Last fall our herb garden hosted a successful crop of parsley, cilantro, and Lady bird beetles (AKA Lady bugs).  But we only noticed the bounty of bugs when we found roving hordes of hungry beetle larvæ voraciously devouring hapless aphids.  Pictures of the process of larval metamorphosis were captured  and posted here, but all the eggs had already hatched, leaving the beginning of the adventure undocumented. Now the cycle has begun again, and happily this time we caught it from the start.

>>Here are lovely saffron-colored lady bug eggs on our bolting parsley, awaiting transition into fearsome predatory eating machines. (Thanks to E for the photo.)

We’ll have to be careful when we harvest for tabbouleh!

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.

We’ve been watching a hummingbird Hen — we think she’s an Anna’s (Calypte anna) — on a nest since the middle of February.  Lots of people have passed close to her chosen spot, which was fairly low in a crooked Aleppo pine in our backyard, right over a gravel path through the side of the garden.  There was a big wind storm, and chilly late-winter temperatures.

>> Hummingbird nestling (photo A.Shock; click to embiggen)

But the Hen kept sitting, and we finally saw the results of her diligence: one slightly fluffy, fairly well-grown chick peering out over the edge of the small cup-like nest (see photo above).  There’s going to be one more influx of people in the next couple of days to try its courage.  But at least the weather is warm now, and many more flowers are blooming, including some recovered chuparosa flowers, so when the new little bird fledges, there should be lots of nectar and gnats to learn on.

And, for those who follow this blog regularly, I believe I forgot to mention here the last appearance of the unusual (for Phoenix) male Broad-billed hummingbird in our yard last month.  He stuck around until the 16th of February, and we haven’t seen him since.

In other hummingbird news around the yard, yesterday, March 14, we saw our first-of-season Black-chinned hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) at one of the feeders.

<< Black-chinned hummingbird magnet (Three Star Owl/A.Shock)

Or rather, saw and heard: the males’ wings produce a whirring zizzz in flight: usually we hear them in the yard before we see them.  These hummers are slender, and the males have a black head which shows a purple swash at the bottom edge along their neck, but only if the light is just right.

…by the dawnzerly light?

<< Here’s one of the local Cooper’s hawks preening in the pre-dawn light above my tent “office”.  Every morning at EXACTLY 5:48 by the alarm clock, the pair begins their day by skrekking KIK a couple of solo kiks, then rolling out a long stream of duo kik kik kik kik kik kik kiks.  But the crows are up a few minutes earlier, also clacking and giving their hollow caws. (Side note: crow is okay, but raven is better, if you’re lucky enough to live where it live.  I missed raven when we lived in St. Louis, although there there are two species of crow, American and Fish; it almost makes up for being ravenfree).  The crows are nesting too, and fly into the palms with beakfuls of sticks.

American crow (all photos A.Shock, click to enlarge!) >>

I haven’t had a chance to bird the campground systematically, but casual encounters besides crows and coop’s are yellow-rumped warbler, a common yellow-throat who sings every morning on the other side of the fence, mallards who stroll about the campsites like cats, snapping up dropped hotdog buns and popcorn, a white-crowned sparrow or two, ruby-crowned kinglets scolding fussily overhead, and Anna’s hummingbirds, a hen of which kind was moments ago diligently gathering spiderweb from the plank fence just feet from where I’m eating breakfast.  She took her time — eventually I got the photo on the left. <<

>>Cooper’s hawk in the morning sun.  It was being hassled by the crow above.

Today I’ll be at the San Diego Audubon Festival at the Marina Conference Center on Mission Bay from 11am until 5pm, or maybe a little later.  If you’re in the vicinity, come on by: there’s still both beastie and wazzo wares to check out, and other artists and exhibits to enjoy!

Here is the Office, Three Star Owl‘s nest away from nest on certain roadtrips, complete with cot and a TV tray table that serves as a desk, and a battery-powered lamp or two. <<

And here is the Cooper’s hawk who nests here each time I’ve stayed in this RV Resort.  It’s eating something fairly large, with pink feet — like a pigeon — and feathers and tiny shreds of meat are dropping down onto the empty campsite below.  Attracted by the predatory event, a gang of crows is circling, cawking, but the Coop’s is plucking calmly. >>

From 11am to 5pm on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be at the San Diego Audubon Bird Festival in the Marina Conference Center on Mission Bay in San Diego, with wazzo-ware and beastie-ware in small but delectable quantities.  Come on by!

…and also why it’s called “Broad-billed”.

Although those two statements concern two different birds.

Update: as of Friday morning, “Bill”, the Broad-billed hummingbird, is still reporting in to our backyard feeders, passing the 72-hour mark (I first observed him on Monday afternoon).  We guess he’ll be here until he’s not!

