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)

Early Monday morning I nearly stepped on a raccoon kit.  We both came around a wall at the same time, from opposite directions.  Fortunately, no contact was made: the kits are well-grown now.  Also, the Hairhen is very watchful, so we were all very careful to not create an incident.  She and all four kits were headed back to the Fan Palm where the family holes up invisibly in the spiny fronds during the day, after a night marauding.

It was the second raccoon Close Encounter in as many days — the night before last, the Hairhen spied an ENORMOUS fat Palo Verde Beetle above a window in the studio.  She attempted to climb the aging nylon screen to fetch it down, but the UV-weakened fibers couldn’t support her weight, and she slid back down, shredding the screen on the way.  I was on the other side of the window at the time, just a foot away (the glass was closed) unable to do anything but watch strong-nailed raccoon hands wreak destruction.

I wish she’d managed to snatch the high fiber protein snack — these giant beetles are very destructive, laying their eggs in the roots of Palo Verde trees, where their grubs (which are way too large to be appealing in even the slightest way) eat their way to maturity, doing considerable damage.  (See excellent photos and read more about Palo Verde Borer Beetles here at the fine Myrmecos Blog.)

Above is a photo of our yard Hairhen and two kits in the Palo Verde/Aleppo Pine complex. (Photo A. Shock)

This is the Hair Hen.  Actually, there are two; we call them both the Hair Hen because we used to not be able to tell them apart.  Now we can: one has two kits, the other has three.

This is a picture of the three-kit Hair Hen.  She lives under the Mexican Fan Palm in the back yard, where she spends much of the day.  She talks to the kits and keeps them in line with a soft churring purry noise, so we know they’re there even when we can’t see them in the deep thicket of thorny fronds and shaggy trunks.

We’ve been seeing the two-kit hairhen and her brood, but this evening our neighbors called and alerted us to the three-kit hairhen: the furry family was headed our way.  Sure enough, a minute later they were strolling along the pool deck, learning how to drink from the pool by putting their paws on the plaster under the tile and leaning way over.  (Hey! be careful — no lifeguard on duty…)

This may or may not be the same hairhen who threw three kits last season; we can’t know for sure.  (If she is the same one, she now has a chip in the tip of her right ear).

How many raccoons is too many?

(Photos A. Shock)

We missed some of Spring in the desert this year, so last weekend we went in search of it under the Mogollon Rim: Sunday found us hiking along the West Fork of Oak Creek in Sedona.  It’s one of the more popular trails in that popular area, and at times it’s mobbed by clusters of sweaty Phoenicians looking for a quick cool-off up in the oak pine red rock country.  But the weather in the desert has been cooler than seasonal, and although we certainly weren’t alone on the path, the trail wasn’t as crowded as we feared.

The day couldn’t have been more beautiful — Oak Creek Canyon at that point is a mile high (literally) so it’s still spring up there, with lots of showy color.  Both Scarlet and Yellow Monkey Flower (Mimulus cardinalis and guttatus), Golden columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha), and Western spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis) were at their peak. Columbian monkshood (Aconitum columbianum) and Deers-ears (Frasera speciosa) were just beginning, as were the False Solomon’s seal (Smilacina sp).  Butterflies abounded — both on flowers and on ammonia-rich heron-wash smears on the gravelly banks — and the air was lively with swallowtails, skippers and sulphurs, and others I don’t know.

The local birds were lively and showy too, the males singing and holding territory: Lazuli bunting (Passerina amoena), Black-headed grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus), Western tanagers (Piranga ludoviciana), and Red-faced warblers (Cardenlina rubifrons) were among the colorful singers, while Cordilleran flycatchers (Empidonax occidentalis), House wrens (Troglodytes aedon), Plumbeous vireo (Vireo plumbeus) and the ethereal-voiced Hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus) were vocal but plainer of plumage.

Now, I admire a little brown bird as much as anyone — the House wren is a delight to watch, singing so hard its little barred tail vibrates — but it’s tough to not be swept away by the sight of tiny woodland jewels like Red-faced warblers, who were numerous and singing, or the Painted redstart (Myioborus pictus) who was foraging quietly and intently as if he had nestlings and a mate to feed.

To the right is a page of the day’s birdlist, sketchily illustrated on the fly with really tiny thumbnails of a couple of the brighter species.  (I’ve been honing down a back-packing sized watercolor kit, and it’s coming along well, although I haven’t yet gotten the paints pared down to an Altoids-tin, since Jerry’s Artarama is still out of empty half-pans). The bird-list is small-scale, too — in a Moleskine journal just 3.5×5.5″.

