Yes, that’s “Cnemie-philia” — the love of lizards in the genus Cnemidophorus, now more properly called by their current genus name, Aspidoscelis, or Whiptails.  Our locals are Sonoran tiger whiptails (Aspidoscelis tigris punctilinealis), and they’re the most commonly seen lizard in our Phoenix area yard.  They like it hot and are out and about during the the day, except in the highest heat, constantly looking for prey such as insects and ants, which they are welcome to, as our ants have out-sized painful defense methods.  (Yet I love the ants, because they feed the flickers and the whiptails).  The young whiptails have been more in evidence recently, too — tiny whippety slippets of things, sleek and fast with brilliant blue tails that largely void their stripey camouflage against granite gravel.  Maybe the flashy and detachable nearly-neon blue tail is an effective decoy for color-visioned predators, distracting them from more critical body parts.

(Various watercolors in Arches 140 lb coldpress sketchbook, A.Shock; click image to enlarge)

Here’s a watercolor study of a tiger whiptail who, sadly, fell victim to the LaBrea Tarpit of our pool.  I finally took it out of the freezer drawer of our fridge, much to E‘s relief, although there is still a Vaejovis scorpion chilling in there (this is when zip-lock bags really shine, I feel).  When I was through drawing, I took pictures and put the limp, thawed carcass out for a Curve-billed thrasher to find for a meal, but ashes to ashes: the ants found it first, bringing the lizard’s life full circle in a nutritional sense.

Etymology

Lately I’ve been slacking off on supplying etymologies for things, but this one’s already been covered, at the very bottom of the Desert iguana post, along with a swell photo by E of a (Plateau?) tiger whiptail we saw at the Grand Canyon.

tigers walk behind me, they are to remind me, that i am lost, but i’m not afraid

–David Byrne

My friend Gloria died at home in St. Louis earlier this year.  She was a good artist, teacher, and person.

(Naive-style watercolor painted for Wolf, A.Shock 2009)

…to everyone who helped make Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival the most successful one yet for Three Star Owl.  Hope to see you there next year.

By the way, if you had your eye on an item before the show, don’t assume it’s not available — please email me.

Gaze upon Sierra Vista, in south eastern Arizona, where the beautiful Huachuca Mountains beetle over the fast food restaurants and motels of the busy town.  Not visible in this shot, but also beetling, is the everpresent and mysterious white surveillance blimp.  One day, I will find out about the white blimp.  Maybe today.

The natural beauty of the region is not far away; below is a view of the foothills of the Whetstone Mountains just north of Sierra Vista.  The landscape here is transitional between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, and is high enough to be more grassland and thornscrub than desert.  But this trail in Kartchner Caverns State Park has ocotillo, agave (in bloom) and barrel cactus, and a mix of desert and arid scrubland birds, like Curve-billed thrasher, Greater roadrunner and Varied bunting.  (Not that I’m seeing many birds — inexplicably, I forgot my binox!  I guess I’ll have to be an artist this weekend, and not a birder…)  The landscape is lush and green, even in a moderate monsoon year.  Most of the rainfall of the entire year falls during the summer monsoon season.

Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival is in full swing and Three Star Owl is in the thick of things. Yesterday was the first day of the Art Fair and Nature Exposition, and lots of people came for the vendors and artists as well as the birds.  Purchases were made: owls, javelinas, black-headed grosbeaks, and gila monsters found nice new homes.  Peek into the Saguaro Room at the Windemere Hotel, and the first thing you see is the Three Star Owl booth.  (Really, why is it always so hard to get a good booth shot?  In person, the set-up looks quite nice.)  My only sorrow is that the hotel hasn’t turned on the twinkle lights buried in the tulle swagging overhead, left over from somebody’s wedding party.

(All photos A.Shock)

The last pieces for Three Star Owl‘s Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival date slid into the kiln thursday, so no more pinching, coiling, stamping, slipping, scoring, or glazing nares, coverts, hooves, beaks, talons, or TOES again, until after the event.  Meanwhile, here’s a peek at a few things lurking informally around the studio now, waiting to be photo’d, priced, and packed:

New for this event are Javelina salt & pepper shakers and owl whistles.  And there’s a Plethora of Owls in all forms this time, even more than usual.

