If you had a dragon-wing rug — I do mean a rug made out of dragon wings — and it was terribly old and worn but still in use in the family home, and it lay on the floor of a room at the back with a couple of big armchairs to fold up in and lots of dark wooden bookshelves and not many windows, the rug would probably have fringy bits along the edges, and worn patches where you could see leathery underlayments where the scaly feathers attached, and it might still glitter a little with rainbow membranes.  In fact it might look a lot like this:

White-lined sphinx moth wing detail

This isn’t a dragon wing, it’s the wing of a sphinx (a mystical and legendary creature in itself) but in this case the moth version.  All four of the moth’s wings were discarded by an ærial predator over our yard last night, and all four wings fluttered to the ground and settled within feet of each other.  An owl, or a bat, or a nighthawk had shucked it, perhaps — the body would have made a fat protein-rich mouthful but the wings are dry and awkward to swallow, so the predator neatly clipped them and let them fall.

Given this scenario of on-the-wing food prep, the question remains — if you had a dragon-wing rug — what sort of hunter could do that to a dragon?

  (All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge!)

Exactly one year ago this month, the White Mountains of eastern Arizona were ablaze with the Wallow Fire, the largest fire in state history.  The human-caused fire scorched more than 530,000 acres in four counties in Arizona and one in New Mexico, significantly damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness habitat, as well as historic and residential buildings, water and timber resources, and range-land.

This weekend, E and I hiked and camped in the high-altitude mixed conifer-aspen, near-alpine grassland biome near Mt. Baldy, curious to see how the fire had affected some of the areas we know and love.  In the few days we were there we found big changes, but perhaps not as drastic as we feared.  We were able to camp and hike in favorite places, each scarred but not destroyed by the wildfire’s effects. The campground was only marginally burnt.  I would love to know if this close call was a natural quirk of fire topography, or if firefighters saved the campground.

<< aspen and ponderosa forest damaged by the 2011 Wallow Fire (Photoshopped edit, A.Shock photo)

Our relief that things weren’t worse than they were is the result of a non-technical, tourist viewpoint.  For residents, both human and wildlife, the fire changed the landscape in ways that will not be restored in our lifetime. Blackened trees stand everywhere, some killed outright, others damaged and struggling.  Fallen trees — some reduced to a trunk-sized trail of ash — criss-cross the forest floor.  Some of the downed trees were felled as part of federal and state agencies’ safety strategies intended to make the most seriously burnt areas safer for hunters, hikers, and fishermen: many hazard trees near roads, structures, in campgrounds, and along trails have been cut down and piled into charred heaps by feller-buncher equipment and saw-crews.  Bright yellow signs posted at every trailhead and forest road junction caution people venturing into the back country that flames are not the only dangers of fire: once the fires are out, flash flooding, falling trees and branches, and landslides are the legacy of wildfire for seasons to come.

But not all of the forest suffered equally: crown-fire areas, where the flames jumped from treetop to treetop, burnt hotter than others and show more severe damage.  Ground-fire areas burnt spottily, while other places were only lightly toasted.  Some pockets were not touched by flames at all. Yet each of these places shows a welcome resurgence of life.

>> a foot-tall aspen regrowing in the shelter of a charred ponderosa trunk (Photoshopped edit, A.Shock photo)

Although Ponderosa pines appear to be hard hit in many places, aspen trees and firs growing alongside them often seem to have sustained less damage. In addition, 2012′s snowmelt and spring rains provided most areas with a green carpet of grass, re-sprouted shrubs, and young trees.  Elk cows trail gangly calves, and busy Barn swallows, Hermit thrushes and Brewer’s blackbirds have bug-filled beaks, carrying food back to their nestling broods.  A pair of Bald eagles has built a nest in the woods crowning a peninsula of a popular fishing lake: a joyful reason for an area closure, unlike the parts of the forest still closed to recreation because of severe fire damage.

<< watercolor sketch of small aspen that survived the fire (A.Shock)

The flame-colored sky in the background of the top image is reminiscent of the fires that swept through the area last year. But it’s just a mid-June sunset glowing behind the aspens and Ponderosa pines where we camped. Ironically, the blazing sunset is caused by smoke particles in the air, wafting from wildfires currently burning in Arizona and New Mexico — the Poco fire near Young, AZ, and the enormous, lightning-caused Whitewater-Baldy Fire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest , now classed as the largest fire in the history of that state.

A few weeks ago, we discovered that one of our local Gambel’s quail pairs had nested in an aloe bed at the foot of the back garden wall.

