a lively manner for it must have worked up quite an appetite by the time it found this unlikely wet and muddy place.

Rusty Harrier, owl-like in movement, aspect, and silence, from far off comes directly to me.  I stand still, and it veers at almost the last moment it could, but only to correct its course so it doesn’t hit me in the face.

The big, late day bug hatches continue and as I do the last work of the day with all those insects also barely missing my face, the sun goes.  I still have wheel lines to move, but it is not a bad thing to be out with such chores that shouldn’t be left for tomorrow:  the sight of the Galiuros in their evening smoking jackets of mulberry and peach is a rich reward for the overtime.  I am descended on by doves, who come to The Cienega just before complete night.

A few minutes rest at The Stockpond is in order before I tackle the much longer road to where I’m now living.  I drive up to the water and turn off the pickup engine.  The quiet is wondrous.  Crickets murmur around the edges where Egret had spent the daylight hours, a single Coyote woof-barks far off, for all the world like a dog.  Half Moon over all, in the balmy dark and a breeze that is only enough to be called a caress.

November 10, 2013

A Teal on The Stockpond, it’s been weeks since the last one stopped in.

After holding water for more than four months, the dirt tank has finally dried and is likely to remain empty and cracked until next year’s Monsoon will gather into it the splash and runoff from waters roaring down from those ridges to the East.  Coyote comes to check for even a single gulp left him, but he finds none and goes on.

 

November 6, 2013

Low 20s at the early pastures–what a seesaw!  The “Layered Look” is an invention of Arizona ranch hands.  The expected rise of 60 degrees by afternoon comes along, fills out the grasslands with Red-winged Grasshoppers again; a Gray Fox lopes across the native grass plots.  Frogs are still leaping from The Stockpond’s edge, splashing in and swimming away well under water.

November 2, 2013

Hallowmas, Dias de los Muertos.  No matter the Winter trickling over this waning year, new flowers are come into bloom, vivid in color, huge in size: abundant plastic, freshly cleaned flowers suddenly burst from the roadside, where the families of the two lost vaqueros of this querencia have come to freshen and brighten the memorial to the deaths of their loved ones.  A tall crucifix marks where their men were swept from a hay-hauling rig after they made a move that couldn’t be retracted, of entering the Hot Springs Canyon, on that day a Crossing Too Far, when Monsoon growled a warning unheeded. The vaqueros didn’t make the other bank and safety and home and senoras.  They crossed to Eternity, instead.

Many many tracks that look like ancient pictographs of human hands are in the mud of the roads through Mason’s Pastures this morning.  I follow along where the raccoons must’ve been playing through the night, and scare into flight just as many Red-winged Grasshoppers from the sides of the tire ruts.

The day itself wings gently up to 81 degrees, and in the late light it is so warm that I sweat in my shirt, without vest or jacket on.  Gossamer catches that light and shimmers high over the grass, and a new hatch of bugs fills the air–glowing Sprites, with partners in the dance the Sulphur Butterflies in rich orange, or plain bright yellow.  Meadowlarks must rejoice in this Winter-long abundance of food for them.  Tall Conyza weeds are also glowing, the high, rock-strewn hills behind us lit golden, too, overarched by sky palest blue with half of it cobbled in little round, evenly spaced clouds.

November 1, 2013

Morning.  Crystalline.  Cloudless.  Blue.  The mercury has dropped through the floor of the 30s, to my fascinated horror it is trying to arrow on down right through all the 20s without a stop, and into the teens but stays just shy of that in the early sunrise hour.  The pastures are scattered with ice and I’m glad that their big irrigation hoses were emptied last night.  The wide swaths of Barnyard Grass I cross are still green but frost edges each blade–it is all so sun-dazzling that were it to take any more time getting to the other side of the pasture I’d come out from it snow blind.

