Meet Miss Thang.  She is a female Costa’s hummingbird (Calypte costae), and unlike her purple-mustachioed male counterpart, she’s a plain green-gray above, and a plain gray-white below, with a chunky round body, almost no tail, and no neck at all.  She holds territory right outside our front door, as Queen of the Desert Garden.  The garden has many attributes valuable to a hummer: twiggy mesquites for roosting, a many-pointed DeSmet agave for perching, chuparosas with long-season blooms to feed upon, a freebie sugar-water feeder under the porch, and best of all, prime position from which to attract a showy male Costa’s who does looping, zizzing display flights for her each morning.  Although Miss Thang’s appearance is subdued, her personality isn’t.  She holds this valuable, resource-rich territory against all comers, including resident male Anna’s who are both brash and bigger, the summer tourists like Black-chinned hummingbirds, and any other hummers who may try to kype a slurp from the feeder.  The Gila woodpeckers are too big to chase off, and the Verdins seem to come and go with impunity, but other hummers at the feeder are given short shrift.  Speedy tail chases through the mesquite are frequent, although peevish scolding from a perch sometimes inches above the ground are often sufficient to rout invaders.  Her favorite perch from which to keep an eye on her real estate is a devil’s claw and obsidian wind chime, situated under the porch overhang directly outside the front door, shaded in the mid-day warmth, and dry in the rain.  At this time of year, when the door is open most of the day, we can see her perched alertly on the point of the devil’s claw for hours, spinning slowly as the chime turns in the breeze, chattering indignantly when another hummer flies through, or sallying forth to escort strangers right out of the yard.

Costa’s are desert hummingbirds.  They range from southern California, across the low deserts of Arizona, into Mexico.  The sources I’ve checked supply varying info about the yearly movements of Costa’s, giving an impression of the need for more research.  Some experts report they winter just south of our border with Mexico, others say the birds stay year-round in the low desert, some that they winter in the ‘burbs and breed in the less developed areas of the deserts; others just assert that their distribution is not well known.  In our yard in some years, Costa’s seem to be present in each month, with the largest number of individuals observed between June and December.  Some years they seem to disappear around the New Year and are scarce until late spring.  Now that we’ve packed the yard with hummer-friendly flowers (the photo above is Miss Thang’s demesne in full spring bloom) like chuparosa (Justicia californica), Mexican honeysuckle, (Justicia spicigera), Fairy dusters (Calliandra spp.), Desert lavender (Hyptis emoryi), native penstemons, various aloes, and sugar-water feeders, we seem to see more birds more of the year.

There’s been a female Costa’s hummer holding our front-garden territory year-round for at least two years.  We have no way of knowing for sure that it’s always Miss Thang, but of course it’s possible — it even seems likely.  We suspect she nests nearby — I’ve seen her gathering spider-webs in her beak — but have never discovered a nest. (Each year we do see young-of-the-year Costa’s in the yard, but we don’t know where they hatched.)

The yard also hosts glorious males, staking out other food-plant and feeder-related territories.  In past years, a Little-leaf Palo Verde was favored by a bird we called “Cornerhead” because his gorget went from scraggly sideburns to full-blown Yosemite Sam whiskers over the summer into fall. This is his picture on the right.  This year, there’s a long-mustached male (it may be Miss Thang’s suitor) under the pine/palo verde complex shading an outdoor table.  He “sings” (an almost inaudibly high-pitched descending sibilance) and gnats under the branches, keeping interlopers off the feeder there, then withdraws to the thorny interior of a nearby lemon in the middle of the day.  He “sings” from there, too, invisibly in the deep shade which is the only reason we know he’s in there.