The pale, speckled eggs were tucked deep into a hollow among the spiky aloe leaves — real Spot the Bird material — they’re barely visible inside the red circle on the photo. (click to enlarge) >>

The hen had scraped a shallow depression, lined it with bits of dry vegetation and a few feathers, and settled hennily onto the eggs.  She had hidden her nest well, but unfortunately it was while we were out of town and the garden was quiet.  Once we came home and started watering and raking and making a human kind of tidying fuss, she flushed when we passed near. If she hadn’t flown out of cover each time with a clapping wing burst, we might never have discovered her and her trove.  On the other hand, these skittish, explosive escapes were as much distraction as alarm, designed to draw a predator’s attention towards herself, and away from her helpless, immobile egg cache.  But we kept away as much as possible and did the math, looking forward to seeing the little cloud of downy chicks swarming uncountably behind her before long.

For more than a week we avoided her part of the yard as much as possible in order to keep from disturbing her, but occasionally we had to Pass the Nest.  At those times, when she flew, or if she wasn’t at home, we’d peek briefly into her green hollow to see what was new.  We counted ten eggs, which is about average for Gambel’s quails.  If the clutch had been out in the open, it wouldn’t have looked significantly different from these Cadbury Mini Eggs (photo by William Warby from Wikimedia Commons) — if they’d been a bit rounder, larger, and not delicious candy-coated chocolate.  No pink or yellow ones, either: they all look like the white ones with cinnamon speckles and blotches.

Here’s a slightly better view of the genuine eggs, enlarged from the photo above right >>

For a week nothing changed: hen, aloe, eggs.  Late one afternoon I passed by, and when she didn’t flush I peered down into the hole.  I didn’t see eggs — just some miscellaneous checkering and speckles.  Since quail babies follow mom right out of the nest the minute the last chick has pipped, never to return, my first thought was that the chicks had hatched and I was seeing eggshells. But it didn’t look quite right for that. I bent closer in, peering, and saw bright eyes staring back.

A young gopher snake had found the nest.  All I could see was elegant coils of yellow and brown snakeskin draped over the eggs in the shallow scrape.

>> the gopher snake in the hen’s nest.  It looks like it’s eating an egg, but it’s just the angle of the photo

After managing a few blurry cell phone photos in very low light, I moved away, not wanting to spook the snake.  Since I didn’t know whether the quail hen was going to come back to the nest or not, it would be a shame if the eggs went to waste: the gopher might as well have them.

Would the snake eat all ten eggs?  Would the hen abandon the nest in agitation?  Did she even know she’d been robbed (possibly not if the snake came and went while she was away, because unlike ravens, quail can’t count).  We didn’t know.

What happened was that the young gopher ate five of the eggs, and departed.  The hen came back, and continued to incubate the remainder.

But only for two days.  After that, she didn’t return to the nest and none of the remaining five eggs hatched.  We don’t know if she abandoned the nest because of the snake, or because the eggs weren’t viable, or if she met her own fate (probably not to the egg-robbing adolescent snake, which wasn’t big enough to eat her).  There were five eggs for a while, then four, and now there are two — somebody’s coming back periodically for a snack.

<< today, two remaining eggs

It seems like a terrible loss for the hen, and it made us sad to not have a batch of fresh quailets swarming around the yard (and we still haven’t seen any quail hatchlings this season, which is unusual).  But a moment’s reflection provides reassurance.  The eggs went to a native predator, and weren’t wasted by some other pointless loss like being stepped on, eaten by a well-fed pet dog, or crushed by our neighbor with a dropped branch as he lopped mesquite limbs on our side of the wall.  Even if the eggs had hatched, the odds are that some of the chicks would have been lost to predators anyway, perhaps to the very snake that scored the egg bonanza.  I’m pleased to have gopher snakes and coachwhips (or even the occasional problematic other) working the yard, keeping less appealing scurrying neighbors in check. It means there’s some vestige of a natural system at play here, so I can’t truly begrudge them a baby cottontail or a quail egg, or eight.

With luck, experience, and efficient gene expression, the hen is sitting on another clutch right now under the watchful eye of her baby-daddy rooster, in a nest better hidden from foot traffic, human disruption, and snake-sense.

(All photos and illustration by A.Shock, except where noted)

The morning after our latest haboob I found an expiring Sphinx moth, battered by the winds and on its last legs.  It was a big one, not as colorful as some, but marked like bark in black and white, with three orange spots on its abdomen.  It’s a fairly large animal: about three inches long, with an abdomen like my little finger, except segmented and furry.  I’ve identified it as  Manduca rustica, the Rustic Sphinx (if you know different, please let me know), which as an adult moth feeds on deep-throated nectar flowers such as Petunias and Tecoma.

<< Manduca rustica (photos A.Shock, click to enlarge)

Although it’s probable that this individual was done in by the wind, it may also have been at the end of its life span anyway.  I carried it to the outdoor table, and took a few macro shots with my cell-phone macro lens.  That I got any results worth sharing is a bit amazing, since the lens, which is designed for a different cell phone than the one I own, has to be scotch-taped to the device.  (Seriously, scotch-taped to the device, not exaggerating.)

