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…

“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.

This is the very week many Costa’s hummingbirds leave our yard.  I know this because I’m keeping track, not out of obsessiveness, or possessiveness (well, maybe a little…), but because each winter I participate in the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Project Feeder Watch.  Like Christmas bird counts, it’s a way for science to harness the awesome powers of birdnerds and aviphiles across the nation.

<< male Costa’s hummer in our Little-leaf palo verde tree.  Go ahead and click on it to enlarge — I uploaded a huge image!

So, between November and April, I keep periodic count of birds that come to food sources in our yard: feeders, water features, flowers and plants, and other food sources like bunnies, finches and doves.  I report these winter bird censuses to Cornell Lab, and they compile the data into useful charts graphs and figures, which can be accessed by anyone online.

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned how our post-breeding population of Costa’s hummers balloons, with as many as 6 or 8 individuals, both males and females, coming daily to our feeders.  The males can be easy to tell apart, as some are young of the year, and are just growing in their flamboyant purple moustaches (properly called gorgets, like the piece of armor which protected the throats of knights, or the swath of cloth beneath the wimple some orders of nun wear), and the new feathers grow in distinctively, for a while enabling us to separate individuals by sight.  From July to January, the feeders in our yard are dominated by Costa’s.

But right after the New Year, many of them go away.  For instance, Yoyboy and Macho C, fierce contestants for our front porch feeder for months, have just recently moved on.  Some individuals do stay year round, and for right now, we still have at least one female coming to the feeders in the back, and at least two males — “C-Dude” and another nameless young of the year male — are still defending prime feeders in the back yard as well.  Time will tell if either stays here through summer.

For now, though, the Costa’s numbers are thinning, and the big Anna’s hummers are beginning their courtship cycle.

Anna’s hummer, photo by Will Elder of the National Park Service >>

For the last week, while the rest of the country fogs its glasses in a deep freeze, it’s been warm enough in Phoenix to open up the house, and I can hear the sharp, loud “chip” the Anna’s males accomplish at the bottom of steep, repetitive dives.  The sound has recently been discovered to be made by air rippling tail feathers as they descend, and it takes practice before the birds can make the noise consistently.  Little bullroarers, they swoop down on a female from high in the air, and chip just as they pass over her head in a millisecond, like miniature fighter planes at an airshow buzzing the crowd.  They’re just as fuel consumptive — I have to fill the nectar feeders twice a week or more.

So beginning now, my Feederwatch counts will have more Anna’s than Costa’s, until next year when the proportions are reversed again.  The next hummer change?  Around the first week of March, when the Black-chinned hummers fly in from their wintering grounds, and zip around the yard with their zizzing flight sound, dipping at the nectar sources alongside the Anna’s and resident Costa’s.
(This is Three Star Owl post #200!)

Weeks out of “swim-season”, our pool is a bit dishevelled right now: a recent windstorm, a bit of a chemical imbalance, a bit of neglect, made it time to brush the pool.  It’s a task that in itself isn’t huge fun in cold weather — cold wet aluminum chills the paws fast! — but does get me out of the studio into the outdoors.

It was nice to be out this morning.  Our post-rainstorm air was still clear as blue glass, the temp in the low forties (yes, snow-dwellers, I know this isn’t actually cold!).  The bird feeders, seed-feeders and nectar-feeders both, were crowded with fressing finches and zizzing hummers, and the squee-like contact calls and chatter of the busy Lesser goldfinches filled the yard.

(left: adult Cooper’s hawk.  Photo by Hanna Breetz)

Suddenly, a gray blur shot low over my right shoulder, and streaked over the pool to where the birds filled the creosote bushes, waiting for their turn at nyjer thistle and oilers, or warming in the early sunlight.  The blur pulled up as the finches and sparrows scattered, and manifested as an adult Cooper’s hawk, probably a female to judge by her size (female hawks are generally larger than their males).  A couple of passes through the mesquite tree and she’d emptied the place of smaller birds: Inca doves, goldfinch, house finch, thrashers, Abert’s towhees, cactus wrens, and white-throated sparrows, even the mourning doves and Gambel’s quail, all exploded off the ground, out of the trees and bushes, off the feeders, and disappeared over the yard walls with a burst of wing percussion, jibbering and complaining.  Hummers scolded energetically from their perches safe inside the thorny citrus.

(right: “accipiter kibble”; if you put out seed for the finches, you’re also putting out finches for the raptors. This is a Lesser goldfinch hang-feeding on a thistle-feeder.  Photo A.Shock)

The hawk paused on the top of the wall, searching the creosote below her with a fierce red gaze, glaring a few more birds out from the thin cover.  Then she flew off, empty-taloned, around the corner of the house, possibly headed for the crowded seed feeders in the front yard.

Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperi) are spry-flighted bird specialists, adept at tail-chasing winged prey through foliage or over open terrain due to their short wings and long tails.  These traits show excellently on the photo at the top of the page, a bird perched on a water feature in my friend Hanna’s Phoenix yard last November.  In the photo to the left, take a look at those long yellow toes, and sharp, curved talons: more bird-catching equipment.

(left: the same Cooper’s hawk as above, showing delightfully rusty-barred breast, and intense red iris.  Photo by Hanna Breetz.)

I finished brushing the pool, but in the silence of a yard emptied of small yammering finches and bossy cactus wrens.  Warming my hands on my coffee cup, I hope the Coop’s finds a fat hot pigeon to take off the morning chill.

(Guest photographer Hanna Breetz often has knitting needles as well as a camera in her hands: you can read her green knitting blog, Ever Green Knits, here.)

BTW, just had another bird moment in a humble locale: While in the looney-bin that passes for a local strip mall parking lot, I looked up to see a heavy-bodied, dark falcon laboring aloft with prey, headed for a high rung of an enormous antenna that looms over this block of big box stores deep in east Phoenix.  Seeing a Peregrine in a place like this is not only a bit of happy spotting, but a great reminder to keep your eyes open: spot opportunities anywhere, like a hawk.

…it’s a coil of tube-slush that blurped out of the hose this morning — yes, ICE!  So, the frost-cloth and styrofoam cups are stratigically positioned, ready to be placed over newly-planted herbs, and on tender cactus-tips late this afternoon: tonight is supposed to be the first frost of winter.  The hummers are hitting the nectar feeders hard.  (Photo A.Shock)

The post-breeding influx of Costa’s hummingbirds in our Phoenix-area yard continues.  This tough little desert hummer is present at the feeders year round, but the population goes up noticeably between about June and December.  Most of the birds we see are males, some in fully developed adult plumage, some with scraggly purple moustaches just growing in.  Gray-green, slightly less pugnacious females are not as flashy, giving the impression of being less numerous, but I’m not certain if this reflects numerical reality or is a figment of observation.

(left: “YOYboy”, young-of-the-year male Costa’s hummer; photo A.Shock)

Since the vacancy of Miss Thang from the front garden, a new battle for the porch feeder is ON.  The combatants are two male Costa’s, who are easy to tell apart by comparing their gorget featheration.  One is “YOYboy” (male Young of the Year), with only sheathed feathers and small purple spangles sticking out from his face like cactus spines (see left).  His favored perch is about 18″ off the ground, the very tips of the leaves of an Agave americana mediapicta in a pot on the front walkway, where a volunteer chuparosa flaunts its red nectar-filled flowers conveniently nearby.

The other is a full adult male, Macho C (nicknamed in remembrance of Arizona’s recently — and tragically — deceased last known resident wild jaguar Macho B), who sports glorious grape Yosemite Sam mustachios.  He perches in low branches of the mesquite tree across the walkway, also near a blooming chuparosa.

(Right: “Macho C”; photo A.Shock)

These habitual perches are sallying points for fierce aerial combat and tail-chases that break out several times each day, accompanied by zoom-buzzy wing-whirr, metallic scolding, and sometimes actual brief mid-air body contact, audible as a quick, dry feathery tap that sounds like someone snapping shut a rice-paper fan.

Much of the action occurs at the feeder, and can go on for minutes — E clocked them at more than three minutes solid the other day, with the winner getting to sip supper from the sticky feeder ports.  The fierceness of the competition has somewhat lessened in recent days, but they’re both still close by, and in between bouts of strife, each roosts and preens on his perch less than 15 feet from the other. Occasionally they join forces to chase other hummers from the front yard.  As far as I can tell, with all but one of the feeders being defended by male Costa’s, the Anna’s hummingbirds have been confined almost entirely to one part of the yard: the airspace and perches in the big Aleppo pine in the backyard, where the Hen nested last spring.

Recently a neighbor came across the street to tell me in a concerned way that she had “had to” kill not just one but two non-venomous coachwhips in her yard out of fear for the safety of her pet, a feisty little terrier whom no self-respecting coachwhip would allow near enough for trouble.  So it was very good to discover that “our” coachwhips on this side of the street, whom we see with some frequency, had managed to reproduce, to help offset the unnecessary slaughter.

