On our way home from our weekend getaway, E and I stopped at Montezuma Well National Monument.  It’s one of our favorite places: a compact confluence of archæology, geology, and natural history. If you haven’t been there while visiting central Arizona, I highly recommend it.

>> Montezuma Well and beautiful fall color (all photos in this post either A or E Shock; click to enlarge)

As we were walking back to the truck, admiring the glow of the cottonwoods in the creek bed and dramatic clouds in a sapphire blue sky, I remembered to look down.  It was a good thing I did: underfoot were a couple of spiders.  Unaware of each other or of us, they were not going in straight lines as if to get from point to point, but were moving around deliberately, as if looking for eight lost contact lenses.  Each was a moderately large animal, the size of an adult wolf spider.  But they had round cephalothoraxes, and were black with lots of gray spiky hairs on their abdomens and stocky legs.  I bent over for a closer look, and wondered if I were seeing tiny tiny tarantulas.  Tiny for a tarantula, that is — they were still fairly large spiders, about an inch and a half from toe to toe.

<< on the go, places to be, females to find

We watched them for a while, got some pictures, and went on our way, hoping the squabbling tourist family on the trail behind us wouldn’t accidentally flatten the little guys through inattention.

Back on the highway in cell phone range, and uncertain if we’d really seen tarantulas, I consulted the internet and discovered this site: So You Found a Tarantula?  (In case you ever need to know how to transmit a live tarantula through the US Postal Service — and apparently there are good reasons to do this — this is your site.) It solicited questions, specimens for ID, and generated answers about things tarantular, including citizen science and advice about tarantula husbandry.

>> “Do not get too close: I am assuming the posture that indicates I am willing to kick irritating urticating hairs off my abdomen at you.”

Through this post on the website of the American Tarantula society, Dr. Brent Hendrixson of Millsaps College is trying to increase what’s known about American tarantulas, which for all our familiarity with them from heebie-jeebie movies turn out to be poorly understood in terms of their systematics and life history.

<< Keen sandal for scale.  Tiny tarantula is just to the left of the yellow leaf.

The website was fascinating, but it assumed you already knew you’d found a tarantula — it wasn’t set up to answer the question “Did I find a tarantula?”  And we weren’t sure: aren’t all tarantulas huge hairy hand-sized horrors?  Other tarantulas I’ve seen in the wild or in captivity were all enormous.  If tarantulas we had seen, then they were “toy” tarantulas, the chihuahuas, the tea-cup tarantulæ of the arachnid world.

After a little more research on the Web I was still undecided about their tarantularity, and decided to email Dr. Hendrixson photos of one of our dinky dudes asking if we had seen tarantulas, and if so, what kind?  Within minutes, I’d received an email reply from him: “Definitely a tarantula.”  This was exciting!  Better yet was the next part: “There are a number of ’small’ species in Arizona and it turns out that this one is most likely undescribed (i.e., doesn’t have a name yet).”

>> Possibly, these were adult males  wandering about searching for females’ burrows, where the ladies were waiting for male callers.

Sure enough, according to this website, there are 14 species of tarantula, all in the genus Aphonopelma, that live in Arizona: three in Maricopa, three in Pima, three in Coconino, etc.  But in Yavapai County, situated between Coconino County and Maricopa County, no tarantulas have been scientifically described.

This doesn’t mean that we discovered an unknown, new species of tarantula (although it is a possibility).  It’s just that biologists haven’t poked around enough tarantula burrows to know who answers the door in this location — it could be an already described species that also lives in an adjacent county.  We’ll have to wait to see what science decides.

In the meantime, we can fantasize about eponymous lightning striking twice: first Thermogladius shockii, now Aphonopelma shockii?  Well, of course not (that’s not how scientific nomenclature-giving works), but you can’t blame us for pretending.  Nevertheless, I’m still excited about having spotted diminutive, un-named tarantulas in the wild, who are living their lives entirely unconcerned that no one has ever slapped a latinate moniker on their hirsute posteriors.

Bonus etymology

All American tarantulas belong to the genus Aphonopelma.  According to Henry F. Beechhold, this name is derived from the Greek elements aphonos, “silent”, and pelma, “[sole of the] foot”.  (I haven’t cracked Liddell and Scott on this one, so we’ll have to take his word for this.)  I think it’s unfair of tarantulas — even tiny ones — to be pussy-footed; I’d rather be able to hear them coming. On the other hand, I once heard the click of a cockroach’s feet as it walked across ceramic tile, and that was fairly disturbing, so maybe, on second thought, silence is golden.

Well, it’s not actually a bird.  Perhaps these posts should be called “Not the Bird”.

Here is an appropriately faded Old West-y snap shot of a neighbor of ours, taken with my cell phone.  Can you spot the non-avian subject?  It’s a Desert Iguana, posing with dignity as if for a Victorian formal portrait, lurking in the heat of the day under a creosote bush a block from our house.

<< Desert iguana under creosote (photo A.Shock). Click once to enlarge.

These lizards are both camera-shy and fast, and this was the best shot I could get: right after clicking it, the liz shot off across the broiling pavement back to the other side of the road and disappeared.

Desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis: “thirsty lizard” with a “notable back”) are fairly large lizards — this one was twelve inches from nose to tail-tip — closely associated with creosote bushes, which provide them with food, shelter, and shade.  I’m always thrilled when I see one in our ‘hood, which is only a couple of times a year.  Unlike our other local lizards who eat other creatures and shun the heat of the day by retreating to shelter and burrows, these pale pinkish, blunt-nosed lizards are primarily vegetarian thermophiles who are most frequently seen active and out in the heat of the day in the very hottest part of the summer.  This one was basking on the edge of our black-asphalt street, swishing its long tail slowly back and forth before it fled the camerazza (me).  Click here for an earlier Three Star Owl post on our neighborhood iguanas, here for more species info, and here for still more info and great photos.  If you’re too blasé to click the second link, you will miss reading about this species’ interesting natural history, including why it eats the fecal pellets of other iguanas, and what its thigh glands secrete.  Really, you need to know, so go ahead and click.

To the right is the photo key to the Rock wren of the current Spot the Bird. Rock wrens rock one of my favorite Latin names in the bird world (along with Upupa epops, the hoopoe): Salpinctes obsoletus. According to Choate, the name comes from Greek salpinctes, “a trumpeter” and Latin obsoletus, “indistinct”, referring to its ringing voice and drab plumage. These contradictory traits explain why the little bird is often heard before it’s seen.  Some of you who wrote to tell me you found it said that after not seeing it for a while “it just suddenly popped out of the picture”.  That’s the way it tends to happen in person with these guys, too.

Below is a rock wren up close, singing its song. You can see its long, de-curved bill, useful for probing rocks and crevices for insects and spiders.  It’s also good for carrying and manipulating small rocks: Rock wrens construct a pavement of tiny flat stones and pebbles leading up to their nest, which is concealed in a hole or crack in a rock.  No one (except the wrens) knows why they do this.  (<< photo E.Shock, taken at Fremont Saddle in the Superstition mountains) One thing the beak does not do is take up water: Rock wrens are thought to get all their moisture through their prey, and don’t drink even when water is available.

Speaking of water, E would like me to add that the rocks in the top photo, along Castle Hotsprings Road, are significantly hydrothermally altered.  You know, subjected to intense heat in a moist environment, either at depth, or nearer the surface, as in a hotspring.  I don’t suppose the rock wren cares, except that the hydrothermal process has left the rock cracked and full of holes, which is just what a rock wren likes.  Click here for a tale about another hydrothermally-altered rock that hosted many organisms.

Last post was the New Year’s first bird — a frosty Costa’s hummingbird — but this one is the Year’s First New Bird, and it’s a hummer, too.

We just returned from Baja California, and in the mission village of San Javier on the dramatic east side of the Sierra de la Giganta in Baja California Sur, Xantus’s hummingbirds (Basilinna or Hylocharis xantusii) were much in evidence. They’re pretty little birds, medium-sized for a hummer (about the size of Anna’s) and colorful, sporting a bright red bill, buffy chest and belly, azure and emerald green upper-parts, black throat, blue-black forehead, a white line behind the eye, and a cinnamon tail.

Behind the Misión San Javier de Viggé-Biaundó, in the three-hundred year old olive grove planted by its founding Jesuit missionaries, Xantus’s hummers zipped back and forth, feeding on chuparosa flowers sprawled over the bulky stone walls (photo right), perched in the thin tips of the olive branches (below), and scolded each other. This is a hummer that lives no where else on earth but central and southern Baja California, and we had tried unsuccessfully to see it once before on an earlier Baja trip, so it was delightful to get so many good views.

(All hummer photos thanks to E.Shock and his magic big little zoom lens, in difficult light conditions with tiny moving targets! Click to enlarge.)

The man whose shares his name with the bird had an interesting history: Xántus János, John Xantus de Vesey (left), was a Hungarian exile who came to the US in the middle of the 19th century, and worked with Hammond and Baird (also names familiar to birders and biologists). He had a short-lived consulship in Mexico — according to Wikipedia he was dismissed for ineptitude – but was there long enough to collect a specimen of this endemic hummer.

In his lifetime, Xantus’s name was also attached to a blenny, a croaker, a gecko, a pelagic crab, a murrelet, a wrasse, a night-lizard, and several plants. In addition, according to an anecdote recounted to me by a Baja historian, during his consulship Xantus left quite a few of his own chromosomes in the local gene pool, along with his Hungarian family name Xántus, which reportedly can still be found as a surname in Baja.

As long ago as the Old Kingdom (the middle of the third millenium BCE), the Egyptians used the eye of the Falcon — the eye of Horus, the falcon-headed deity — as an apotropaic, or protective symbol, wearing the still-popular faience amulets as personal ornament, or tucking them into the wrappings of mummies.

The Left Eye of Horus, also known as the Wedjat Eye, was known to be particularly potent, and its resurrective power was demonstrated by bringing Osirus back to life. According to the British Museum:

The name wedjat means ‘the sound one’, referring to the lunar left eye of Horus that was plucked out by his rival Seth during their conflict over the throne. The restoration of the eye is variously attributed to Thoth, Hathor or Isis. The injury to the eye and its subsequent healing were believed to be reflected in the waxing and waning of the moon.

Horus’s falcon counterpart is said to be the Lanner (Falco biarmicus), a falcon of southern Europe, Africa, and the middle east. We don’t have Lanners living wild in this hemisphere, but most falcons display the typical black “speed stripe” below the eye, like cheetahs, which is the distinctive characteristic of the Wedjat Eye symbol.  To illustrate, here’s a detail of a clay portrait of a native falcon I recently completed: the left eye of a male American kestrel, the smallest falcon in North America, and terrorizer of finches, grasshoppers, and small rodents.

Really, I don’t know if a Kestrel’s eye is so much a bringer of life, as it is a see-er of lunch, but, that’s life-giving to a kestrel, if not to the lunch.