What if you had to raise large numbers of owls, herds of owls, swarms of tiny owls, all at once? What if that was your job? What would you need? You might need an Owl Hive. Or a cluster of Owl Hives. What would an owl hive be like? Each hive would have to have entrances, so that the owls could fly in and out. There would have to be an interior chamber, so the owls could build their elaborate, communal owlcomb. There would have to be access for you the Owl Keeper, to extract whatever product the owl colony produced and stored inside, like vole honey or rabbit suede. It would need a lower hole to expel pellets and admit fresh air. At the very least, there would need to be a roof for the owls to land on, and a lofty perch from which to Keep an Eye on Things.

Here are some detail photos of unfinished architectural-effigy-nest-vessel-box objects in progress, some only bisqued, some completely innocent of the kiln as yet — the most recent Three Star Owl clay project. They might be Owl Hives. They might be sculpture or effigy vessels. They might be small ovens or incense censors. Or, they might be actors, waiting to be cast as archæological artifacts in an upcoming fiction post on this blog. Of course, they might be all of the above. Stay tuned to this location to see how it goes. (All photos and objects A.Shock)

It always makes me happy to see infant animals in the yard; it means the world is rolling along, as it should, species replenishing themselves and the natural systems functioning. This is why people love seeing babies — it gives the same satisfaction: that the world is carrying on as usual, despite everything, and because of everything. I feel it when seeing tiny cottontails hidden out in the open in their form, hatchling praying mantids swarming out of their bread-loaf egg-case, nest-cached hummingbirds waiting for mother to dispense nectar-and-gnat soup, even young raccoons trundling behind their mother, wreaking havoc in the yard, and young serpents making their way on the soil, searching for prey something the girth of a pencil can handle.

Pituophis catenifer affinis, the Sonoran Gophersnake (Photo A.Shock)

In the warm desert, a lot of this new life begins in fall, our functional second spring: ahead is the cool weather with its longer nights for foraging, the scorching hot temperatures are behind us. Monsoon is winding down too, a time when the intermittent deluges of late summer storms kick-start the food web after the stingy, dry weeks of early summer. This moisture encourages hatching and births, vegetation sprouts everywhere, and arthropod and rodent pray abounds, generously giving hungry young animals a solid start.

Yesterday, it was young lizards: the herb and vegetable garden we planted this year with its slightly raised-bed construction, bounded by hollow cinder blocks and stocked with minute invertebrate-rich compost, has proven to be a successful nursery for both Tiger whiptails and Ornate tree lizards. While watering, I watched three young tree lizards simultaneously hunting ants and other tiny prey: they would dash forward, whip out their tongue, swallow, and then slowly, sinuously wave their tails back in forth in an undulating movement — a slow-motion lash — that just looked like someone rubbing their hands in self-satisfaction. Each lizlet was only 2 inches long. A young whiptail, larger by species, but still young — its long tail was still faintly electric blue — was also puttering around in the vicinity, taking advantage of my shadow to hang out in the coolness of some overflow water from the beds.

This morning it was the young Gopher snake (above), about a foot long, but only as big around as a finger. Gophers are common in our yard, but I always admire how their yellow and chocolate pattern shifts subtly from head to tail, from yellow-on-brown to brown-on-yellow. You can’t tell where the change-over happens, but the tail is positively different from the head.

<< The change-over zone (Photo A.Shock)

Unfortunately, this beautiful pattern is the reason so many gopher snakes are killed by fearful people: it’s reminiscent of the diamond-pattern on rattlesnakes. Gophers (or bull snakes) are especially welcome here as efficient rodent predators; our part of the Phoenix area has been plagued with roof-rats for a decade or so.

This young’un in the photo above saw me before I saw it, and hid its head under an orange leaf, leaving the full length of its boldly patterned body out in the open. Here it is, sneaking slowly away in the hopes the looming predator (me) doesn’t notice.

…to bring you a tiny owlet.  From Pink to Dink, with hardly a blink.

Friday morning, I came home from delivering E to campus, and blissfully opened the back door to let in the first blast of coolish late summer air.  Instead of the usual morning quiet, the back yard was chattering with angry bird sounds: MOB!  Two Curve-billed thrashers, three cactus wrens, one Costa’s and two un-ID’d hummers, a verdin, a handful of Lesser goldfinch, and a couple of Gila woodpeckers, all shrieking in the upper branches of the messy African sumac right outside the bedroom door.