Etymology…

…of the scientific name of Costa’s hummingbird, Calypte costae, is less than satisfying.  On the genus, Calypte, Choate, in the Dictionary of American Bird Names, can’t do any better than “Greek, a proper name of unknown significance”.  If he were alive, Gould could probably give a better explanation as to why he chose this genus for the bold Anna’s and Costa’s hummers.  I would suggest that Gould had in mind the adjective καλυπτή, from the verb καλύπτειν, to cover (with a thing).  The adjective means “enfolding”, connoting a veiled or mantled quality, possibly referring to the gorget that covers the entire crown and throat of hummers in this genus.  As for the species, costae, that was given in honor of Louis Marie Pantaleon Costa, Marquis de Beau-Regard, which early 19th century French nobleman had an “imposing” collection of deceased hummingbird specimens.  Merde, alors.

Photos: All photos by A. Shock, Three Star Owl.  The odd quality of the first photo of Miss Thang is due to the image being shot through an old-fashioned heavy metal security screen.

Here is an image of a Costa’s hummingbird mug from Three Star Owl.  The interior is a beautiful rich mulberry, the glaze color I can manage closest to the color of a male Costa’s gorget.

Saturday morning while walking through our neighborhood to the Park, E and I saw one of the local Gray Foxes. We didn’t have a camera! Too bad; it posed obligingly and let us admire it for quite a while: a beautiful, delicate zorro with a most magnificent tail.  It looked just like this:

Photo of Gray Fox by Patti McNeal

Desert Gray Foxes are quite arboreal: we frequently see them up mesquite trees and running along the tops of the block walls that criss-cross our neighborhood. They jump-climb the 6-foot walls easily, and also use them for somewhat coyote-proof napping eyries. Gray foxes rely on their subtle coloration to den out in the open — when they kip they coil up so that none of their black details show, enabling them, like owls, to hide in plain sight. The very first gray fox I ever saw was on a road embankment by the Mississippi River north of St. Louis: the fox was curled nearly invisibly in the thin winter grasses, right on the dirt about at eye level. As we drove past it on a gravel road it barely raised its head to look at us, but the movement revealed its dark eyes and “tear-lines”. If it hadn’t we never would have seen it.

I borrowed the photo above by Patti McNeal, who found this animal in Terlingua Texas. I’ve never managed a photo of a fox that’s any good, although I have been to Terlingua TX. Just for local interest, to the right is a photo I took, blurred and hard to see, of one of our local Grays napping on a neighbor’s wall in the dusk.

Etymology

Foxes are canids, but not Canis, the genus of dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals. The Gray fox has its own genus: Urocyon, which is from Greek ὀυρά, tail, and κύων, dog. Its species is cinereoargenteus, from Latin cinis, ash, plus L. argenteus, of silver. Put them together, and its name means “silvery ashy-black dog-tail“. In case you’re wondering, the genus of the Red fox and other “true foxes” is Latin Vulpes, meaning “fox”, which does NOT give us our word “fox.” That is said to be derived through Old English from Old German fukh (the modern German word for fox is fuchs), derived from the Proto-Indo-European root puk- which means “tail.”

Terlingua Texas in 1936, NPS photo by George A. Grant

A couple of mornings ago, we saw our first Cooper’s hawk of the season, swooping nimbly around the big backyard mesquite in an unsuccessful attempt at snagging a dove or finch from the feeders under the tree. It lit on the utility pole in the alley and, having an itchy face, primly scratched itself with a big, bird-catching foot.

Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperii) are accipiters, a group of bird-eating hawk species characterized by medium to small size, spry flight (the better to capture other birds with), short rounded wings and a long tail useful for steering in flight. They inhabit a broad geographic area primarily in the lower 48 states, and a wide range of habitats, including temperate woodland, mesquite bosques, cottonwood stream-sides, as well as neighborhoods and parks. Cooper’s hawks are the most frequently encountered accipiter in Arizona.

