‘Tis the Season.

Every morning when I get up, I check the pool for unintentional overnight swimmers. Usually there’s nothing, but when there is it’s often a sunspider, or a scorpion, or beetle; sometimes it’s a hapless mammal like a pocket mouse. Sometimes it’s a rescue, sometimes a recovery, to use the clear but courteously oblique terms of search and rescue.

>> hatchling afloat contemplating options, fully aware of looming predators, uncertain of their intentions

This time of year — at least this year — it’s spadefoot hatchlings. We seem to have successfully hosted a batch of hatch of these Sonoran native amphibians (toad-like but technically not, more accurately referred to as a toad-like amphibian — the way a javelina is not an actual pig, Sus, but a pig-like mammal). We are happy and proud, of course, but a little surprised, since we thought our local population of Couch’s spadefoots had dried up. Up to this point, we weren’t sure our 2008 efforts at re-introduction (read here) positively took, and we haven’t heard their sheep-like bleating mating calls this year, despite several seemingly appropriate thunder-blasting, downpouring monsoon storms of the sort we’re assured is considered by “toads” to be romantically stimulating.

Yet here they are in our yard, Couch’s spadefoot hatchlings, and so the resulting morning pool check is carried out. Usually this is what happens: I go out, check the strainer, the hose, the tile water line, the open water, the bottom (for victims, although we’ve never found a drowned toad), and fail to find a “toad”. Then an hour later E goes out and announces, “A! ‘Toad’!” (“Janet! Donkeys!”) From this we know that either a) the toads are jumping in after sunrise, or b) I’m blind to Couch’s spadefoots. Since a tiny ‘toad’ throws hard-to-miss ripples from its bi-lateral, efficient frog-kicking tour around the perimeter, we think it must be a). a) is the more desirable answer because it means that the “toadlets” aren’t spending a long time in a water feature they can’t climb out of (we do have various ramp-like structures set up for self-extraction from the pool, but smaller animals don’t always find their way to them). Answer a) also means I’m not blind to “toads.”

<< scooped up in a kitchen strainer, not an inch long

The paddler we rescued this morning — pictured in this post, both images — appears to be a lighter “toad” than the last one rescued, with more highly contrasty spots, which is an indication we’re probably dealing with a batch rather than a one-off. Hurray spadefoots! You’re welcome to use our overgrown, puppy-dog-free yard as a nursery any time!

(Photos A.Shock — they’re large files, click for better look. Check out the blood supply in delicate veins on throat in bottom photo, and a glimpse of dark spade on rear feet of upper photo)

Monday was International Touch the Tiny Toad Day, with bonus Whiptail.  I guess the whiptail makes it more correctly International Touch the Reptile Day, except it wasn’t international, it was just in our yard, and a toad isn’t a reptile, but then again, it was a tiny Spadefoot, which isn’t a toad but a toad-like amphibian, although an amphibian still isn’t a reptile.  But it was tiny, and I touched it.

Couch’s Spadefoot, Scaphiopus couchii, (photo E.Shock) >>

At any rate, I ended the day having made contact with two herptiles: a Spadefoot toadlet which E rescued out of the pool and I held on my palm while he snapped its portrait in the rosy light of sunset, and a Sonoran Tiger Whiptail (Aspidoscelis tigris punctilinealis) which I’d rescued out of the pool earlier but didn’t get a picture of because it zipped into the cover of the fan palm as soon as I lifted it onto the deck.

Normally I go weeks if not months between making direct contact with a yard herp, so this was a kind of blue moon event, as far as handling neighborhood non-mammals goes.  Both whiptails and spadefoots have very soft, smooth belly skin, cool and heavy like silk.  (FYI: if you ever find a whiptail in your pool, go ahead and rescue it by hand — I’ve never had one try to bite, unlike some other lizards I could mention. If you rescue a spadefoot — or any toad — wash your hands afterwards: many have toxins in their skin, and Couch’s toxins pack an eye-swelling wallop, I understand.)

The question remains: was this tiny toadlike toddler an offspring of one of the Couch’s spadefoots we released in September 2008? It’s about the same size as those hatchlings were — that would make today’s youngster “young of the year”, and the first evidence that our releases had reproduced.  (Of course, it could have washed in from uphill during the August flash flood.)  But still, in past years we’ve found larger spadefoots in the pool (right>>) which we’ve assumed were “ours” from ’08, and they were way bigger than this lil dude, so we’re figuring he’s a subsequent generation.