I stood under the canopy of snaggly twigs and miscellaneous branches for a while, with binox, until I saw the reason for their agitation: the Real Cranky Owlet.  A tiny, tiny owl, with a round head, staring down on me with enormous outrage.  I ran in to get binox and camera, and when I got back outside, it was sitting there still radiating high dudgeon.

It took a bit of hunting to find a window through the leafy snarl, but I finally got the owl in clear view.  At first I thought: it’s a recently fledged Western Screech Owl, too young for cranial tufts (ie, “ears”), wedged up in the twigs, trying to pretend it hadn’t been spotted by half the shouting avifauna of the yard, and one quarter of the interior mammals.  I’d recently been hearing a WESO calling at night in the yard, and we get them around here occasionally (well, they’re probably here all the time, but we hear or see them occasionally).  It was a likely candidate.

<< radiating high dudgeon

But… I looked again, without my binox: it was clearly not a screech owl — the bird was SO TINY!  As any birder will tell you, size is one of the hardest characteristics to judge in the field, and an easy place to go wrong. Comparisons are invaluable. The thrashers mobbing it were considerably bigger than the owl; it was about the same size as the Cactus wrens, although in a vertical format, rather than horizontally arranged like the wrens; it was approximately sparrow-sized.  There’s only one owl that dinky, in the desert or anywhere: the Elf owl (Micrathene whitneyi, en français chevêchette des saguaros, en español tecolotito anano).  The supercilious white “spectacles”, the reddish blotches on the breast, the size of the eyes in the smallish head: it was an Elf owl in our yard! I was able to get a couple of poor snapshots — tough light to boot — which I’ve posted here, magnified.

Like the Western screech owls, Elf owls may be in the neighborhood regularly; we live in an “older” (by Phoenix standards) subdivision with naturalized desert landscape, including mature saguaros with woodpecker holes.  But I hadn’t heard an Elf owl or seen one around here, and believe me, it wasn’t for not listening, or not looking in every saguaro hole I know about. So, since the Elf Owl population in our part of the state is seasonal, it’s also possible that this individual could be a migrant, moving out of its breeding area to its wintering zone, passing through our yard.

detail, Elf owl in saguaro vase (Allison Shock Three Star Owl, stoneware, 14″) >>

The sumac probably seemed like a good day roost.  But, unfortunately, it turned out there were not only hecklers, but a paparazza, and the tiny owl flew a few yards to lose itself in the denser, thorny canopy of the nearby Texas Ebony.  The hecklers followed, but I didn’t. (All photos A.Shock)

The yard’s been hopping, recently.  Click here to read an assortment of posts about what we see right outside our doors, birds and other things.

One of our destinations during the recent eastern California trip was the dramatic and amazing Mono Lake and its crumbly, gradually ephemeral tufa groves.  Tufa towers are mineral formations deposited underwater when calcium-rich spring water pours up into carbonate-rich lakewater.  The resulting mixture precipitates calcium-carbonate which builds upward into the lake water, sort of like stalagmites in a cave, but underwater.  If the lake level drops or the lake dries up, the towers are exposed (like the Trona Pinnacles).

>> Osprey-nested tufa tower, Mono Lake.  The tips of the hen’s primaries look like a little black alligator head, if you click to enlarge.

Lots of birds and mammals use the pinnacles to perch, shelter, forage, and nest.  This tufa tower, about 15 feet tall, is completely surrounded by water — a pair of ospreys has built their nest on the platform of its top.  The Osprey hen, sitting tight on either eggs or chicks, is barely visible as two black wingtips sticking up just over the the middle of the untidy stick nest.  She’s hunkered low down in a whipping wind.  Her mate, not in the photo, was coursing low over the water nearby.

This streaky, buffy-lored Savannah sparrow was hunting along the highly alkaline, hyper-saline water’s edge, like a very tiny T-rex, searching for alkali flies and larvae, yum.  The cold temps and wind made it fearless or at least heedless — hunger does that — and it passed right by me, intent on finding a late afternoon meal. >>

Mono Lake is also the second-largest California Gull rookery in the U.S.  Below is one, bright and bold, who landed on our truck roof to see if we had anything to eat.  I suppose this photo might qualify as a “The Bird Spots You.”

(All photos A.Shock; click to enlarge.)