The scenes change before my eyes, the visions of the pastures quiver as I watch ice begin to drip and hoarfrost vanish and the edges of all things dissolve.  Quickly strengthening Sun like an orchestra leader raises his baton, and the mercury responds: the First of November, the first day of the Sonoran Second Spring, whose arrival is told by the European Foxtail Grass and the annual rye volunteered by last year’s plantings, now re-sprouting suddenly and massively over half of #2 Pasture.  The grass returning to the wide pradera is already an inch tall … when did that happen?!  I didn’t notice it yesterday!

By noon a drowsy warmth is coming on, but rounds of chores are such that I don’t get to eat lunch for a good while; a Great Horned Owl calls in the hot 2 o’clock hour when I get to settle back into a steep bank of The Stockpond and open the lunch mochila.  It is almost 80 degrees; it is almost 60 degrees above the temperature at dawn.   All the water is a startling algal bloom color of antifreeze, and the heat has brought awake from their morning’s frozen stupor many insects to come to drink from it: Tarantula Hawks, dragonflies varied and beautiful, a Painted Lady butterfly.  What will it take to put them finally into dormancy, or death?

I doze off with head tilted back comfortably into a hollow in the level top of the dusty pond bank, winter Stetson lowered over my face to the nose.  Nothing matches the pleasure of such a nap mid-work in so peaceful a haven, nothing so good at restoring ambition!  Something wakes me, maybe my own snoring … and in the moment before I open my eyes I hear a huffing and growling even deeper than my snore, close by, and getting closer.  I lift the hat and stretch my head backwards for a nervous look, without turning over, and see a world of upside-down mesquite trees on blue sky, and the long face and little eyes of an upside-down champion-size Javelina coming at me all a-bristle, grunting, angry and meaning business, about ten feet away.  “WaaaaaahhhHHHHH!”, I belt out my own growl, flip sideways and let out another, but the single-minded critter’s brain seems to have shut down and it comes forward even more aggressively.  In another try at returning the animal’s belligerence in hopes of scaring it off ( <*<yawn>*> … how tedious to have lost my nap …) I stretch up standing as tall as I can, curve high my arms and open wide my hands while screeching like the mythical Onza and take a step towards the Javelina, but on comes the bedeviled thing that wants back this waterhole for its troupe.  I wonder if those animals drew lots to see who’d go do this–they sure picked the right one.  I back up a couple steps, do the bear impersonation again, the Javelina bristles up even more and quickens its step forward.  One more try at this bluff and I’ve backed into the edge of the pond, and the realization sets in with a sickening mental squall that there’s no choice but to run into the water–backwards–so I could keep steady eye on the situation, or at least try to.  Onward the unhappy thing comes, right to the edge of the water as I keep stumbling in reverse but now splashing and kicking up swirls of the blackest goo, blind to what is behind me, and I guess I’m going to have to skip out backwards into the middle of that mud and water I have never wanted to touch.  Just when Cousin Javelina starts to come on in after me, I hit a trip wire: barbed strands that stretch the tall pond-filling riser to the air pocket releasing sniffer a little ways down the water main that’s buried in the mud.  And … over … I … go, still screeching out, sideways and down and fall flat into water that must be a soup of intestinal parasites and who knows what else in the deep bottom of an age’s accumulation of black and syrupy cattle manure.  Oh the smell that welled into the air … the wild splashing to find the footing to get back up standing … the wave of black muck that covered me with an odor that makes me retch–NOW the Javelina decides this creature it’s decided to attack might better have been avoided, and after a quick panicked snort of “Why, just look at the time!”, it trots off fast and huffing, to the extended family on the other side of the grove of mesquites, and they’re gone.  The irrigation is running, and I realize I can turn the handle on that pond riser hydrant to get such a blast of water that I’m peeled of the mud covering boots, Wranglers, shirt, and what little skin that’s ever exposed anyway to the Sonoran Desert sun.  Though I’m clean in not much more than an instant with the convenient power washing, a certain miasmic smell lingers, as does an ear-pounding, worked-up tension that will take its time to fade off.  It’s not the first such event, and won’t be the last, I think to myself, and I also think to myself that the reason cowboys wore a side arm was to drop or scare off the Adventure of the Day–keep his skin, keep his life going long enough for the next horse to try to drag him across the rocks and cactus and that he must stop literally dead in its track if he is to live, or until the next skunk or bobcat wants to tear him up and get those clever rabies bugs into him, or stop a Mojave Rattler who has experienced a loss of composure and comes zinging after him.

