Had a nice morning walk in Papago Park (Phoenix AZ) this morning — the spring air was breezy and clear, and the high skies brought out a number of aerial show-offs.  The main attraction was a Peregrine falcon, spiraling and soaring between the two largest buttes in the Park and the Army National Guard reservation, over McDowell Road.

<< Peregrine falcon soaring; note typical peregrine dark “hood” and pointed falcon wings (Photo E.Shock)

The falcon’s showy overflights attracted the peevish attention of the local pair of Red tailed hawks, who flew up to try to show it the door.  In terms of aerial agility, the big, broad-winged red tails are no match for a nimble sickle-winged falcon, but we did witness some serious stooping on the part of both species, and even one brief roll-over with talon-grappling incident.

<< Redtailed hawk, in a power glide.  Note black patagium — leading wing edge close to head — one of the best field marks for IDing red-tails aloft (Photo E.Shock)

This action went on among sparse clouds of White-throated swifts — was the probably migrating Peregrine trying to nab a quick swift-to-go before heading north, the raptor equivalent of a drive-thru fast food breakfast burrito?

No wonder the Redtails were upset — a little searching with binox of the inaccessible red rocks on the Military’s property turned up the hawks’ nest, a substantial stick-pile wedged in a ledge on the butte.  We’ve suspected they were a nesting pair, but now we know for sure.

A loggerhead shrike was on duty, as well.  Spring has been cool, and there are still very few insects around, which suggests that the Lesser goldfinch and lingering white-crowned sparrows in the desert park might wish to keep sharp.

<< The last thing the grasshopper saw. Loggerhead shrikes are sometimes called “functional raptors” because although they’re Passerines (perching birds) they prey on insects and small mammals, qualifying them as birds of prey.  Dig the tiny white “eyebrows”.  (Photo E.Shock)

The photo of the p-falcon’s a bit grainy due to having to magnify it, but please click on the Red-tail and the Shrike images to enlarge them so you can admire the good feathery detail.

<< Oh, and here’s King Kong…  Their nest is near here, and the Red-tails love to perch on his brow and warm themselves on a sunny morning.

<<  Two of these equals these. ↓

Desert cottontails abound in the yard right now.  The desert is green from the late winter rains, so there’s lots to eat.  Adult frolicking leads to tiny bunlets.  The two in the photo above on the right were stashed by mom in a shallow scrape right out in the open.  When we discovered them, while checking on the mantis egg case, they were barely 3 inches long.  A day later, they were gone, leaving only the “form” behind in the mesquite leaf litter.  Moved by mom, eaten, or hopped off under their own power, we’ll never know.

(All photos E.Shock)

A praying mantis egg-case is not something you can easily find if you’re looking for one.  So, imagine our surprise — again! — when E looked up at a random, leafy, and low branch of the big backyard mesquite, and said, “Hey, look!”  There was a tiny brown-loaf-looking mantid egg case, stuck to a thin twig towards the whippy tip of a branch.

This was our second mantis-related sighting of the week — the other is described here, in the latest post on this blog.

So, we’ll be keeping an eye on this one, to see if it hatches, now that warmer weather is here.  And, who knows how many more are out there?  With luck, the yard will be mantis-rich before long.

Praying mantis egg-case on mesquite twig, finger for scale (Photo A.Shock) >>

And stay tuned to read about what I encountered under the mesquite just now, while checking on the mantis-egg case…

We grow succulents at our house in containers, and some of them can’t take the heat of the low desert summers, while others can’t take the hardest frosts of winter. This results in a constant migration of plants inward and outward between the house and yard, depending on the season. The indoor space the plants inhabit is a set of wall-shelves perched in a loft area above the bed. Every once in a while the cats get up there – in the avatar of furry negative forces of destruction and sudden catastrophe – and implement their conviction that one or the other potted plant would be better on the carpet, which results in a loud thump, crushed foliage, and a shower of dirt and gravel onto us in the middle of the night, causing much heart-pounding and swearing.

The other result of having the indoor-outdoor shift in place is that things get imported into the bedroom that really would be better off outside. Last fall, unbeknownst to us, one of the plants that came in for the cold season was an Adenium where a Praying mantis had secreted her breadloaf-brown egg case. The first we knew about it was when E went up the spiral staircase to water plants, and found, pinnacled on the tip of a succulent, the tiniest possible baby green mantis – looking just like a big one, but not as big as a human fingertip. A quick search around yielded a dozen more, freshly hatched, as well as the egg-case itself on a nearby plant.