The Mono Lake story is a complicated one of rich natural history, ruthless water-greed, and hard work by a lot of dedicated conservationists and politicians, for better or for worse.  Check it out here.

<< check out the orange “gape” or flexible skin at the corner of the mouth, all the better to gulp down bickies with.  We did not oblige.

After much battling, litigation and legislation, current policy is to let the lake fill naturally, so the South Shore tufa towers pictured above are slowly being inundated.  A good reason to visit now, if you’ve never been; in a few short decades, these tufas will be underwater.

A few days ago, we drove far out into sage-covered lava rocks to check out some hot springs on the east side of the Sierra Nevada.  After walking to the top of the hill, walking around the next hill and between two other hills, seeing what birds were around and about, and while E was nearby doing Science in Hot Water, I felt I’d had enough wind — since we were above 7000′ feet, it was a cold wind — so I sheltered in the cab of the truck.

The rock I watched >>

If this seems like a nature-phobic sort of thing to do, let me recommend it: a vehicle makes a wonderful blind, great for observing otherwise human-wary wildlife.  I watched a Wilson’s warbler, a sweet scrap of yellow with a smart black cap, struggle in the gusts from one juniper tree to another right in front of the hood; an Audubon’s warbler, too, was getting buffeted about in the same nearby trees. And, next to the truck was this large Rock (top photo).  I studied it, thinking about making a sketch.

<< Ground squirrel and spiny lizard (far right edge of rock)

It was clear that this rock had been heavily used — most obviously by people, who’d built fires under it, but also by plants who’d sprouted in its cracks, lichens crusting its surfaces, and by animals, who were sunning themselves on it. Although I never made a sketch, I was able to watch and photo a series of species — seven in all, ultimately, although I only could photo five — as they used this rock as viewpoint, shelter, sunning place, food storage or source. (All photos A.Shock; be sure to click on each image to enlarge for better viewing.)

Birds landed on it briefly, including the Wilson’s warbler, and a vivid Western tanager male.

<< male Western tanager on the Rock

Being hydrothermally altered (so I’m assured by E), it was porous and full of useful cracks and refuges.  A small movement caught my eye, and in the darkest crack in the darkest center of the sooty overhang, a Piñon deermouse had packed the crevice with soft needles and moss, and was turning this way and that in its snug, sheltered nest, running tiny paws over its big ears.

<< Piñon deermouse in crevice nest in the Rock

Best yet, I happened to look over at the upper dark hole in the rock just in time to see this little face peering out, checking on how things were in the middle of the day.  It’s a Long-tailed weasel, a native here (unlike in New Zealand), but still an active and industrious predator.  I was alarmed when the ground squirrel above made a short trip into the very hole the weasel had just gone back inside.  But there was no disaster, and the squirrel came right back out again, presumably with all its parts, and with no dramatic nature-show confrontation music to mark the event.

Long-tailed weasel outside its hole in the Rock >>

The seventh species I observed on the Rock was Homo sapiens.  It was one of the two dudes that came by in a battered Isuzu Trooper (like the one I drove for years).  Although I didn’t get a picture of him up on the top of the Rock, we were particularly glad to see this human being: something you won’t often hear me say.  The reason he was a fine sight on this backcountry, rocky road?  That’s another story.  I won’t tell it here, except to say that it involved jumper cables…

If you’re not familiar with Gilded flickers (Colaptes chrysoides), they are large desert woodpeckers, closely associated with Saguaros.  They excavate their nest cavities in the trunks of the giant cactus.  They’re closely related to Red-shafted and Yellow-shafted flickers who inhabit the western and eastern U.S., respectively.  Flickers are flashy in coloration, being spotted and barred, and having yellow feather shafts in their flight feathers and tail, visible when the bird is in flight.  They are loud, too, both vocally and when the males hammer territorially on hollow surfaces like the metal bird-guard on our chimney.

It’s the male flicker of this species who sports the brilliant red “moustache”.

<< A male Gilded Flicker peering at E as he snapped this photo, in our neighborhood (photo E.Shock)

The primary food of flickers is ANTS, and this large woodpecker frequently can be seen on the ground, foraging for them.  This is a really good reason to NOT POISON ANTS in your Flicker-inhabited yard: use non-toxic arthropod deterrents such as diatomaceous earth.  They also eat fruit and insects, nectar, pet kibble left outside, plant seeds, and will feed at bird feeders with nuts or suet.

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…