>> A durable little male Costa’s hummingbird, perched two feet off the ground on an aloe-tip, in the gray light of a below-freezing desert dawn, the first morning of the year also the coldest of the season so far. (All photos A.Shock — click to enlarge!)

Moustachios a-flarin’ >>

Above: slurping at the feeder:

It’s surprising how often the shutter captures an extended hummer-tongue:

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, Costa’s hummingbirds are year round birds in our yard, although in the winter months their numbers can be sparse. Currently, I know of one male in the yard, this one, who holds court at the feeder hung in the palo verde shown here, and one female, who hangs out at a feeder at the back of the lot. Gnats must be scarce right now, but the Chuparosa (Justicia californica) — so favored by the little flower-feeders that the bird gives one of its Spanish names to the plant — are in fine bloom, their red tubular flowers full of sweet nectar.

In celebration of my friend Kate seeing Black-bellied whistling ducks in New Orleans, here is a Black-bellied whistling duck Spot the Bird.

The photo was taken in a coastal wetland in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, in Ocotber of 2008. I was scanning the greenery with binx when I spotted the ducks — I suspect I would never have seen them with the naked eye — and took the picture, hoping it would come out just like this: a photo with birds that are virtually invisible, except for their extraordinary bill color. (If you don’t know what a BBWD’s bill color is, click on the link above to Kate’s photo to make the search easier.) I’ll post a photo key later, but in the meantime, don’t forget to click to enlarge. By the way, the head count is three ducks, as far as I can tell.

A looming Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) casts a long shadow in the late afternoon sun, standing on a bermed farm road east of Phoenix (photo A.Shock).  Despite its scientific name, it was being silent, and not vociferus at all.  And despite its common name, ungulates don’t have to worry, but you invertebrates? — quake in your lowly, mud-coated exoskeletons.

…it’s hard to hide in bright, falling foliage if you’re a flying tiger…

Here’s one of a pair of Great Horned Owls we happened upon yesterday in a cottonwood grove along the Verde River east of the Phoenix metro area.  We were scouting for Tuesday’s official Christmas Bird Count of the Rio Verde area, and accidentally flushed the pair from their day-roost just before midday.

The owls flew a short distance then resettled, each in a spot they felt was secure.  One hid well, disappearing from view, but the other became a shadowy shape in golden foliage.

Great horned owl (Photo A.Shock) >>

It evidently felt sufficiently concealed, since it didn’t fly again, despite our nearness and a raven and a cooper’s hawk hassling it.  Look carefully — even through the screening leaves, you can pick out the owliness of its outline: a solid, chunky form with wispy cranial tufts. “Stink eye” — no one likes their nap interrupted — can be deduced, but not actually discerned in the photo.

I’ve classed this as a Spot the Bird, of sorts, just because.

It’s not uncommon for people who have moved here from wooded parts of the country to declare that they miss the seasons, especially fall and its bright colors.  This can be true especially for those who live on golf courses with year-round green lawns and palm trees.  But on close inspection, the natural Sonoran desert has its own distinct seasons, and its own rich color scheme. Each year E and I try to get out into wild places— or, at least wildish places — during the holidays to observe these seasonal changes.

<< One of the desert’s fall colors is green: if autumn rains are plentiful, as they have been this year in the highlands east of Phoenix, the palo verdes, catclaw acacias and other trees leaf out opportunistically.