More bugs, beetles, and spiders fill the air and creep in the grassland in the strong afternoon sun–around The Cienega, blue or green or deep copper dragonflies and one small one that’s pale bronze and very shiny, and blue damselflies … a gigantic katydid … a pale brown, very small jumping spider.  No matter the November date some of these are ones I haven’t seen heretofore, and that I suspect are just now starting their flickering candle quickly extinguished life on the planet.  Among the new ones in the bermudagrass are a few brilliantly colored, small beetles in shape like a blister beetle, green, with three pairs of black polka dots showing down the length of the “back” when the insects are at rest.  Afraid they are indeed blister beetles, I dare not harry them; I name them “Polka Dot Beetles”.

I am distracted by a Vermillion Flycatcher still hanging on in the valley, and almost step square onto the back of a Striped Skunk who–I am so thankful!–merely ambles off grumbling about its klutzy human neighbor.  I’ve lost count of the number of similar encounters I’ve had with skunks in the pastures on both sides of The River over the years, all of them without having come to an unhappy end.  Luck? or do skunks have a mostly undeserved bad rap, at least if they’re not rabid?

September 19, 2013

As I drive away from the house I look up to the Rincon, where Full Moon sports with the highest peak, is shining out from a mother-of-pearl sky; thrashers scold, sparrows tsip and cheep. The season is on the other shoulder, in the bottomland it is 57 degrees, while it was 95 degrees when I left The Stockpond at 5:15 last night.

A Great Blue Heron this morning at that pond, and at least four Summer Tanagers call around it, some are adult males in bright red plumage. A large “finch”, white below, gray above, and with conspicuous large white eye ring is there too, who knows what it is, leaves before a better look and a determination can be had. Many things will remain unidentified in this pretty good group of birds–Little Brown Jobs, Little Green Jobs, Little Yellow Jobs. There is too much ranch work needing tending to, to give time to sorting out even a few. The aquamarine-colored Damselflies still swarm around the mud edges, and bottle green ones hover there, too. A folded-wing Skipper Butterfly skips from mud to mud, it has dusky brown wings, the lower ones with white trailing edge.

In one mesquite edge or another seen as I make work rounds are Green-tailed Towhee, McGillivray’s Warbler, another Dusky-capped Flycatcher … and along the Cascabel Road at the Mason Pastures’ north end is a fine adult Gray Hawk, the final one I’ll see in the Season of Plenty now winding down. Bug kind flies on, clicks, chirps, as if les bon temps will forever roule: small grasshoppers with turquoise hind wings, gorgeous nearly-hovering Lubbers in 1957 Studebaker color combinations of pistachio and melon-pink, black and yellow, the still-sweet Sweet Clover racemes of blossoms flickering with many Sulfur Butterflies.

Other residents are out that I’d rather see with more distance between … as I barge through the tall grass to get a wheel line moved, I nearly step on top a skunk, who takes the surprise good naturedly though the canopy of entwined grass stems might be what keeps it from being able to raise a tail well enough to add even more interest to the afternoon. Then something else moves itself, parting that grass in a long line as it comes towards me. Must be a snake, I think, and then its diamond pattern can be seen through openings in the blades, and the head, and the rattle-ended tail of a fella who’s all business and thoroughly p.o.’d. I tear off. It keeps up, just behind and for longer than I want. A Mojave Rattlesnake would be the first conclusion out here that would be come to, though Wikipedia says, “Although they have a reputation for being aggressive towards people, such behavior is not described in the scientific literature,” meaning, I suppose, that not enough scientists have moved wheel line irrigators.