The Broad-tailed hummingbirds (Selasphorus platycercus) were zizzing around fussily, sometimes more easily heard than seen, but we lucked into looking up at just the right time to see this Hen settle onto her nest on a bough directly over the trail.  Check out her clever lichen-camo, and how it blends right down into the lichen-covered Big-toothed maple branch!

The Phoenix-Sedona round trip with an eight-mile hike in the middle makes for one long day, but even so we came back refreshed and renewed, glad to have a cooler option when the desert is too hot to hike.  Graduated seasons are one of the nicest things about living in a state with delightfully drastic topography.

(Photos from top to bottom: red rock overhang, West Fork of Oak Creek, A.Shock; Spiderwort being pollinated by Eurobee, E.Shock; Golden columbine dragon-heads, A.Shock; illustrated bird-list, A.Shock; Broad-tailed hummer hen on nest, E.Shock)

You may be wondering about the much-posted Hen, a female Anna’s hummingbird, and her two nestlings, who were busy growing up in an Aleppo Pine in our back yard.

As far as we know, the Hen fledged her young successfully while we were in New Zealand. We’ll never know for sure, but the evidence supports a successful fledging. Two years ago, a nest failed when it was torn down by a predator, but this nest looks as if it lasted through a full nesting cycle: it’s intact on its branch and a little stretched out, the way spider-web-based hummer nests are designed to do to accomodate growing nestlings.  So, it’s entirely possible that the Stalwart Hen is sitting on a new nest at this time (although it’s past peak Anna’s breeding season in the low desert), and her fledglings are among the YOY (young of the year) Anna’s we see coming to the nectar feeders.

(Photo of female Anna’s hummingbird by M. Held, from Wikimedia Commons)

Hen update with photo. The Stalwart Hen and her Nidlings (the Anna’s hummingbird and her nestlings in our backyard pinetree) are still hanging in there, despite a night of unseasonal wind and cool rain.  In this photo, the bottom side of the tip of one of the nidling’s beaks is just visible at the left edge of the nest, above a nearly horizontal pine needle.  From the upper window, I can see two nestlings clearly, but the window screen makes focusing a photo tough from there.  The two Nidlings have grown enough so that they fill the cup of the nest, and their little beaks stick upward over the edge.  Each day the beaks are getting longer and darker, but they’re still nowhere near final hummer-length.  Go Hen Go!

And?  Then Sunday evening, a warm, calm, acacia-fragrant evening while it was still light, I looked down on the Nid from the upstairs window, and saw Fascinating Behavior.  The first was a definite look at a dark, fuzzy head with a now orange-yellow bill restlessly moving in and out of sight from the depths of the Nid.  This was very exciting.  Then nothing for several minutes — the Hen was away for quite a while on this outing.  It gave me a chance to study the inner edge of the far side of the Nid, and think how clean it was: no poop.  I realized I’d never seen a hummer carrying a white fecal sac away from a nest, like many songbirds do to keep their nests clean: food in, fecal sacs out.  I wondered if a nestling hummer produced a fecal sac that was just so small I’d never noticed.  Just then a gray fuzzy lumpish shape appeared over the rim: a second nestling!… but, no — it has no face?  What…? Then: SPLORTCH!  Like a jet of ‘baccy juice from the lips of a cartoon hillbilly, a tiny projectile squirt came shooting over the rim of the nest and arced towards the ground.  So that’s how it’s done!  No fecal sacs here for mom to cart away, just a butt-skywards and a quick squeeze, and business has been taken care of.

The second event was the Hen returning.  And, to my relief and fulfilled expectation, she perched on the edge of the nest and pointed her beak downward.  Just like in the nature films, two little heads rose up to meet her, and she poked her bill down one gullet and then the other, dispensing yummy liquid Gnat-in-Nectar stew to each Nidling in turn, the bigger one going first.

To the right is a close-up of an Anna’s hummingbird stamp on a Three Star Owl “Hummingbirds of Arizona” cylindrical vessel.  (Both photos: A.Shock)

No pictures of any of this excitement.  I’ll try, but I’ve decided to paper over the window until fledging.  It would be awful if our voyeurism, or the cats, who love to sit and “read the backyard newspaper” from this window, caused her to abandon the nest.  I’ll leave a flap to peek through, like an impromptu blind, and maybe before long I’ll manage to get a photo.  The best I can do is leave you with this link to someone else’s photo of exactly what I saw.