If you put out a bird feeder for songbirds, you’re also feeding Cooper’s hawks (and their smaller relative, the Sharp-shinned hawk). Not because they eat seed, of course, but because they eat seed-eaters, like the finches and sparrows that stuff themselves at well-stocked feeders. Our yard hosts Cooper’s hawks most often during migration and in winter, when they lurk inconspicuously in the lower branches of trees, waiting for unaware prey to come within range. All accipiters are capable of tail-chasing smaller birds skilfully through foliage, and take prey either on the ground or in mid-air (see fierce foot above). It’s not uncommon for us to find a Cooper’s hawk under the canopy of the big mesquite on a chilly winter morning with breakfast in its fist, or a feather pool on the ground under where one has roosted and plucked its meal. They favor avian prey, but will take anything they can get, including rodents, invertebrates, reptiles, etc.

Although the strong early morning light in the upper photograph makes it difficult to see, the reddish barring on our recent hawk’s breast and belly means it’s an adult; an immature would have brown dots and streaks instead. Its gray back shows it’s a male; the larger females are brownish above. Cooper’s have fierce red eyes and beetling brows, which give them a “You talkin’ to me?” sort of look.

Photos: top, E. Shock. Right: a very clear photo of an adult Cooper’s from T. Beth Kinsey’s Firefly Forest showing an excellent assortment of field-marks for the species: contrasting dark cap, red barred breast, bright yellow legs and barred tail with relatively wide white terminal band.

Etymology

In Latin, accipiter means “hawk”, from the verb accipere, which means “to take” as in “taking prey”, like the word “raptor”. The species name, cooperii, is named after ornithologist William C. Cooper (1798-1864), a New York scientist who described the Evening Grosbeak.  In places where their ranges overlap, such as northern Arizona and New Mexico, a Cooper’s hawk would love to eat an Evening grosbeak.

This is a Spectacled Owl from the recent Veracruz trip. Spectacled owls are boldly patterned, unsociable owls of tropical forests of Central and South America. This one flew silently in to check us out from its perch high in the canopy, and suffered to have its photo snapped illuminated only by a flashlight, and no magnification. They sport an excellent Latin name: Pulsatrix perspicillata, meaning “female pulsating one” referring to its accelerating pup-pup-pup-upupup call (Pulsatrix-perspicillata-1.mp3), and “conspicuous”, referring to its striking markings.

(Top photo A. Shock, Three Star Owl.)

To the left is a clearer photo of what a Spectacled owl looks like in daylight, taken in the London Zoo.

My recent post about our vet-irradiated cat Hector Half-Squid contained a visual joke about being able to find him in the dark, by showing a picture of his normal feline eye-shine generated by a camera flash. But there’s a real glow-in-the-dark kitty in the news: Mr. Green Genes. Here’s a picture of Mr. Green Genes glowing, in an excellent photo by Rusty Costanza of Newhouse News Service. The lab tabby fluoresces under ultraviolet light because of genetic material introduced into his cells by scientists at the Audubon Center for the Study of Endangered Species. They hope their findings will lead to methods of curing diseases by gene therapy. Check out the details in this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, including a picture of Mr Green Genes in regular light: he’s a standard marmalade tiger!

This is our black and white kitty, Hector Half-Squid. A while back the vet discovered he had a benign thyroid tumor which was making him thinner and thinner. We chose to treat it with medicine you swipe in his ear, he chose to develop a strong allergic reaction to the medicine. (Have you ever seen a kitty with swollen lips?)

So last week Hector underwent last chance treatment: the same procedure undergone last season by Diamondbacks pitcher Doug Davis, injection with Iodine-131. The only cells in the body that take on Iodine are those of the thyroid, which then don’t survive the isotope’s radioactivity.

The clinic keeps the treated kitties until their levels of radiation emission are safe and low enough to send them home (as determined by the Arizona State Nuclear Regulatory Commission). But for two weeks we need to wash our hands a lot and “limit snuggling time” to half-an-hour a day. This is hard on everybody because he’s a snuggly boy, and dear to us.