In the top picture, take a look at the spadefoot’s hind leg, underneath his foot.  See that small black dash that looks like a piece of crud on my hand?  That’s his little “spade”: a hard, dark digging organ situated under each back foot, which gives him his name in both English (spadefoot) and Greek (scaphiopus). Actually, you can also see it on the left foot of the spadefoot in the pool photo, too. Click on this link to the Calherps website to see lots of Couch’s spadefoot photos, and scroll to the very bottom to see great shots of their spades.

And, because I didn’t get a photo of the whiptail, here’s a bonus Green-tailed Towhee (Pipilo chlorurus, photo E.Shock — E is on a roll, being in the right place at the right time with his camera!)  Green-tailed towhees are Arizona natives, but they breed in mid- to high-elevations, so it’s just passing through our yard — although it’s possible it could stay for the winter.  It looks legless because it’s belying its rep for being a secretive bird by taking a dust bath out in the open.  And it looks spiky because it’s molting in fresh plumage, especially around its face, and the new feathers are still wrapped in a protective keratin casing, like the tips of shoelaces.  The shoelaces’ pushing out makes a towhee itchy, and that’s probably why it’s rolling around in the gritty gravel, scratching its itchy bits.  Itchy itchy towhee.

I presented the following essay, written especially for the occasion, at “Sonoran Stories: for the Birds“, a story-telling event held at  of Audubon Arizona’s Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Center, on 23 Sept 2012. It was part of a benefit for Sonoran Desert Heritage‘s efforts to preserve 750,000 acres of desert in Western Maricopa County.  My thanks to Sarah Porter and Doug Bland for giving an unseasoned story-teller a voice in an all pro line-up!  The photos weren’t part of the oral presentation since the audience was called on to conjure up images in their heads; I’ve added them to this website post, since they were the source for many of the descriptive passages. They’ve all appeared previously at threestarowl.com — click on the captions to link to the original posts. (All photos by A.Shock) Translation note: the name “Harfang” is from the French name for Snowy Owl: Harfang des Neiges.

Imagine the Shape of a Bird: vertical napping bark

Everyone has their own bird. And everyone’s bird is different. It might be your favorite bird from childhood.  It could be, as birders say, your “best” bird. Maybe it’s a bird you know well because you lived with it – or an exciting bird you saw only once. It could even be a bird you’ve never seen, one you’d cross an ocean to find.

I’d like to invite everyone here to use your mind’s eye to imagine the shape of that bird.

Is your mind’s eye looking up? Did you see a Cliff swallow, swooping down from its tidy mud nest under a Salt River bridge? Or maybe you saw a Costa’s hummingbird at a chuparosa flower, flaring its purple gorget like a dinky dude twirling his cowboy mustache? Or maybe you waxed poetic and pictured the teetering float of a turkey vulture waiting for the sun-warmed scent of carrion – a redolent roadkill ragout – to rise up to its pervious nostrils?

purple moustache majesty >>

We people like to picture birds in the air. We think of a bird as an airborne creature, aloft and at altitude. To those of us on the ground, birds make flight look easy – so easy that we commonly say that a bird is “at home” in the air.

But really, for many birds, when they’re on the wing they’re at work — whether it’s a day job or a night job, or whether, like a lesser nighthawk, they’re working the crepuscular swing shift. On the wing, birds are commuting, feeding, migrating, patrolling their territory, advertising their presence for the benefit of a potential mate or rival.

So instead of a flying bird – a working bird – I’d like to ask you to imagine a less dynamic, more domestic shape: a bird in the place it roosts, rests, nests, or digests. Imagine a bird at home: an elf owl sunning in a saguaro hole, passing for a patch of brown cactus crust. Or, a pair of Spotted Owls loafing shoulder to shoulder on a sycamore limb, doubled-dappled with sunspots and owl spots.

Spotted owls of Scheelite Canyon>>

That’s my bird – an owl at home: Vertical Napping Bark. An owl at rest is a bird in its most basic shape, not doing much, maybe yawning occasionally, scratching its facial disc, or swiveling its head to glare at a scolding wren or agitated jay, cocking its eye upward to follow a red-tail’s flight overhead.

As a birder, I never tire of seeing that shape in the wild, even if it’s just a quick glimpse, or nothing but a silhouette screened by foliage. As an artist, that shape is something I think about a lot. I need to know how an owl’s shape forms and changes, how an owl organizes itself. A sleepy owl, an indignant owl, a startled owl – each of these owls has a different shape.  Let’s consider a loafing owl now.

silhouette of a Great Horned Owl in fall leaves >>

Since owls are good at not being seen, I’ve brought a ringer, a visual aid to help out. Meet my assistant: Harfang [fake owl unveiled from under black velvet bag]. You might notice Harfang is not a desert species. Nevertheless, he’s a local bird. He’s a plastic Snowy owl purchased from the garden dept of a now defunct big box store on Thomas Road, as a scare-pigeon. But in our yard, he perches on the garden wall for decorative effect, ignored by the lesser goldfinch and lovebirds who come to feed on the sunflowers we grow for them.