Anyway, here’s the sphinx’s face, with its big night-seeing eye, its furry head, and its coiled, straw-like proboscis, plenty long for reaching down the throats of flowers for the good stuff.

Other parts of the Phoenix area had been rained on already in this monsoon season, but so far our part of town only had dust.  Big dust, impressive dust, haboob-style wall of silty grit in your eyes, teeth and hair dust, but no rain.  At about four this morning, however, that changed with the slow onset of rumbling thunder, brief flashes of lightning, and (after suitable meteorological prelude) buckets of rain.  About four tenths of an inch came down over a couple of hours, a perfect pace for sluicing dust, soaking gravelly soil, filling flower pots, and refreshing everyone and everything that lives here.

Lots of things come out of the ground during heavy rains: Spadefoots, scorpions, centipedes, and various snakes either choose to or are forced to emerge from their underground refuges to flee the flood or to hunt others who have come out to drink, mate, or search for food.  Unfortunately, a small hunter with inadequate eyesight and no capacity for swimming fell victim to our pool during last night’s downpour: a tiny Western Threadsnake.  Not good for the snake, but good for photography.  We’ve  seen these guys in the yard a only couple of times before, usually unearthed during gardening and gently reburied, but we’ve never managed pictures.

<< Western Threadsnake (Leptotyphlops humilis), with a dime for scale.  Its scales are so translucent that you can see a couple of its last meals as dark areas in various points along its digestive system.

Threadsnakes are tiny silvery-pink worm-like snakes with two blunt ends that look alike, except that the tail ends in a harmless spine which it will poke aggressors with defensively (on larger nuisances, such as humans, this has no effect).  The other end has its nearly featureless face, which consists of two darkish spots below the scales that are eyes and a small, practically toothless mouth. >>

The eyes are almost blind because the snake lives predominantly underground, and the mouth is toothless because the little snake’s prey — ants, termites, their larvæ and the like — are swallowed whole. In general, the entire snake maxes out at 15″ in length, the last 0.3″ inch of which is the stubby tail.  As you can see, this one was barely 10″ from snout to tail-tip; here’s a picture of my rusty studio straight edge, with threadsnake for scale, a reptilian Dinky Dude of the Desert:

(All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge)

This time of year the world is pregnant with nests full of eggs, tiny cottontails hopping and hiding in the yard, fledgling birds following their parents food-begging insistently, new yellow-green leaves and catkins on the mesquite trees, and glorious cactus blooms.

<< Praying mantis egg-case on a Palo Verde twig (photo E.Shock). >> close-up of a mesquite catkin (photo A.Shock)

But as this acceleration of generation increases, we see another side of abundance: broken eggs on the ground, young birds not experienced enough to stay out of the street, small mammals learning the hard way about the swimming pool, an adult gopher snake swallowing a tiny cottontail.

Spring is a scavenger’s prime-time. We’ve been watching an Inca Dove carcass decompose under the tangerine tree. In the dry desert, this isn’t a grisly thing: if not enjoyed by raccoons, foxes, or feral cats, the soft parts are quickly consumed by the local scuttling scavengers, usually ants or dermestid beetles and the like. Inca Doves are small, anyway — there’s not much to them, and small bodies don’t have time to bloat, liquefy, or smell very much.

>> Inca dove skeleton (photo A.Shock)

Decomposition is short and if not sweet, at least efficient. What was an intact dove carcass lying in the leaf litter a couple of days ago was, by yesterday, an articulated partial skeleton. The head was gone, but the ribs were still festooned with a few feathers, and the pelvis dangled two femurs and a foot. The ants’ tidy de-fleshing revealed a possible cause of death invisible to us before: egg-binding. Look below the rib-cage under the vertebrae and pelvis, and you can see an intact egg, cracked but still heavy with its contents, in place in the abdominal cavity.

<< Here’s a side-view. The large blade-shaped bone on the right is the little dove’s keel, or breast-bone; the egg sits snugly — perhaps a little too snugly — under the tiny pelvis.

I don’t have my own photo of an Inca Dove — although they’re common in our yard, they’re camera-shy, at least in my experience. But if you need the reassurance of a living image, or more info about Inca Doves, click here, for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology entry on the species.

And just to sweeten the pot because after all it is the holiday season, here’s a photo I posted last spring, of two terribly tiny bunnies snuggled into the form their mother scraped out for them. Go ahead; click to enlarge to see their tiny fluffy details. It was either this or one of the gopher snake eating a baby cottontail, but I think I’ll save that for next Easter.