Breeding season for Anna’s hummers is in full swing here in Phoenix.  The males are executing their showy flights, shrieking down from a height with their gorgets flashing scarlet, making a loud peeping pop with their tail feathers like tiny bullroarers, then rising vertically upward to do it again and again, usually targeting a perched female to impress her with this routine.

<< Anna’s hummer on current nest in Aleppo pine (click to enlarge; all photos A.Shock)

And from my studio I’ve been watching a female Anna’s gathering spider webs and flying away with her beak wrapped in gossamer, a sure sign of “nidification,” otherwise known as nesting.

When our trees were trimmed last week, we searched hard beforehand to make sure there were no current nests in the trees affected, and didn’t find anything. However, late this afternoon, while scanning for the errant Broad-billed hummingbird who has been working our feeders, I did find a nest, just by luck: I saw the Hen fly up into a low pine branch, and stick.  Binox showed me a little beaky head above an apparently completed nest, built above a pine cone on a nearly horizontal branch.  From everyone’s perspective, it’s not a great spot: it’s fairly low over the path through the part of our yard we call the Sonoran Garden, and E could (and probably unintentionally will) bump the branch with his head as he walks by. To me it seems a very exposed location.  In fact, while I was watching her, the Broad-bill zoomed up and perched on a smaller branch just inches below the nest with hen, apparently unaware of her.  She knew he was there: she froze, and waited perfectly still until he went away, which was soon — he’s a restless body.

>> Male Broad-billed hummer, out of place, out of season, but he’s been here for 48 hours, that we know of.  (Click to enlarge.)

The Broad-bill flew a short distance away and settled on a preferred perch in the “ugly” lemon tree.  Although the photo isn’t perfectly sharp, you can see that the base of his bill is slightly flattened, making it look broad, especially in comparison with the needle-like rest-of-the-beak.

Incidentally, for the first time ever, the normally prolific “ugly” lemon tree set one whole lemon as its entire crop this season, and it dropped that during the tree-trimming episode.  So as far as I’m concerned the shirking citrus can bear the burden of a tiny colorful bird as its tangy winter crop for a while longer.

Another update: going onto day three of “Bill” at the feeder.

Update: as of Tuesday late afternoon, the BBLH is still at our feeder, defending it against the local Anna’s hummers, happily zipping about under the pine and between our yard and the neighbor’s.

A series of rapid, smacking clicks and a rich chip caught my ear as I was making mugs in the studio, and I looked up to catch a dark emerald at the hummingbird feeder under the Palo Verde.

A glittering green hummer with no light feathers on its belly? This was worth risking the mugs drying before I could get rim coils onto them, so I went out with my binox and little camera to stake out the feeder. I didn’t have to wait long: a male Broad-billed hummingbird is working our backyard. If I lived in Tucson, this wouldn’t be exciting. But this is a species that usually sticks to Sonoran desert foothills and southeastern Arizona; they can be found 50 miles east of here (for instance, in the oasis of Boyce Thompson Arboretum), but only once have I ever seen one in the low desert, and that was several years ago at the Desert Botanical Garden, a couple of miles from here. This is a species whose range is usually shown as just coming up into the southwestern US from Mexico. So, this little guy is a “yard bird” for us… a never-before-seen species for our property.

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

Perhaps the unusual cold pushed it down into the Metro area from the foothills: our Chuparosas were in full bloom when last week’s extreme cold hit, killing almost every single spray of nectar-filled blossoms, and it’s even colder up around Superior — the food sources higher up must be few and far between. This little guy is aggressively holding his own against the Anna’s who are the more usual residents.

I managed to get some lousy pix, but here they are anyway — I’m too excited by having a Broad-billed hummer in the yard to self-edit! And in fact, the blurriest photo — of the speeding little glinting shuttlecock coming in fast to chase a competitor off of the feeder — is my fave. We’ll see how long he hangs around.

A while back, I posted the latest Spot the Bird, a shot of a Mexican wetland that contained hard-to-see birds.  It was a tough one.

Here’s the key.  The hidden birds are three Black-bellied whistling ducks, visible in the sea of green only by looking carefully for their bright coral-red bills, a tag of chestnut plumage, and surprisingly, their gray cheeks which stand out more than you’d think.  Enlarge the B&W version of the photo on the left, and look for the color splashes inside the yellow oval.  Two of the ducks are together on the left, and one, the most diffucult to see, is on the far right.

Well, OK, they’re still hard to see. Here’s a color-heightened, tight close-up to help.  Disregard the bright brown clump of leaves in the middle of the field of view.

(Photos A.Shock)

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.