So far, so good; but only time will tell if the treatment has been effective. At least in the meantime we can always find him in the dark.

Photos by A. Shock

There are wrens in our desert world. Big, raucous, busy Cactus wrens are always here. And there are wrens that pass through: eye-browed and long-tailed Bewick’s wrens in spring and fall; a Rock wren usually comes around a few times in the winter, and even a House wren once, on its way to its breeding grounds uphill from here.

Today we had a new-for-the-yard visitor: a Canyon wren “jeeting” around on the back porch. It was early morning, and we were up for our Papago Park walk, but before we left I spotted a small dark form flitting in and out of small spaces under the bentwood rocker. At first I thought it might be a rodent, but after better looks, it proved to be a Canyon wren, its cinnamon and gray back and white throat clear even in the early light. It was actively foraging first on the canes of the chair, and then between the flower pots by the pool.

Canyon wrens live in arid places, but usually not in lowland deserts. They are characteristic denizens of precipitous canyon terrains in higher elevations, like the Mogollon Rim or the Grand Canyon, the Superstition Mountains, and such hard-surfaced vertical spaces as those, where their clear descending call rolls down the rock, and absolutely means “Desert Mountains” to many of us who live or visit there. Perhaps there’s a downward movement of a small percentage of the birds from higher elevations for winter, so some birds must pass through occasionally, but it’s a bird we’ve neither seen nor heard in our yard before, nor in Papago Park, where the buttes provide habitat more like what it would naturally occupy.

Canyon wrens are structurally specialized for probing stony crevices for delicacies: their bill is long and straight, and according to Sibley, their spine is attached to the skull at the back, instead of from underneath, which gives the small bird both maximum probing capacity and a nearly constant upward-tilt to its head.

Amazingly — it’s a very active subject — E managed to get these two photos of this morning’s bird, a bit blurry but very identifiable. The last we saw of it was its little rusty tail disappearing into the dark spiny interior of the Mexican fan palm. Then we lost track of its “jeet” call, and we didn’t see it again.

For the record, this week in October seems to be one each year when it’s possible to find species on the move: last year, this was the part of the month when an Ovenbird, a tiny, unexpected out-of-range thrush-like warbler made a brief appearance under the backyard mesquite, as if it belonged there. White-crowned sparrows have also recently returned for their winter stay, making themselves known by their characteristic and pleasing song, along with the male Red-winged blackbirds, who trickle in a few at a time and stay until spring.

To hear a Canyon wren sing go to ASU’s Ask a Biologist and under “Sound files” click on “click to open” then click on the right-pointing triangle to play.

Photos by E. Shock.

The first day of autumn has been a red letter day in our yard. Not only was there a Western screech owl calling last night — a new species for the yard, as far as my observations go — but this afternoon, in the heat of the day, a young Desert iguana raced under a creosote bush in the front yard, when I went out to get the mail.

I whipped out my tiny Canon Elph but the little ‘zard was all warmed up from hanging out in the midday sun, and it sped away before hiding in the shade under the creosote where I could see him but couldn’t get a picture. So I pinched this nice photo by Jason Penney from the excellent Reptiles of Arizona website which you can check out for more detailed info about this lizard. When full grown, Desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis) are large lizards — almost 6″not counting tail and up to 16″with it — with a blunt face, long tail, and distinctive buffy coloration below a colorful pattern of speckles. This little guy shone pale gold as it raced across the cement driveway; its color gave away its identity even before I got close enough to see him well. Tiger whiptails (Aspidoscelis tigris) the lizards we see most often around here, are darker and lower to the ground.