Often, at Thanksgiving, this means a trip up the Apache Trail, Highway 88, along the Salt River Canyon and its lakes.  Not a trail, and not a highway, the Apache Trail is a well-maintained, and in places excitingly precarious, gravel road that leads travelers through some wonderful upland Sonoran desert east of Phoenix. This is a rich desert, populated with vast Saguaro groves, ocotillo, palo verde, crucifixion thorn, hopseed bush, jojoba, viguiera, bebbia, pink fairy duster, desert lavender, lots of Englemann’s prickly pear, the occasional Mammalaria pincushion and hedgehog cactuses, several varieties of cholla, and many other plants.  (All photos A.Shock unless noted; CLICK to Enlarge)

In the fall and winter the fruits of the slender-stemmed Christmas cholla (Cylindropuntia lepticaulis) ripen red  >>

This year our trip up the Apache Trail began with a false start, as we failed to check road conditions before leaving home and were surprised to find that much of the road is closed due to summer monsoon washouts.  It’s a long drive, but by approaching from the east, driving downstream from Roosevelt Dam, we were able to get to the Burnt Corral campground, which is excellent for picnicking, fiddling about like a pipit on the lakeshore, or hiking up into the surrounding desert which was what suited our anti-consumer madness mood.

The Desert broom (Baccharis sarothroides) bloomed earlier in the year and now the female shrubs are flocked like Christmas trees with fluffy, airy radiolarian-like seeds, which are so abundant this year that the pebbly crevices on the floor of the wash we were exploring are clogged with small drifts of them.  Sparrows and chipmunks will feast on this bounty, and the Cooper’s hawks, shrikes, and kestrels will, in turn, have lots to feed upon.  >>

Like odd pod-like ornaments the seed-bearing organs of the female Crucifixion Thorn (Canotia holacantha), are still ripening and red; later they will droop over and hang, woody brown, until they burst open and release their seeds to the ground.  (Photo E.Shock) <<

In spring, Ocotillos are topped with fiery flare-like sprays of blossoms at the very tips of their stems, but in some autumns, the multiple stems of these drought-deciduous plants are lined with dying leaves along their entire lengths, changing from green to yellow to red to brown.  To the right, the outbound leaves of an Ocotillo (Fouqueria splendens) are easy to see against the deep blue sky, and the green skin of two youngish Saguaros using it as a “nurse-plant”. >>

When the sun backlights ocotillo leaves, they glow like dense lightstrings along the spiny stems.  In the background, against the lake, a still yellow-leafed ocotillo can be seen (left). <<

And to draw all the colorful descriptions above of red-ornamented, flocked, light-stemmed desert plants into a Christmas tree simile, here’s a star for the top — a Loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) perched atop an already bare Ocotillo, an excellent perch from which to hunt for prey on the desert floor. (Photo E.Shock) >>

<<  Or, if you have a bigger top decoration in mind, here’s a distant Red-tailed hawk, warming itself on a saguaro in the late sunlight, its image captured at the extreme end of my little scope and digital camera’s range.

And under the tree, as a present?  I almost forgot: a quick daylight glimpse of a gray fox, too quick to photo, but with a glorious bushy tail flowing in its wake.

…a Happy Thanksgiving!

As fabulous a bird as our North American Wild Turkey undoubtedly is, there is a turkey more wonderful still: the Ocellated Turkey (Meleagris ocellata) of tropical Central America.>>

On this Turkey Day feast your eyes on the glory that is the iridescent El Guajolote Supremo — eaten nearly to extinction because it apparantly tastes as good as it looks.  Now it’s protected, and currently can be  found primarily on the Yucatán Peninsula, and a limited number of other spots and preserves including Quintana Roo, Campeche, and Guatemala.  (These photos were taken by A and E Shock at Chan Chich Lodge in Belize in 2007.  Be sure to click to enlarge!)

Some readers know that the E who appears occasionally in this space is my husband, Everett Shock. Some readers also know that he’s a geochemist on the faculty of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the department of Chemistry at Arizona State University.  But up until now, no one knew that an organism has been named in his honor.  It’s official, and in print — a newly identified archæon discovered living in the very hot water of a geothermal spring at Yellowstone National Park: Thermogladius shockii.