We instantly whisked the nest-plant outside, before the fur-bearers discovered the movable feast of lively greenlings, and where they could disseminate into the garden and find plenty of food to eat, unlike the largely tiny-prey free desert of the bedroom.  We’ve had young mantises around before and they are very voracious younglings, eating anything that moves which they are strong enough to grasp and render immobile.  This is the other function of allowing them to wander off, each in a different direction — they will eat each other, if hungry enough.

By next morning, all but one of them had made its way away from the eggcase Adenium, except for one guy who figured he was okay where he was.  With luck they will mature into one of the mantids native to the Sonoran desert.  Or, they may grow into an imported mantid from the Mediterranean or China that people release to control garden pests.  Of course, many may be eaten by birds or raccoons, but even that way, they’re in the natural system, and out of the bedroom.  Bonne chance, tiny predators!

(all photos by E. Shock)

Today I actually got outdoors to breathe air, soak up sunbeams, and take a look at what’s up, and what’s in the air.  It’d been awhile, and I thought I’d celebrate by passing along some of what’s happening along the Salt River, smack in the middle of the City of Phoenix, AZ.

<< green Goodding’s willows, brittle bush, Desert willow, and chuparosa at Rio Salado; photo A.Shock

The Rio Salado Habitat Preservation Area, as it’s officially designated (here is the website), is an  ex-horrific-riverside urban dump that’s been cleaned up and improved in order to attract and showcase permanent and migrating wildlife, including birds, mammals, and insects.

Along the Salt River just south of downtown Phoenix, the RSHPA is less than 10 miles downstream from the riparian area at Tempe Town Lake (see here), and has a variety of habitats, from mesquite bosque to shady bands of Goodding’s willows (the bright green foliage in the photo above.)  Each time I visit, the vegetation is better established, both naturally (Goodding’s willows are said to be able to grow something like six feet per year), and with the help of human hands — many native desert and riparian plants have been planted along the bike path and walking trails that weave along the river, on both sides.  Right now, the Goodding’s willows are in bloom.  The screwbean mesquites (right) are still bare, making their tightly-twisted seed pods stand out against the blue sky, clustered like little brown bouquets of rattlesnake rattles.

The river is high today after all of the rain in both the metro basin and in the high country north east of Phoenix, but it’s obviously been higher recently: big piles of flood debris are left on both sides of the trail. Cormorants (Double-crested and Neotropical), American coots, and Killdeer are common along the river, and the ponds and oxbows host a variety of waterfowl, like this handsome Ringnecked drake (left), Cinnamon teal, and Common moorhens.  But we were especially on the lookout for dinky dudes — in this case, an out-of-range straggler, a Black and white warbler that’s been hanging out at the Rio for at least a week.  It proved too dinky to photo, but we did get crippling looks at the tiny tourist, wrestling an enormous caterpillar into its gullet.  It was keeping company with a Brown creeper, numerous Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped warblers, Ruby crowned kinglets, a Blue-gray gnatcatcher, and other dinky dudes.  A casual couple of hours of birding yielded a list of more than 35 species of birds, including a House wren.

But for me, the surprise of the day was provided by our furry mammalian neighbors: there’s a beaver working the Rio! We didn’t see the critter itself, but check out the evidence of Beavers At Work. right >>

I love the industrious pile of wood chips under the chewed ends of this downed tree.

Anyone birding in the Phoenix area during autumn through spring seasons might wish to check out RSHPA .

Remember — it’s an urban birding gem, so you might wish to bring a friend, and don’t leave anything valuable in your car.

Don’t be discouraged by the urban nature of this area, it’s got its advantages, too, like some really nice public art along the paths, and under the bridges on otherwise blank concrete supports.

>> Local wildlife painted under Central Ave bridge, RSHPA (all photos A.Shock)

“Hoover” the semi-tame  African Collared Dove who inhabits our neighborhood came around for a handout of sunflower hearts and peanuts on Valentine’s Day.  It’s a bit of a sad story, in that he used to have a female companion, but no longer.  So far this spring he’s spent much of the day in plaintive calling — woooHOOOooo — over and over, as of yet to no avail.  There are others of his species living ferally in the area, but their numbers seem to be down from a few years ago.

So it seems appropriate to combine President’s Day with Valentine’s Day in wishing Hoover the best of luck this season of love and the executive branch in finding a feral girl-of-the-feather to hang with.

A recent post, Spot the Pipit, inadvertently marked the inauguration of a series of themed posts in this webjournal: Spot the Bird.