It’s not his fault Harfang doesn’t scare the songbirds — what could our desert finches, chatty scraps of dry yellow sunshine – know of a hunter of lemmings on the Arctic tundra? Really, though, it’s not geography that’s the problem. And its not because of the way he looks: Harfang’s designers have given him all the owly characteristics – starting with lots of “good feathery detail”. He’s gifted with a large, domed head that functions as a mobile radar dish, strong taloned feet, and alert, upright posture cloaked with cryptic coloration — in his case perfect for mimicking hummocks of tundra.

<< Harfang lui-même happily not scaring Rosy-faced lovebirds in our sunflowers

These are the marks of owliness, recognized by every cautious bird and small scared mammal.  This fundamentally owly shape is so recognizable that when a real owl wants to disappear it can hide in plain sight by making slight changes in that shape: it might turn sideways, draw itself up like a thinnish branch, and squint to hide its vivid eyes. Then, to perfectly complete its innocent stick impersonation, an owl removes itself from the scene by holding…perfectly…still.

And that’s why Harfang, the heavy-duty plastic K-Mart Owl, owly as he appears, fails to effectively frighten. He’s motionless, and therefore invisible: an abstract branch, a bleached stump. Hunted animals know a stump won’t eat you, and you can sit on a branch. To them, Harfang – like a ball park umpire – is merely part of the field.

So physical presence isn’t the whole story of shape. It doesn’t start at the cranial tufts and end at talons or wingtips. It’s not merely what a bird looks like — it’s bigger than that. Ecologists strive to quantify it; hunters, photographers and artists each in their own way try to capture and display it; storytellers remind us: the whole shape of a bird is how each one fits into the world, an interlocking, integral part of a larger picture, like a puzzle piece, or the fibers of a basket.

>> snake snack

It’s a Gambel’s Quail hen pecking at grass seeds while in her nest nearby, three of her eggs are being swallowed by a young gopher snake – the unwilling process of a quail turning grass into snakes.  It’s also a rural school kid explaining that her grandma always says that when you hear a hoot-owl call, it means someone’s going to die.  It’s a well-worn clay pot in the Heard Museum decorated with burrowing owls and spadefoot toads, meant for holding the fruits of the monsoon harvest.  And it’s the motivation of a group of people working to preserve the Sonoran Desert not just for what it can do for humans, but simply on the desert’s own merit.

So whenever you think of a bird, imagine its whole shape. The shape that’s made up of all of these things: a bird’s body, its biology, its presence on the land as well as the place it holds in human minds and hearts – like ours here today as we illustrate stories of birds with our imaginations, along with the help of one funky plastic owl.

It’s ba-ack.

Last January, a Cooper’s hawk snatched our neighborhood feral African Collared Dove, “Hoover” off of the roof of my studio and ate him, then quickly left the vicinity.  It was sad, but we told ourselves at least Hoover’s nutritional content probably fueled the hawk’s migration back to its breeding grounds. Again, we were sad that Hoover was gone, but after all it is what doves are for — turning seeds into hawks.

This afternoon, I caught this adult Cooper’s hawk lurking on a limb of the African Sumac right off the back porch, apparently freshly back to the winter spa of our yard.  If I were given to anthropocentrism, I would say its expression was optimistic.  If I were accipitercentric, I would say it was recalling a fine al fresco lunch it had enjoyed at this establishment last season, and was checking to see if the fall menu had been posted.

<< Cooper’s hawk eyeing the snack bar (photo A.Shock)

Of course, I have absolutely no proof it’s the same bird.  But it’s not impossible. Given this bird’s proximity to the studio where it (allegedly) had had success previously finding a succulent snack, I would even say it’s not unlikely.  Especially since the huge mesquite tree that in the past has been the favorite perch of hunting Coops fell over this monsoon season.  Although part of it is still standing, it’s been reduced to two spindly branches, and offers little shelter for an optimistic snatcher of yard-birds at the feeders, who now might have to employ other vantage points.

So, maybe this is the same Cooper’s that returns to our yard each winter.  I hope so: it warms the pragmatic portion of my heart to think that Hoover’s cells have made it back here for another year, even if in a different, fiercer form.