Thermogladius shockii: if your Latin’s a little creaky, that’s New Latin (the “made” Latin of scientific names) for “Hot Sword of Shock”.  The transmission electron microscopic photo F to the left shows why — according to M.Osburn and J.Amend, the authors of the article in Archives of Microbiology, some individuals sport “occasional stalk-like protrusions.”  (TEM images from Osburn and Amend, 2010)

But the “thermo” of Thermogladius doesn’t really refer to anatomical hotness (despite any claims to the contrary).  Thermogladius is a genus of HYPERthermophiles, tiny, single-celled, anaerobic cocci who prefer to live in very hot, nearly boiling, gas-rich water fermenting complex organic substrates.  What a way to make a living!

Congratulations, E!

Which feels worse, the hollowed out jalapeño or the worm what done it?

Go ahead; click on it just to make yourself miserable.

… I missed at first, when outside friday morning shooting passionflowers.

It really irked me to not have my own photo of a Gulf Fritillary to post yesterday, so once the sun was higher, I went out to fetch one, if possible (a photo, that is, not a flutterby). I ended up encountering not only the butterfly, but three other notable things. Here they are, in the order they appeared (be sure to click to enlarge, except the kestrel, which is too blurry to bother, and actually will just get smaller anyway; all photos A.Shock):

A. The Gulf Fritillary, which started it all. The insect is sort of hidden in the negative space between stems and leaves (almost a “Spot the Bird“).  This was the best photo I was able to nab — the name flitirraries would suit them even better, because they never seem to rest. They are Passiflora specialists, and are clearly thrilled that we have four vines in the yard. (Well, six vines actually — this morning I found two small seedlings, thriving about 4 feet away from where their parent plant refused to take.) >>

B. The Echinopsis in bloom (or “Easter Lily cactus”). This one is a cultivar, I don’t know which, since these shade-growing cactus have been living in this yard longer than we have. In my experience, it’s unusual to find its crepuscular flowers still open at noon. <<

C. The Fearsome Predator. >> The neighborhood male American Kestrel, about the size of a Mourning dove, checking out the Dee-licious Finch Bar (the birdfeeders) for lunch. I looked up when I heard a house sparrow give a rough alarm call; the little falcon was just 20 feet away from me, perched on a low wire with a good view of the menu. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a shot of him until he’d swooped up to the top of the corner phone pole because my trigger finger was distracted by D:

D. The Ants that were biting me painfully on the feet. Due to hastily brushing them off and sweeping them out from under my sandal straps in a undignified quick-time version of the Myrmex Dance I did not immortalize their image, although they were just doing their job, Protecting The Nest, which I’d accidentally trodden upon trying to photograph the Echinopsis. Perhaps the Gilded Flicker family who lives here (and who, I think surprisingly late, just fledged a young’un) will be making a visit to the Dee-licious Ant Bar.

Do you suppose the Ant Bar has a Formica countertop?

Bonus etymology: Formica, etc.

According to the archives of “Word of the Day” — …Greek murmex [is] “an ant,” which also gives us myrmecology “the study of ants” and myrmecophagous “ant-eating.” In Latin the related word for ant was “formica,” from which we have the former Word of the Day “formication,” the sensation of ants crawling under the skin. The proprietary name “Formica” applies to a plastic laminate ultimately derived from formic acid (which comes from ants), but it is also a pun—it was originally developed as an electrical insulator that could be substituted “for mica.”

For the detail-oriented, let me add that Latin formīca is the ancestor of the French and Spanish words for ant, fourmi and hormiga, respectively. The Latin and Greek words formīca and myrmex (μύρμηξ) at first glance may not seem similar to each other, but as neatly summarized by Wikipedia, both are generally accepted to be derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *morwi- along with a pile of words for ant in other languages: Latin formīca, Iranian /moirbant, Avar maoiri, Sanskrit वम्र (vamra), Greek μύρμηξ (murmēks)/μυρμήγκι (mirmigi), Old Norse maurr, Crimean Gothic miera, Armenian մրջիւն (mrǰiwn), Polish mrówka, Albanian morr, Persian /murče, Old Church Slavonic mravie, Russian муравей (muravej), Tocharian /warme, Kurdish Mérú, Breton merien.