I felt like a paparazza, drawing as close as I dared, trying to hold my proper camera with the big zoom steady in the failing light.  But she was calmly perched out in the open, low on our back fence, mobbed by smaller birds.  Hummingbirds orbited her, scolding, like cheeky electrons, but she ignored them. She looked at me, and looked away, bored.  She might be the same one I took photos of last year in our big pine tree; maybe, maybe not.

<< tonight’s Great Horned Owl, Bubo virginianus (all photos A.Shock, Canon EOS xti)

She was clutching E’s rain gauge — you can just see its acrylic rim over the fence, one of her dark talons curved over it.  Tomorrow morning I’ll go out to see if she left scratches in the plastic, like the woodpeckers do scrabbling for balance on the swinging hummingbird feeders.

I had been hearing the flickers, hummers, a couple of irate mockingbirds, the pair of thrashers who live in the yard, and even a gnatcatcher for a few minutes before it occurred to me go out to see what the fuss was all about.

Flickering flicker.  If you’ve ever wondered why this woodpecker species is called “gilded flicker”, you can see the golden coloration under the flight feathers and tail >>

The owl was overlooking a part of the yard where the cottontails have little cover but apparently there was no action, because after a while, she made a short flight into a small palo verde that has volunteered in the alley, and sat there for a while until it grew dark, looking around at her hostile avian entourage, glaring upward at a circling helicopter as if it were mobbing her too, yet still keeping a downward eye hoping for dinner.

<< On the palo verde throne, fierce-footed

When last seen, she launched towards the butte into the dusk, a gray blur against the graying sky.

Not a real owl!  I photographed this owlmorphic clump of cobwebs and autumn leaves in a tree hollow on Cape Cod in 2007.

This summer, there’s been much haboobery in the Phoenix area, causing a veritable Haboob-O-Rama.  Just this evening (Sunday) we had what was by my count the fourth significant dust storm of the 2011 monsoon season, which should be winding down, but isn’t.  There’s still dust in our yard from the first big one, which came upon us so fast and hit our part of town so directly that I didn’t get any pictures.

Here’s tonight’s haboob, which struck just at sunset. (All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge):

If the photo looks familiar, it’s because #2 haboob hit at about the same time of day, and I got a similar photo of it from a slightly different vantage point.  See that photo here.  Tonight’s haboob was ummm, taller, if that’s an attribute of haboobs, although it may have just looked that way because it was headed right for me. A few seconds after I snapped this shot, it crashed into the neighborhood, turning everything brown and gritty.

<< In between was #3 haboob, which blew in from the west, a little north of our ‘hood.  I got this photo of it engulfing Camelback Mountain, the summit of which is just barely visible as a triangular shadow between the trees in the midground.  Bonus bird: Not that you can tell in the photo, but the bird flying just above the utility wires in the center of the photo is a Lesser nighthawk.  Knowing it, however, should add to the desert ambience of an otherwise power-line filled image.

Another dust storm rolled over Phoenix just before sunset tonight, thirteen days after the doozy that hit us earlier in the month.  The first I knew of that one it was already on top of the house, its swirling dust choking out any light that was left in the sky.  I saw amazing photos of its onslaught, but I missed it myself, the beautiful and impressive start of the storm, and experienced only the gritty heart.  (I’m still cleaning up.)

But this one hit a bit earlier in the day, while it was still light, and farther to the west.  By going out onto the street in front of our house I was able to look towards Phoenix and see the brown snout of the leading edge engulf downtown.  The haboob was below a stack of cumulus clouds that kept its sullying gusts pressed to the skyline, while rays of clean sunlight streamed upward into an azure sky.  At the house, we only got a little dust, but uncharacteristically, that hasn’t settled.  The air is still and hazy, like a gray, hot mist.

This morning, I found a golden egg, high up in a tree.

Nestled into the rough bark of our backyard mesquite, a magical bird had laid a golden egg.  This was excellent: what a windfall! — my fortune was secured, if only I could reach it.

But it was too far over my head, so I had to satisfy myself with longing for its golden curves through binoculars.

And guess what, it wasn’t an egg at all, but some type of -quat or other: kum-, or perhaps lo-. Yes, that was what it was: a small orange fruit, probably a loquat since a neighbor has a tree, wedged into somewhere safe by a bird, or maybe a squirrel, to be retrieved later.

Who would do such a thing, hiding a golden treasure in plain sight?  The jammer would have to have sufficient strength, beak/jaw gape, toe-grasp, cleverness and agility to handle hauling a small fruit into a tree, and stashing it on a vertical trunk.  There are several candidates, but I strongly suspect the Curve-billed thrashers, who have just fledged their ravenous brood and are working incessantly, combing every crevice in the yard to feed their greedy-gaped offspring.  These industrious foragers will eat anything, seed, suet, bug, or fruit.  And they have an eye for treasure, just as golden as loquats.

(All images A.Shock).