The Festival is in Sierra Vista (Arizona) at the Windemere Hotel, 5 – 9 August — that’s next week.  If you’d like to drop in, the vendor’s hours are: Thursday, August 6, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; Friday, August 7, 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; and Saturday, August 8, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.  Admission is FREE to the vending and exposition area in the hotel Lobby and Conference Rooms.  And, there’s still some room in several of the birding and natural history field trips, too.  Come by and say Hello!

Late each spring, later than most other neotropical migrants, the Brown-crested flycatchers (Myiarchus tyrannulus) return to our neighborhood (and other places in southern Arizona) from their wintering grounds in Mexico.

They are relatively large tyrant flycatchers, about the size of the more familiar Cardinal, but unlike Cardinals they’re not usually seen on or even terribly close to the ground.  They are Birds of Trees, and favor woodland and riparian areas, as well as the occasional suburban or park setting.  They need trees with trunks large enough to contain generously sized holes, because they’re cavity nesters.  A saguaro will do (a “Crest” once checked out a woodpecker hole in our now defunct saguaro, but didn’t select it), or a cottonwood, or any other tree a good-sized woodpecker like a flicker has excavated a hole in already.  We’ve got Gilded flickers and Gila woodpeckers around, so there are holes big enough for the Brown-cresteds to raise a brood in.  Excellently, the BCFL is one of the few native cavity-nesting passerines able to out-compete Starlings for nest-holes.

As flycatchers, they are also Birds of Air, and feed almost entirely on insects which they catch on the wing.  They’re distinctively vocal, and it’s often easier to detect them by sound than by sight, as they give vigorous rolling brrrts and wheeps from the tops of trees.  In addition, they seem to be the earliest singers of the morning, starting before sunrise with a gentle repetitive song that differs in note and pattern from their daytime vocalizations, but is similar in tone.  Many people find it easier to identify them by sound: Brown-crested flycatchers have a look-alike smaller Myiarchus “cousin” the Ash-throated flycatcher, which is more widespread in arid regions of the southwest but utters different sounds.

Though they arrive late in spring, they also leave earlier than most migrants, and around the middle of August, I find myself listening each morning for the early song of the Brown-crested flycatcher, wondering when they’ll all have flown.

(Sketch book watercolor, A.Shock)

Days are getting short until Three Star Owl‘s third appearance at Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival, and I’m in a groove, making pieces for the event.  As posted, I’ve been making mugs, and also owls.  Lots of owls.  Even more owls than usual.

So recently I turned to the hairy side of Sonoran fauna, and have been doing Javelinas.  Javelina items are popular with Three Star Owl clients, both Arizonans and visitors to the desert.  Interestingly, it’s often people who have lived their lives in the less urban areas of AZ who are NOT fans of the rooting, tusk-bearing mammal: they may have grown up thinking of them as pesky neighbors, and are weary of battling them over landscaping, gardens, and garbage, or are tired of sewing up the hound.

But in general, javelinas have lots of fans.  I was thrilled when a herd temporarily moved into our neighborhood a few years ago. They were flooded out of their usual habitat during a rainy year when the Salt River swamped the Goodding’s willow woods growing up in its channelized banks.  They did a bit of damage in yards, including ours, but I also still remember the thrill of hearing clicking sounds coming up the street, and looking up to see a mama with two quite young piglets following her!

Javelinas are not true pigs: they are pig-like mammals in the peccary family, Tayassuidae, and have a New World origin as opposed to pigs and swine, family Suidae, which originated in the Old World.  Our javelinas are also called Collared Peccaries, and live in a wide geographical range and a variety of habitats in the arid Southwestern U.S.  There are three other species of peccary in the Americas, which live throughout Central and South America: White-lipped, Chacoan, and Giant Peccaries.