Cactus wrens are a large (for a wren), lively, and common presence all over the low-elevation deserts in the American Southwest.  The photo to left left shows one sitting on a cholla branch.  They do that a lot, often while making all sorts of  mechanical-sounding vocalizations like drbrdrbrdrbrdrr or krakrakrakrakrakra.  Cactus wrens are expert at landing on, perching on, and building in fiercely prickly vegetation, usually constructing their unruly globular “kitchen sink” nests weaving fiber, litter, twigs and plastic safely into the protective arms of seriously spiny cactus species like cholla.

Last week we found a Cactus wren dead in our yard, stuck in the leaves of a yucca.  Here’s a photo I took of it (take my word for it, the spotty plumage is diagnostic):

This was certainly sad, but it also seemed very odd.  We couldn’t tell how the bird died, but there it was, a sorry speckled-feathery carcass wedged in the leaves of a Soaptree yucca.  Was it stashed there by a predator?  Not likely; there are predators that do that, but they don’t frequent our yard.  Did it die in the foliage above and fall there?  That doesn’t seem likely, either — it was wedged in tight, and somewhat horizontally.  Did it get stuck there, somehow, maybe a foot caught in the narrow leaves?  Possibly.

Here’s another wren story, not sad and perhaps enlightening.

Just a few days after the macabre yard find, E and I visited Boyce Thompson Arboretum, and paused on our walk for a few moments to watch a pair of Cactus wrens (Campylorhyncus brunneicapillus) busily working on a nest in the upper branches of a tree Prickly pear, a really tall variety of Opuntia. You can see the main support pad in the photo on the left, with the fibrous nesting material sticking out to the right, and the streaky bird’s head poking out to the left.  The wren was about to launch itself into the next plant over, a Soaptree yucca, to continue rummaging between the rigid leaves to gather tough hair-like fibers (visible especially clearly in the carcass photo above) that grow along the yucca stem at the bases of the leaves.  It did this over and over again, each time going deep into the spiky growth to tug and pull at the free building material to use in its nest.  Below is the best photo we managed of the wren reappearing with its beak full of yucca fibers.  Considering the tough and pointy nature of the vegetation as well as the close quarters, it looked like hazardous work, although poking around in nooks and crannies, probing with their narrow, strong beak, is what cactus wrens are built to do.  (I’ve tried to extract unwanted volunteers like fan palm sproutlings and African sumac seedlings from inside yucca clumps, and let me say that gloves, eye protection and long sleeves are often not up to the task.)

So did our hapless yard wren get caught somehow while carrying out this dangerous domestic mission?  We can never know for sure, but it seems in the realm of possibility.  It’s hard out there for a bird.

(Top photo, from Wikimedia Commons, by Mark Wagner.  Other photos by A&E Shock)

Another dire tale of cactus wren-related nesting mishap casts the spectre of botanical revenge on this story: a couple of years ago, the continuous plucking of fiber off of a hairy “Old Man” cactus in the yard by a diligently nesting Cactus wren denuded the plant’s crown so much it experienced horrible sun-burn, and died.

It’s confirmed — the Hen’s egg(s) has/ve hatched!

This afternoon (Thursday April 2) just after one pm, I was finally able to catch the Hen away from the Nid — she’d been sitting tighter than usual this morning — and could look down on the nest from the upper window.  The first discovery was that the black thing on the rim of the nest is not a tiny beak; it’s just crud.  Having established that, I was about to put the binoculars down because the nest looked entirely empty. Just a second before lowering my arms, though, there was movement: a little yellow-gaped head briefly poked up, wavered around a little, and then dropped back in.  I kept watching, and saw the movement repeated a couple of times.  Once there may have been a glimpse of a second yellow gape (two would be the usual number of nestlings for Anna’s hummers), but I can’t be certain.  In between sightings the nest looked perfectly empty.  I determined to watch until the Hen came home.  After a couple of minutes she did, and just settled right in on top of her hatchling(s), no feeding, just sitting.  It/they disappeared entirely under her.  The nestling(s) must be very very newly hatched, because the little bill was still so very short and entirely yellow.  The head supporting the beak was pink and unfinished-looking.

I have no pictures yet of the ‘ling(s), but here’s yet another of the Hen from earlier in the day.  For now, you’ll have to imagine there are brand new pink-scalped dino-nestlings under her.  (Digiscoped photo A. Shock)