The recent storms washed out the dust and the worst of the heat, even rinsing the moisture from the air.  Plants, lizards, soil, and birds are refreshed, drinking up the free water and puffing out with infant leaves and fresh plumage, strong and bright like spring’s new sprouts, a second spring before winter.

The migrants are coming through, and most days bring a few tourists into the yard: a turkey vulture, pumped up numbers of lesser nighthawks, a green-tailed towhee, wilson’s warblers, and, this morning, the “chick-a-brrr” of a first year summer tanager (photo above).  Following the distinct call, I spotted him in the neighbor’s Lysiloma tree, not yet displaying his distinctive red plumage, but glowing none the less in the warm golds of his basic plumage.  Next summer, he’ll look like this >>

(above, Photoshop-altered photo and, right, adult Summer tanager in Zion NP, photos A.Shock).

There are Young of the Year everywhere: western whiptails with their twinkling blue tails, tiny tree lizards, popping fearsome pushups hoping to bully their own shadows, and, I’m happy to report, at least one “Cornerhead”: an immature male Costa’s hummingbird is holding the palo verde feeder and bravely chasing off all interlopers, shooting out from his shadowed day perch like a miniature gray cannonball.  His purple moustaches are incomplete, as yet visible only as dark brackets at the lower corners of his head, giving rise to the nickname.  All summer I saw female Costas, while the local male only made infrequent appearances.  But, here is his progeny, in charge of one of the usual niches of Mr Moustaches before him, under the big palo verde.  He’s welcome — last winter’s hard freeze took its toll on our yard’s population of Costa’s, and I’m glad to see their number rising again.

There are other “lazarus” tales in the garden: the African Sumac — a tree I never rooted for until ours lost all its leaves inexplicably and was given a death sentence by the experts — is showing signs of life, after six months of languishing.  The tree is not clearly out of the woods, so to speak, but appears to be heading into the cooler weather with a thin crop of curling baby-leaves. It’s such a heroic goal-line stand I hope for its sake that this winter is a mild one. I’m reluctantly fond of this multi-trunked vegetable — it’s from this tree that the Elf Owl glared down at me, two Septembers ago.  Not such a good hiding place for a shy owlet this year!

>> minute miracle leaves on the abominable sumac

Another tree given a potential second chance is a large mesquite that blew over during a recent drenching, windy storm.  Initially given an expert’s thumbs down, a kind man with a chain saw (!) thought he could prune it in such a way it might be salvageable.  Again, nothing’s sure yet, but there it stands, a spindly remainder of its former grand self.  But the doves, finches, and quail don’t seem to mind.  They perch in it like before, loafing between feeding sessions in the mesquite’s two remaining branches, like highly visible off-season Christmas ornaments.  Maybe the tree will make it.  Mesquites are stubborn organisms.  At the end of a hot, tempestuous monsoon season in the desert, fall exhales a kind of optimism that elsewhere is reserved for spring. We’ll see…

This is a sight I often wake up to: a looming goofy fluffwad with alien eyes strung along the hand rail of the little loft over the bed, like a leopard on a limb.

If it looks dangerous, it probably is.  I don’t mean the cat; he’s a pussycat.  I mean dangerous to do, because it’s about fourteen feet up and Hector Halfsquid is a hapless clod.  He’s fallen off once (to my knowledge), startling us awake coming down thump next to the bed.  He landed on his feet — like a cat — on the carpeted floor, entirely unharmed.  If he’d landed two feet over, he probably would have broken our legs breaking his fall.

It’s particularly annoying because at a time when I’m so busy I don’t have time to write a proper post and can only fling up some cloying snapshot of the household furstock with a brief anecdotal caption, The Cats just loaf around the house 22 hours a day, lying about like flat pools of hot hair, not moving a muscle except to lazily stare at lizards through the sliding glass door and shed, giving off not only copious amounts of fur, but also the impression that this is exactly what’s expected of them.  And who has time to argue?

Wishing everyone a happy International Vulture Awareness Day!

I almost let it slip by due to inattention, but then there it was — a Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura, teetering over our neighborhood, low over the end of the street, and I remembered that today’s their day!

And let me just add: PERVIOUS NOSTRIL!  No carrion-clogged air inlets here after rummaging around in a ripe ribcage.  No tissue to clear your nares of noxious tissue?  No worries — wide-open nostrils are easy to clean of greasy shreds — just one quick sneeze or shake of the head and it’s gristle-be-gone, carcase-ex, rid-O-rot!

(Photo A.Shock, of a Liberty Wildlife vulture on the glove at Boyce Thompson Arbortetum)