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.

Here’s a slightly arty image of an un-opened Potter Wasp nest on the front wall of our house, with a drawing pencil for scale.  Click here for more info on what these tiny clay pots are, and why the wasps build them.  One of these days, I hope to be in the right place in the right time, and see the new wasp break out and fly away.

(Photo A.Shock)

Another dust storm rolled over Phoenix just before sunset tonight, thirteen days after the doozy that hit us earlier in the month.  The first I knew of that one it was already on top of the house, its swirling dust choking out any light that was left in the sky.  I saw amazing photos of its onslaught, but I missed it myself, the beautiful and impressive start of the storm, and experienced only the gritty heart.  (I’m still cleaning up.)

But this one hit a bit earlier in the day, while it was still light, and farther to the west.  By going out onto the street in front of our house I was able to look towards Phoenix and see the brown snout of the leading edge engulf downtown.  The haboob was below a stack of cumulus clouds that kept its sullying gusts pressed to the skyline, while rays of clean sunlight streamed upward into an azure sky.  At the house, we only got a little dust, but uncharacteristically, that hasn’t settled.  The air is still and hazy, like a gray, hot mist.

…of convergent evolution.

(photo A.Shock)

For those like me who need facts and a story, this is a Palo Verde Root Borer Beetle (Derobrachus geminatus, adult, fully 3″ long), posing for what I thought were post-mortem portraits this morning after I fished her out of the pool.  However, she was clearly heard to state “I’m not dead yet!” when she threatened me with her pliers-like mandibles.  She’s out there now, trundling around, still drying out I s’pose.  I didn’t have the heart to do her in, although her grubby children do not play well with others, and insist on voraciously damaging the roots of trees.  Get a load of the spiky thorax!

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)

<< Here are my next-door neighbor’s cucumber plants, with a snake napping amidst them. The neighbor noticed it when he was rummaging around in these leaves looking for cukes for dinner. I happened to be in our backyard, and saw him and his wife standing just on the other side of our shared block wall, and went over to see what they were looking at.

“A gopher snake.”

The wall is six feet tall, and I can’t see over it. So I asked him if he would mind snapping a shot of their snake with my cell phone. He obliged, and handed the phone back to me. As I walked away, I checked to see if the picture was in focus; cell-phone cameras are capricious that way. Nope, in fine focus (photo above).

“Umm, Dane? I don’t think that’s a gopher snake.” I fetched a flimsy plastic chair to stand on, and peered over the wall straight down onto the comfy animal. It was a beautiful Western diamondback rattlesnake, curled in the ‘cukes, snoozing and digesting its latest meal. I could see the sun glinting off of its rattle, concealed deep in the center of its keely-scaled coils. >>

The Fire Department was called, and a re-location made. The Scottsdale FD is equipped for reptile removal. They only take snakes from settings urban enough that the reptile might be considered “out of place” — if you live in the foothills, or on the edge of open desert, they will tell you your snake isn’t a suitable candidate for removal, because it’s at home in your yard. But in our mixed suburban-desert zone they came for the neighbor’s rattler, in a huge, danger-green fire engine — three strapping, uniformed Firemen with their names embroidered on their dark blue uniforms (why would a desert community make their public safety officers wear dark blue in the desert sun?) redolent of calm and expertise. The guy with the snake-tongs had on shorts. The entire scene was calm. No one was horrified, or panicked, or officious. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the neighbors have a 14-month old grand-daughter and an overly-mouthy not-too-bright black lab, I think we all would have been happy to let the snake stay put and take in more roof-rats. There’s plenty to go around, along with the pocket mice, cottontails and those tomato-thieving rock squirrels who disemboweled Shelby’s patio furniture cushions to line their nest in our attic with. All of us would have traded the snake for the rodents, any day. But… the grand-toddler… So unless there are more rattlers, the gopher snakes will have to take care of the rats.

The capture was uneventful; the snake’s belly was bulging from recent feeding, and it only rattled a little. It was taken away along with repeated assurances it was destined for safe relocation (I chose to believe the nice officers). The fireman with the snake even paused to let us take photos — my neighbor had his video cam and I was still hanging over the wall with my camera. The rattler, which was only about three feet long, just looked pissed off.

The folks next door have lived in their house since the 1970s, and they’ve never seen a rattlesnake around here in all that time. But the Army National Guard just paved over a generous chunk of their desert two blocks south, and the city has an on-going streets improvement project a couple of blocks in the other direction. I’ve seen more coyotes in the past few months than in the rest of the time we’ve lived here, including one IN our (totally walled) yard. We suspect this habitat loss and upset is forcing critters there to move into our streets.

Not infrequently the topic of snakes comes up among the folks who live here, and I often mention what a good idea it is to not kill snakes because they eat rodents (we’re in a part of the Phoenix area plagued with non-native roofrats). One of the reassuring things I tell people is, “Anyway, all the snakes around here are non-venomous — we don’t have rattlers any more in this area.” Oops. Also, I’ll be carrying a flashlight when I go out into the yard at night, now. There hasn’t really been a need: the raccoons are scrappy, but they’re not venomous.

