It’s been an unusually wet gray week in the desert, and this has brought water to my mind in general, and some of its more colorful properties from wishful thinking.  So, here are some photos of brightly colored waters.  One is tinted by reflections on its surface, another by what’s under its surface, one by its sediment load, two by clarity and chemistry, and all by light.  The colors in the photos are natural.  (all photos A.Shock)

Autumn salt cedar reflected in the Salt River at Coon Bluff

Deep blue winter shadows on the Salt River from this past Sunday's trip up into the Sierra Ancha (see last post)

"Colorado" means colorful, and here is the mixing of the Colorado River (green) with its spring-fed tributary, the Little Colorado (aqua), at a red gravel bar in the Grand Canyon

Hot spring, Upper Geyser basin, Yellowstone National Park

Shallow water marine reefs seen from the air above Ambergris Caye, Belize. I'm pretty sure there are manatees down there, somewhere!

E and I went uphill today, to see what last week’s winter storms had brought to the higher terrain: a proper Sunday Drive.  We drove up into the Sierra Anchas, a rugged wilderness area east of Phoenix, east of Lake Roosevelt, a place we seem never to explore frequently enough.  In a surprisingly short distance, the road passes through a wide range of landscapes, from the deserty upper Salt River canyon, through yucca-studded chaparral, oak-piñon woodland, and up to thick ponderosa pine forest.  The recent storms had brought the snow level down to about 3800 feet, so much of the area above the desert foothills was still blanketed in heavy, deep snow.

Here are some images from our day. (Photos A.Shock, except Phainopepla, E.Shock)

Above: The snowy Sierra Anchas from the Saguaro-rich foothills below

Above: Spent agave blooms and prickly pear in the snow;  right, a male Phainopepla perched by his favorite food, mistletoe berries.

Below: Ponderosa Pines near Sawmill Flat.

It’s frequently said about the desert that there’s two ways to get into trouble in it: not enough water, and too much water.  This train of big winter storms has definitely proved the latter.

Tomorrow I’ll be drying out the studio which, being the informal structure it is, has many leaks and moisture-retaining properties, and has been taking on water steadily for most of the week.

<< Here’s a shot of it tonight: dark, chilly, wet, and dank, with towels and buckets  catching the drips that are still finding a way in.  Some of the buckets have 3 inches of water in them, and the smell of mildew is becoming noticeable, probably from an ancient floor mat that catches clay from my shoes on the way into the house.

Lovely work environment, isn’t it?  Usually it’s sunny, bright, and dry.  So I’m not really complaining, because there was no actual damage, just moisty inconvenience.

An additional entertaining feature is that after years of use as a plant room (by previous owners) with a leaky swamp cooler on the roof, the brick floor is saturated with salt from the concentrated cooler water.  After wet weather, when there’s less foot traffic, feathery white salt crystals grow upwards from the bricks like a miniature coral garden, the hair-like crystals fine as mold hyphae, some of them half and inch or more tall.  I’ll get pictures if I can, but this time they’ll probably all be trampled before they grow: tomorrow, if it’s not raining, the dry-out begins, so I can get back to work.  There’s a new big Rαtdog in the works…with serpents…

…but only one came back.

Thanks to everybody who came by Three Star Owl at Wings Over Willcox — the show was a very good one for “the owl”.  Cranes were seen, friends were met and re-met, many clay pieces found good new homes.  And thanks also to the organizers of the Festival, who have a lot of things on their plate: birders to marshall and haul, tables and chairs to account for, vendors to wrangle, and birds to find, just to mention a few of their duties.

And, thanks to Hoover, the African Collared Dove, who once again saw me off from Scottsdale.

An excellent start to the New Year!

(Above, the tails of smoke-fired coatis rising out of bubblepak in a box in the back of the truck, awaiting transport; below, Hoover in the garage, supervising the loading of the truck.  Photos A.Shock)

Three Star Owl is spending this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Willcox, AZ, for the annual Wings Over Willcox festival.  If you’re in the area, stop by the Willcox Community Center, and see what’s up.