This handsome youngster and I surprised each other under the hummingbird feeder in the palo verde, and it held still enough for long enough that we were able to get some photos.  I suspect it was after young Tiger whiptails, among other things, as they’re still out and about (the larger adults seem already to have retreated to their subterranean refuges for the season, for the most part).  In fact, nearby on the same day, quite a young whiptail was chasing small ants with gusto.  It no longer sported its blue tail, but had the slim body and large-headedness of a young reptile.

Coachwhips (Masticophis flagellum) lay their eggs in June and July, and the young begin to maraud in August and September.  So this well-camouflaged youth is probably a month or two old, and already a whippy thin 13 or 14 inches in length.

“When frightened it flees so rapidly it appears to magically disappear into the desert,” say Brennan and Holycross in their excellent 2006 Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Arizona.  And that’s exactly how this encounter ended, when the little snakelet finally decided it was time to vamoose.

(Photos: Top: A.Shock; bottom, E.Shock)

The other morning around 6 am I was awakened by a neighbor: the Army National Guard’s Papago Military Station thumped deafeningly with the rotors of helicopters.  I went out to look: the National Guard is usually a quiet neighbor, with only occasional popping of target practice audible from our street.  The airstrip no longer hosts fixed-wing craft, so apart from infrequent “chopper” traffic, we’re not often disturbed by activities on the Reservation.

But this morning, the din was hard to ignore so I went out front to watch.  The houses across the street are slightly up hill from ours, so my view was over their rooves, and at first I couldn’t see anything but a rolling cloud of brown dust like a haboob, kicked up as the ‘copters waited on the old landing strip.

For more than three quarters of an hour, the rotors thumped.  From the enormous noise they were making, I guessed there was more than one, maybe three or four.  At 7 am, they lifted off — TEN Blackhawk helicopters, one at a time, to the east, headed to Fort Sill Oklahoma to join the 2-285th Aviation Assault Battalion, eventually bound for Iraq.  Ten! — no wonder the sound of their blades shook the ground, throbbed in my ribs.

Whatever your feelings about Instruments of War, ten powerful Blackhawk helicopters heavily rising one by one into the dawnzerly light make an impressive scene, the roar of the blades changing with the stress of becoming airborne.  There was something surreal about it, somehow outside Nature, when measured by my usual yardstick of even the largest flying creatures we’re accustomed to in the desert neighborhood: Common ravens, Great horned owls, and Turkey vultures.  These giant copters were like winged prehistoric creatures that ought to be too massive to fly: Pterodactyls are our neighbors.

Scorpions are not a thing at our house.  We don’t see them frequently, and as previously posted, they’re more likely to be encountered outside as victims of the swimming pool than inside the house.  But last night E liberated one from the front bathroom, and temporarily incarcerated it in a pint glass.

In the morning, I wanted to watch it glow.  Here’s a picture of it viewed under a UV light, with the glass’s Duralex logo for scale.  It’s another “striper”: Vaejovis spinigera, a stripe-tailed scorpion, our most common species.

There are places in the Greater Phoenix famous for their scorpionicity.  So much so, that you can find maps of the frequency of scorpion stings on the internet, for the benefit of people new to the area who might want the info while searching for a house to buy. (We looked at a map of Superfund sites, but everyone has to prioritize their own worries).  Such a map is to the right: the darkest areas show the areas with the most stings reported, so it’s more likely to reflect factors such as human population density or likeliness of going to the hospital than actual scorpion presence.  Also, the map doesn’t indicate actual numbers or a unit of time, so there’s no knowing if the darkest red are so many stings a year, or so many stings a minute.  But, it provides a rough idea of who should invest in a hand-held black-light, and who’s most likely to subscribe to weekly pest control.

Oddly, the scorpion-rich areas are not all desert neighborhoods as you might expect: there’s a hot spot in Tempe with lawns and sprinklers and rose-bushes, and another in the central corridor of older Phoenix.  We’ve got friends who live there, and they see scorps way more often than we do, and have been stung.  As a kid in Phoenix, I remember being afraid of scorpions after hearing stories of people leaving wet washcloths on the bathroom floor, and finding several of them clinging to the underside of it when it was picked up next morning.  (Scorpions love getting under things and hanging there upside down.  Biologists call this “reverse geotaxis”: the habit of aligning yourself in reverse to the surface of the earth.)  Fortunately, in our area, for most people the sting of most scorpions is a painful inconvenience, and nothing more.  There are places in the world where there are much more potent scorps, and their sting is a medical matter and is even occasionally fatal.

After its photo-session, I released this striper in the back yard, under a Cenizo bush, where it clung to some foliage.  By the time the sun strikes the plant, it’ll be back in a hidey-hole until night falls again.

(Photo A.Shock; scorpion wrangling E.Shock)