After posting Spot the Pipit, it occurred to me that in the Three Star Owl photo files were other pix which showed birds that were more or less hard to see, but which were fun to look for.  Most of these shots were entirely by accident — at least one bird was so well hidden I didn’t even know there was a bird in the picture until I got the file downloaded to my computer and enlarged — so I can’t claim any real credit, just a sort of 99 monkeys with 99 cameras and 99999 photographs phenomenon.

The birds in Spot the Bird photos may not be easy to find for a variety of reasons: some may be in plain sight, but exceptionally well camouflaged; some may be deliberately trying to hide; some might be very very small or just part of a bird; some might not even be a bird.  Some might be visual jokes, or even manipulated photo images (which I will disclose).  And, there might be trick “Spot” moments…

So, keep a sharp eye out, and look for the Gilded (and very spotted) Flicker “Spot the Bird” logo (above), or search the Spot the Bird! category to find posts with a hidden critter photo challenge from now on out!

To get started, here’s an oldie but goodie that longtime readers of this blog will recognize: in the category of TUI (Totally Unmanipulated Image), I took this photo on the San Pedro River in Southeastern Arizona a few springs back. A version of it was featured in an older Three Star Owl post called Vertical Napping Bark, which also appeared as a guest post on Sharon Stiteler’s lively Birdchick.com site.

Can you Spot the Owl — or is it Owls?  Please let me know where the owl/s are, although there are no rewards except the knowledge that you Spotted the Bird.  (Click on the image to enlarge to make it easier, but not until you’ve given up otherwise)

There’s a small bird in this photo of lakeside rocks.  Can you spot the pipit?

Sunday E and I watched an American pipit (Anthus rubescens; photo E.Shock) working its way along water’s edge at Burnt Corral on Apache Lake east of Phoenix, darting after flies. beetles, larvae and other yummies around the cobbles in the shallow water. This is where it was working — not a bad view  (Photo A.Shock)>>

Pipits are sparrow-sized, sparrow-like birds which aren’t sparrows at all.  They’re the type of bird that people tend not to notice if they’re not birders.  It’s partly because pipits aren’t usually found in town or around neighborhoods — they breed in arctic and alpine tundra, and during winter, they frequent shores and coastlines, agricultural fields, and wild, open spaces.  Also, they’re easy to overlook: being beige and brown and streaky, they blend right into their backgrounds.  In the words of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

“The American Pipit is a small, slender, drab bird of open country. Although it appears similar to sparrows, it can be distinguished by its thin bill and its habit of bobbing its tail.” Click on this link to All About Birds for more info.

They share this habit of wagging tails gently up and down with other birds of stream-sides and shores such as Spotted sandpipers, wagtails, and dippers. Being in constant motion helps them blend in with their background of running water or wind-blown grasses.

The American pipit we were watching is in the center of this grainy enlargement, at the water’s edge, below the largest rock — click the photo to enlarge, if the bird’s still eluding you.  >>

But wait, there’s more!  Bonus international pipits:

It turns out that pipits inhabit wild open places the world around, even as far south as southern New Zealand, and also South Georgia island, roughtly between Antarctica and South America in the South Atlantic (and that’s a lot of “souths”).  Here is a photo of a shy New Zealand pipit which turned its head just as the shutter fired, and also a picture of the place it lives: this one was on the tops of heavily grazed sea bluffs in the Catlins, South Island NZ.

<< NZ pipit (Anthus novaseelandiae), an indigenous songbird of the island.(Photos E.Shock)

And, here is a South Georgia pipit (Anthus antarcticus), in its habitat, tussock (or, tussac) grass on the quite remote and windswept breeding islets off of the coast of South Georgia (Photos, A.Shock) <<

Seems as if pipits, although not very showy themselves, make their livings in some fairly spectacular scenery.

This is the first installment of:

It’s been an unusually wet gray week in the desert, and this has brought water to my mind in general, and some of its more colorful properties from wishful thinking.  So, here are some photos of brightly colored waters.  One is tinted by reflections on its surface, another by what’s under its surface, one by its sediment load, two by clarity and chemistry, and all by light.  The colors in the photos are natural.  (all photos A.Shock)

Autumn salt cedar reflected in the Salt River at Coon Bluff

Deep blue winter shadows on the Salt River from this past Sunday's trip up into the Sierra Ancha (see last post)

"Colorado" means colorful, and here is the mixing of the Colorado River (green) with its spring-fed tributary, the Little Colorado (aqua), at a red gravel bar in the Grand Canyon

Hot spring, Upper Geyser basin, Yellowstone National Park

Shallow water marine reefs seen from the air above Ambergris Caye, Belize. I'm pretty sure there are manatees down there, somewhere!