The afternoon brings 100 degrees, the humidity builds and builds to a swelter. Monsoon is fixing to let loose on us one last blow.

September 3, 2013

A lemon slice Moon, shining through clear, cool air that’s richly moist and that, yes, tastes of Autumn. Poorwill, Owl, Coyote sing their Sonoran bolero.

Six Teal fly up from The Stockpond, I’d better make more careful approach from now on: another of the little hints of Fall being on the way. The ducks circle and circle, but do land again and stay nervous while I’m there. How to tell which these are, Blue-winged or Cinnamon? The head of one is reddish, and I think I can safely call that one, at least, a Cinnamon, but the others …?

It’s still Summer, the Monsoon tells with a drenching storm in the afternoon.

August 31, 2013

The clearest sky before dawn I have seen in I don’t know how long–been two weeks since stars were out at all. The madrugada shines with stars, a quarter Moon hangs in a sweep of constellations. Poorwills call from all the little valleys, their numbers must be added to now by many others steering their way to Mexico … an owl hoots down in the River bosque. Coyotes all give out together in pep talk and howls, and yips. Cool–65 degrees.

In the River bottom as I arrive to look over the cattle herd, I pass the Swainson’s Hawk that is there most mornings in the topmost branch of a large, dead mesquite tree at the roadside edge of #4 Pasture.

Snakes have a reputation for being more on the hook come this time of year, the way young ones are out exploring and learning through trial-and-error how not to waste venom on a human blundering through their haunt of the day. I nearly leave my boots below me on the ground when the grass moves next to my ankles, but it turns out only to be one of those huge Sonoran Desert Toads pushing its way through the stalks.

The end of this month always stirs a question: how many more temporales, chubascos, “male rains”, will Monsoon bring? One more flash flood to humble us, that will give us no choice but to stop and smell the desert? Is it over, so fast?

[…]

Chilly and cold Autumn winds do not sweep into this blessedly mild Land Below the Rim until the year itself drifts towards its time to die, after our delightful second Spring comes to a close. Our love for this place–this San Pedro, this gravel road, these quirky inhabitants human and winged and pad-footed, this Monsoon beautiful and frightening and thrilling and–is ever new, cannot grow old so long as there is a sense of wonder

June 18, 2013

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 16, 2013

Poorwills, which I haven’t heard in a long time, are calling in the dawn saturated with a humidity of 86%.

The Stockpond is ringed with chats, hunting, jabbering, bathing in the water-filled craters left by cattle hooves in the muddy edge. Most birds though are sticking to the branches overhanging far out on the pond, down which they hop and creep until they reach the water where the branch tips allow them to touch it. I come to be conscious, suddenly, of something that apparently had been there the whole time: a large brown feline sitting statue-still at the trunk of one of those mesquites across the pond. I suppose the cat could make birds nervous. A beautiful thing, it must be a Bobcat though the face is strangely shaped and not quite right for one. The head swivels in 180 degree arcs, level, taking in everything, but that is done as slowly as a revolving restaurant. It’s young, still has spots up the legs, and it shows no hint of being aware of my presence. The rather pointed, rather heart-shaped face intrigues me, and I slip as quietly as I can out of the door of the pickup. It seems still unbothered. I want to see what the tail looks like, something I can’t do with the animal in the position it sits in slightly facing me. My slow creeping along the edge of the pond still doesn’t bother it! A few more feet and I’ll risk lifting the field glasses. I look down for a split second to be sure I don’t lose my footing and slip into the pond, look back up–it’s gone. Vanished, and I mean vanished; I get to the spot in a few moments and there is no sign of it across any of the wide pastures that stretch beyond, and no sight of it on the open floor of the bosque.