>> two infant cottontails stashed in a form (photo A.Shock)

They don’t all make it.  E found a dead fledgling hummingbird in the path across the wash, under the palo verde tree. It was dried, mummified, an inoffensive inanimate thing, not even worth the ants picking over.  We buried it under a nearby chuparosa, a favored food of hummers.  (Photos E.Shock)

Top: detail of foot, with primary feathers behind.

Middle: detail of rump feathers and tail feathers, showing juvenile buffy-edged plumage with a hint of metallic green.  The green deck feathers (middle tail feathers) are just growing in.

Bottom: whole little corpse, with partly-grown baby-beak.

Cactus wrens are a large (for a wren), lively, and common presence all over the low-elevation deserts in the American Southwest.  The photo to left left shows one sitting on a cholla branch.  They do that a lot, often while making all sorts of  mechanical-sounding vocalizations like drbrdrbrdrbrdrr or krakrakrakrakrakra.  Cactus wrens are expert at landing on, perching on, and building in fiercely prickly vegetation, usually constructing their unruly globular “kitchen sink” nests weaving fiber, litter, twigs and plastic safely into the protective arms of seriously spiny cactus species like cholla.

Last week we found a Cactus wren dead in our yard, stuck in the leaves of a yucca.  Here’s a photo I took of it (take my word for it, the spotty plumage is diagnostic):

This was certainly sad, but it also seemed very odd.  We couldn’t tell how the bird died, but there it was, a sorry speckled-feathery carcass wedged in the leaves of a Soaptree yucca.  Was it stashed there by a predator?  Not likely; there are predators that do that, but they don’t frequent our yard.  Did it die in the foliage above and fall there?  That doesn’t seem likely, either — it was wedged in tight, and somewhat horizontally.  Did it get stuck there, somehow, maybe a foot caught in the narrow leaves?  Possibly.

Here’s another wren story, not sad and perhaps enlightening.

Just a few days after the macabre yard find, E and I visited Boyce Thompson Arboretum, and paused on our walk for a few moments to watch a pair of Cactus wrens (Campylorhyncus brunneicapillus) busily working on a nest in the upper branches of a tree Prickly pear, a really tall variety of Opuntia. You can see the main support pad in the photo on the left, with the fibrous nesting material sticking out to the right, and the streaky bird’s head poking out to the left.  The wren was about to launch itself into the next plant over, a Soaptree yucca, to continue rummaging between the rigid leaves to gather tough hair-like fibers (visible especially clearly in the carcass photo above) that grow along the yucca stem at the bases of the leaves.  It did this over and over again, each time going deep into the spiky growth to tug and pull at the free building material to use in its nest.  Below is the best photo we managed of the wren reappearing with its beak full of yucca fibers.  Considering the tough and pointy nature of the vegetation as well as the close quarters, it looked like hazardous work, although poking around in nooks and crannies, probing with their narrow, strong beak, is what cactus wrens are built to do.  (I’ve tried to extract unwanted volunteers like fan palm sproutlings and African sumac seedlings from inside yucca clumps, and let me say that gloves, eye protection and long sleeves are often not up to the task.)

So did our hapless yard wren get caught somehow while carrying out this dangerous domestic mission?  We can never know for sure, but it seems in the realm of possibility.  It’s hard out there for a bird.

(Top photo, from Wikimedia Commons, by Mark Wagner.  Other photos by A&E Shock)

Another dire tale of cactus wren-related nesting mishap casts the spectre of botanical revenge on this story: a couple of years ago, the continuous plucking of fiber off of a hairy “Old Man” cactus in the yard by a diligently nesting Cactus wren denuded the plant’s crown so much it experienced horrible sun-burn, and died.

It was leaning, but not that much.  On Thanksgiving morning while we had breakfast (E, the M, and me), it fell with a huge thump from no particular direction. Later, E found the saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea): under the back mesquite, lying split like a toppled Doric column on top of beloved cax and sux, some in the ground, some in pots on shelves. Its weight had splintered a 2×12 pine shelf, cracking it nearly in two.  It popped a mature barrel cactus out of the ground roots and all, and launched pots in the air, so that they landed in uprooted piles.  It took all three of us to dig out the victims pinned under the wreckage, embedded in green flesh, impaled on spines.  Lots of crushed plants, but only two pots lost and only one hand-made one; a small clay “miracle”.  Still, it was gruesome, and the saguaro, although probably 50 years old, wasn’t anywhere near the end of its expected life span.  It hadn’t even grown arms yet, like some of the older saguaros in this mature desert neighborhood.

Pictures tell the story best.

In order to remove the plants from under it, we had to prop the saguaro incrementally up onto cinder blocks, where it now lies abandoned like an old car, awaiting decomposition, its length unnaturally separated from the soil below.  Sadly, as damaged as it is, it looks very whole even lying there, and a few of its roots, still buried in the damp desert soil, are so far keeping it green and living, a support system that won’t bring life back.