(Detail of an oval vessel with a Sandhill Crane repoussé and carved in low relief, 10.5″, stoneware, A.Shock 2009)

Here are some boffo blue beetles.

I don’t know anything about them. We found them last year just below a cloud forest in southern Veracruz, Mexico, on the side of a road that crossed a re-grown lava flow. There were hundreds of them, congregating for reasons possible to guess at, but known only to themselves, in an astounding density. Each is just over 1/2 inch long, and the color is true.

Anyone know who they are?

Here is an bonus unidentified beetle, big and green, seen at the same location.  It was almost 2 inches long.  The irregular dark shape that looks like backwards Texas in the highlight of its carapace is the reflection of my hand holding the camera.  That’s how reflective its shell was.  Click to enlarge, and look at all its little pores!

(All photos A.Shock)

Update: After looking around the internet, I believe the green beetle on the left is a Fig beetle, Cotinus sp.

I’m also working on the theory that the blue beetles may be cobalt milkweed beetles, Chrysochus cobaltinus, but further investigation is needed.

If these IDs are correct, both beetles are quite common, and also occur in the southern US.  The fig beetle is a favorite prey item of Mississippi kites, and no wonder — it looks like it might have some meat under its hood.

This is the very week many Costa’s hummingbirds leave our yard.  I know this because I’m keeping track, not out of obsessiveness, or possessiveness (well, maybe a little…), but because each winter I participate in the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Project Feeder Watch.  Like Christmas bird counts, it’s a way for science to harness the awesome powers of birdnerds and aviphiles across the nation.

<< male Costa’s hummer in our Little-leaf palo verde tree.  Go ahead and click on it to enlarge — I uploaded a huge image!

So, between November and April, I keep periodic count of birds that come to food sources in our yard: feeders, water features, flowers and plants, and other food sources like bunnies, finches and doves.  I report these winter bird censuses to Cornell Lab, and they compile the data into useful charts graphs and figures, which can be accessed by anyone online.

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned how our post-breeding population of Costa’s hummers balloons, with as many as 6 or 8 individuals, both males and females, coming daily to our feeders.  The males can be easy to tell apart, as some are young of the year, and are just growing in their flamboyant purple moustaches (properly called gorgets, like the piece of armor which protected the throats of knights, or the swath of cloth beneath the wimple some orders of nun wear), and the new feathers grow in distinctively, for a while enabling us to separate individuals by sight.  From July to January, the feeders in our yard are dominated by Costa’s.

But right after the New Year, many of them go away.  For instance, Yoyboy and Macho C, fierce contestants for our front porch feeder for months, have just recently moved on.  Some individuals do stay year round, and for right now, we still have at least one female coming to the feeders in the back, and at least two males — “C-Dude” and another nameless young of the year male — are still defending prime feeders in the back yard as well.  Time will tell if either stays here through summer.

For now, though, the Costa’s numbers are thinning, and the big Anna’s hummers are beginning their courtship cycle.

Anna’s hummer, photo by Will Elder of the National Park Service >>

For the last week, while the rest of the country fogs its glasses in a deep freeze, it’s been warm enough in Phoenix to open up the house, and I can hear the sharp, loud “chip” the Anna’s males accomplish at the bottom of steep, repetitive dives.  The sound has recently been discovered to be made by air rippling tail feathers as they descend, and it takes practice before the birds can make the noise consistently.  Little bullroarers, they swoop down on a female from high in the air, and chip just as they pass over her head in a millisecond, like miniature fighter planes at an airshow buzzing the crowd.  They’re just as fuel consumptive — I have to fill the nectar feeders twice a week or more.

So beginning now, my Feederwatch counts will have more Anna’s than Costa’s, until next year when the proportions are reversed again.  The next hummer change?  Around the first week of March, when the Black-chinned hummers fly in from their wintering grounds, and zip around the yard with their zizzing flight sound, dipping at the nectar sources alongside the Anna’s and resident Costa’s.
(This is Three Star Owl post #200!)

Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum) are large stumpy lizards with bright handsome markings that are both cryptic and aposematic simultaneously, and whose hands look like neoprene wetsuit gloves with claws.  They are remarkable for being one of only two venomous lizard species in the world.  They live in the Sonoran and southern Great Basin Deserts and love to eat quail eggs, nestling birds and mammals, and other slow-moving prey items. (Below: captive gila monster on a wooden schoolhouse floor, photo A.Shock)

Approximately life-sized clay Gila Monster “bowls” are items I only make one or two of per year or so. They’re quite time-consuming, since they’re textured, slipped, and glazed pretty much beaded scale by beaded scale.  Here’s one now :

1)  I form a blob of clay that looks like a gila monster.  This early stage is the time to get any sinuousness in the tail, neck and belly, so the clay “remembers” it.  Then it’s time to put the wet lump aside to set up, or stiffen slightly, so that it can be shaped further.  Sponges help hold a pose, if desired.  >>

2)  As the water leaves it, the clay becomes more self-supporting.  While waiting for this to happen, I make legs — oddly spindly for such a stout body — with blocked out feet, to stiffen for adding later.  I also hollow out two thick places in the monster body, to aid in drying: the head, and the base of the tail.  This also makes the completed piece lighter and better balanced.  It is important to make a tiny, invisible passage into the hollow part from the outside, to let air escape during firing, or there could be an explosion.  <<

3)   With the clay slightly stiffer, I smooth the shape into its final form, including carving the toes from the blocked-out “hands”, and rounding the belly “bowl” part.  This shape causes herp boys to giggle, because it makes the lizard look like roadkill to those with scavenging permits for heloderm pelts.  From my point of view, it makes the piece functional, if desired: an Effigy Vessel, and not just a representation.

4)  The next step is to attach the legs, and texture the skin.  This must be done at a particular point of dryness, when the clay is still wet enough to accept the stamps I use to make the “nail-heads” in the skin (Heloderma means “nail-skin”), but stiff enough to hold up to the handling and pressure of stamping it.  Then it’s waiting for it to be bone-dry for slipping (right).  >>

The belly-texture, which looks like pink-and-black Indian corn on the cob, is carved into the clay rather than stamped — this is particularly time-consuming, especially for a part that isn’t seen very frequently.  Early on, I searched the web for a reference photo for Gi-Mo belly-scales, and never found one.  Fortunately, I persuaded a handler at a wildlife education event to flip a live one up for photos (she held it vertically, not upside-down), and got this great shot, which tells me all I need to know about what the unders of a monster look like, including vent details (<< left).  You can just see the heavy-duty cowhide welding gloves the handler was wearing; they were covered with black half-moons: venom-marks from previous crabby bites.  <<

5)  Slipping an item bone dry is slightly risky, as adding water to a piece at this point can cause cracking.  But adding slip to a dry surface gives a crisper, less texture-obscuring coating.  I use a combo of commercial under-glazes and slips I make in the studio.  It’s necessary at this point to choose the subspecies: the banded H.s. cinctum from the northern part of its range, or H.s. suspectum from the southern part, which has a more complicated reticulated pattern.  This one is kind of a combo. >>

6) After bisquing, I glaze the piece with dots (another labor and time-intensive step), each dot on the raised nail-head part of the texture, with a combination of black and pinkish-orange glazes.  After it’s fired, this adds depth of color and a glint to the lizard’s skin, similar to the fresh skin of a newly-molted lizard.  Sometimes, I add a leather tongue, if the monster’s mouth has been made slightly opened.  I’m looking into making a fully-open mouth next time, with wire teeth, giving it a really venomous-looking gape.  Here’s a shot of the finished version, a little more bulbous than an authentic lizard, but — after all, it’s a bowl:

Etymology

As mentioned above, Heloderma means “nail-skin”, for the fact that the monster’s skin looks studded or beaded rather than scaled.  suspectum, the species name, comes from the fact that early herpetologists were uncertain if the animal were venomous or not, and only suspected it was because of anecdotal accounts of its potentially lethal bite.  Eventually it was confirmed by laboratory experiments, and dissection, which revealed the large venom glands in the lower jaw.

Check out more info about the natural history of these lizards here.

All photos A.Shock

…will be a great ear.

Happy New Year!