Three Star Owl will be offering Javelina candle-holders and salt and pepper shakers for your table.  Here’s a colored pencil drawing of a pair of shakers in progress.  It’s not the drawing that’s “unfinished” it’s the clay objects, which are in two stages of completion, still in wet clay.  One is modeled and textured, the other not yet detailed or textured.  The shaker holes are the nostrils at the end of their snouts, and each one is re-fillable through neat rubber plugs in their bellies.

And here is a larger candle-holder, completed. The salt and peppers will have the same coloration, matte slips and oxides, with a little sparkle in the eye.

(Photos: top, javelina dirt-napping at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, E.Shock; javelina in our front garden, munching spring wildflowers, A.Shock; colored pencil sketch on recycled, speckled paper, A.Shock; Three Star Owl javelina candle holder, A.Shock)

“Paean to the Short-all”  (India ink and watercolor sketch,  6×9″, A.Shock)

One crabby technical addition: note the bleeding that occurred in the sepia ink lines adjacent to washes in the drawing.  This happened after adding the watercolor washes, after an hour of ink-drying time.  So, if you’re using Higgins “waterproof” sepia drawing ink, note that it doesn’t appear to be entirely waterproof, despite what it says on the bottle.  Perhaps more drying time?  Actually, the effect if you were doing an ink wash could be nice — a pleasant sanguine fuzziness — but not so much when you’re looking for a clean line to contain tinted areas.  Especially around the lettering…

I’m now in heavy production mode for the upcoming Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival in southeastern Arizona (see Events for details).  Some of the objects I’m making in small batches are smooth-surfaced mugs for glazing bird portraits on.  Flat-bottomed, hand-built (as opposed to wheel-thrown), and intended for daily use, these mugs have proven popular items at nature festivals and among Three Star Owl‘s birding clientele.  Who wouldn’t want to drink their favorite beverage out of their favorite bird mug?

I recently finished a batch for a client with a home in the Colorado Rockies, and here are a few shots of the process.  One of the reasons I’d like to share these photos is so folks can have an idea of the amount of work that goes into these mugs, which have three images of a species on each cup.

The mugs start out as flat rectangular slabs of clay that I make with a rolling pin and hardwood slats from the “home improvement center” as guides for thickness: very high tech.  (Many potters have slab rollers in their studios, which are fabulous items for making clay flat, but they’re big, and I’m not giving the swamp cooler the boot when a rolling pin and some wood molding will do.)  Then I curl the clay rectangles into a cylinder, seal up the side seam, add a slab base, a rim coil and a coil handle, and dry them very slowly over a period of several days.

After they’re bisqued, I draw the outline sketch of the chosen bird with regular no.2 graphite pencil right on to the clay.  This is convenient because I can erase pencil lines or whole drawings if they don’t go as planned (although nothing eats through erasers like rubbing on bisqued clay!), but I don’t have to remove the lines before the final firing: the temperature in the kiln is sufficiently hot to burn off the pencil completely.  The photo above gives a general idea of the tools used for glazing; the one to the right shows the roughed-in pencil sketch for a Green-tailed towhee.  (Remember to click on any image you’d like a closer look at).

The next step is glazing the interior: that happens before glazing the images on the outside, so the glaze doesn’t drip down a finished bird while pouring out the extra from the mug’s interior.

Next, I brush the glazes on.  This is like painting, without the advantage of being able to see what the image will look like with its proper colors.  This is because most raw glazes have very little in common visually with their finished, fired selves.  They go from chalky, pastel flat patches to shiny, brightly hued areas often with brush strokes visible where the thickness of the glaze varies.  These two photos show the difference between a male Western tanager, before and after:

Each mug has an image of the bird on each side, often the male on one side and the female on the other, and a thumbnail sketch, usually a profile portrait of the bird, on the bottom.  The bottom image must be done with matte slips, so they don’t stick to the kiln shelves during firing.

This batch of birds is spoken for, but if you’d like some of your own, contact me and I’d be happy to make you your own, with your own choice of birds (for details click on Shop).  Or, come visit Three Star Owl in Sierra Vista and see what’s in stock at Southwest Wings this August.

(all photos A.Shock)