And it’s still not a good idea to kill snakes.

(All photos A.Shock; click to enlarge)

This morning my foraging strategy was to cook oat bran, spangle it with almonds, and sweeten it a little with agave nectar.  This left the sink full of dishes.  Someone else’s foraging strategy — a fox? a coyote? — was to dig out pocket mice burrows, hoping for some warm, moist, furry, squeaking protein.  This left loose dirt and awkward footing under the lines when I went to hang out the wet laundry.

Another foraging strategy was to hit the hummingbird feeders as soon as the sun was up.  Hummers and woodpeckers — both Gila and Gilded Flicker — are the usual habitués, but since around the 20th of May Hooded Orioles (Icterus cucullatus) have also been sipping nectar at the feeders.  They may have been in the neighborhood from time immemorial, but this is the first breeding season we’ve been aware of them in our yard, other than as infrequently seen migrants.  So, I’m excited.  So excited that I’ve done two things: one, put up a purpose-made oriole feeder (like the hummer feeders we use, but bigger, oriole-sized, and orange), and two, inflict you with the following two barely adequate photos, from my digital point-and-shoot.

Hooded orioles (Photos A.Shock) >>

Yes, these are not great pictures, but as I say, I’m excited to be infested with orioles, and they’re the best pictures I’ve managed so far.  So here they are. The birds are both shy and busy — they tend to go from one feeder to the other (these are hummingbird feeders in the photos) after less than 10 seconds on each one, and so are a tough target.

I’ve only seen a male at our feeder one time, when three birds arrived all at once (perhaps a family?).  Unlike the subtle gray and pale-yellow females, the males are what we think of as oriole-y: a blazing golden yellow, with black wings and tail, white wing bars, and a black mask and bib.

<< In this photo (by www.naturespicsonline.com) you can see a male on a mesquite.  Hooded Orioles love to build their woven, pendulous nests high in palms and other trees, so high and inaccessible (to humans) that most biologists tend to look up at from the ground and proclaim “Yup, that’s a hooded oriole nest!”: for a not un-common bird, very little info exists on their nesting habits, or any of their habits, actually.  (Read more about Hooded oriole’s natural history, listen to sounds, see more images at Cornell Lab’s All About Birds here).  If you think of these orioles as I do, as golden birds with black parts, “hooded” makes less sense than “masked”.  But if you think of them as black birds — and orioles are in a taxonomic sense Blackbirds, or Icterids, related to blackbirds, bobolinks, meadowlarks, caciques, and grackles, to name a few — if you think of them as black birds with golden bits, including a golden hood, then their name makes more sense.  Check out the photo of the male again, with new eyes.

Back to foraging strategy: orioles eat insects, nectar and fruit.  So, like hummers, they use the nectar ports on feeders, but as in the photo on the right above) “our” female/s seem to prefer hanging upside down to drink the sugary drips left by the swinging, sloppy woodpeckers.  At this time of year, when the hummer feeders are busy with the new crop of young birds, and adults feeding themselves and nestlings, this can lead to a back-up of scolding hummingbirds who usually approach to drink only after the larger birds are done.

Orioles also eat fruit, and I had some past-their-prime oranges from our tree that I halved and impaled on a twig above the feeder — the orioles and woodpeckers cleaned them out, leaving only the skin with the interior membranes perfectly intact.  Right now, there’s a watermelon on the kitchen counter waiting to be cut up whose sweet rind I intend to share.  BTW, if you want to put out a nectar feeder for orioles, oriole nectar is 6-to-one parts water to sugar (hummer nectar is sweeter, at 4-to-one water to sugar).  As with hummer food, bring water to boil, add sugar and stir until liquid is clear, bring back to a brief boil, let cool with a lid on, and fill feeders.  Even if you don’t have orioles, woodpeckers will drink this mixture, too.  And it may take some of the congestion off your hummer feeders.

…contemplates you.  Click to enlarge, twice if you can, for good spiny detail.  (Photo A.Shock, Devil’s Canyon)

This time of year, the local Turkey Vultures roost on the rocks and in the tall eucalypts’ tops along Queen Creek.  By twilight they’ve called it a day, and have found their places, high overhead where they’ll be safe from most predators, dreaming of whatever odiferous carnage vultures dream of.  Unlike most hawks, many vultures are gregarious, both at mealtime and bedtime.  Sometimes Turkey Vultures roost in such large numbers that if there’s a breeze you can smell them, their plumage exuding a soury-gastric smell I grew familiar with when handling a turkey vulture or two for school-education programs back in the day.

Being creatures of the sunlight — often seen extending their wings to the warming, drying, disinfecting, vitamin producing rays of the sun (left) — vultures are not generally associated with nocturnal celestial bodies the way owls or nightjars are.  But, above is a photo of one back-lit by the moon, the gibbous globe behind it looking like a cranium picked as bare of covering as the vulture’s own red, wrinkled scalp.  Goodnight, sweet scavenger.

(Both photos E.Shock; top, vulture in eucalyptus with moon, Boyce Thompson Arboretum; bottom, vulture on Cardón in Baja Sur)