The little iguana was also exhibiting another trait of its kind: it was out in the hot part of the day, when most other lizards have retired to shaded shelter or underground to rest and digest their forage. Diet is another thing that makes Desert iguanas distinct from our other lizards — they’re largely herbivorous when mature, eating a variety of desert vegetation, including the yellow flowers of creosote bushes, which they will climb to feast on. The first Desert iguana I ever saw was among the spring wildflowers at the Desert Botanical Garden, grazing in the hot sun like a small-scale reptilian cow, even leaving behind it large (for a lizard) fibrous pellets of poop like plant-eaters do. And, yes, they are related to their better known cousins, the Green “Tastes Like Chicken” Iguanas (Iguana iguana) of Mexico and Central America. I don’t know what something that feeds on pungent creosote blooms would taste like.

But this is why seeing him was especially exciting: there are only a few in the neighborhood, and that number appears to be shrinking, at least by informal observation. It’s only a theory, but mortality of Desert iguanas (specifically in our neighborhood) seemed to accelerate after the City re-coated our streets with a dark sealant. It makes for good basking, perhaps, the dark surface heating up earlier and staying warm later than the old gray road, and sadly, for several weeks, I would see Desert iguana roadkill regularly: three along one stretch of a heavily-used street nearby alone. So, seeing this little guy who was perhaps this year’s hatch, or more likely a yearling, was a very welcome sight.

Etymological notes:

Dipsosaurus is constructed of Greek elements, meaning “thirsty lizard”; dorsalis refers to the spine, which in Desert iguanas is protected by prominent, keeled scales.

Tiger whiptail, photo by E. Shock

Aspidoscelis tigris: Aspidoscelis is also from Greek elements, and means “shield leg” because of the sturdy scales on the whiptail’s legs, and “tigris” because it is stripy.

Last night was a busy night in the yard. Well, I suppose they’re all busy nights, but last night I was awake to appreciate it. Before human bedtime, the geckos were at their posts under the porch lights (our yard residents are the non-native Mediterranean Geckos, not the indigenous Western Banded, but they’re still charmingly rubbery voracious devourers of insects, especially moths), and the Butte was going off sporadically, the coyote pack’s yelps ricocheting off the slickrock. There might have been the sharp yip of a Gray Fox, which also inhabit the neighborhood, but it was faint. Somewhere, the spadefootlets must have been hopping around foraging in the dark, as well.

After “bedtime” though, things really got going. A female raccoon marauded past the bedroom trailed by at least one kit from this year. Last year there were two separate families, one with two, the other with three kits each. That’s a lot of pounds of raccoons living off the yard, plus Papa, too, who has only half of a tail, diminishing his raccoon-gestalt but not his swagger. We’re not sure how many there are this year, because our view of them is most often through the arcadia door, and sightings are limited to who rolls by the framed glass, like watching a dog show on the TV animal channel.

Last night the main event (for me), however, was again being awakened by an owl. Not the Great Horned owl this time, but an owl I’d never heard in our yard: a Western screech owl. They’re not uncommon in the area — I’ve seen them peering out from day-roosts in saguaro cavities at the nearby Desert Botanical Garden — but we’ve never heard or seen them in our little scrap of modified desert. This one called from just after 2 am until the Butte really exploded about half an hour later, when the owl stopped. Its mellow short hoots were emitted in a cluster which descended slightly at the end. It sounded much like the “Morse code call” of its cousin the Whiskered screech owl, but that species doesn’t live in this part of Arizona. The call was soft but regular, and started up again at 4 am, and went on for at least 45 minutes, when I fell back to sleep.

So far, like the generously rainy Monsoon of 2008, this has been a generously owly season in the yard, and this Western screech owl, who may always have been here, or who may be a new neighbor, ushered in fall last night; I’m glad I was awake to hear it. With luck maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of it sometime, hunting pocket mice and crickets under the desert trees. Right now, though, I think I need a nap: the first nap of Autumn!

“The northern autumnal equinox takes place today, Monday, Sept. 22nd, at 15:44 UT (11:44 a.m. EDT) when the sun crosses the celestial equator heading south for the year. Autumn begins in the northern hemisphere, and spring in the southern hemisphere. Happy equinox!” (Spaceweather.com)

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