The weather has cooled a bit, and even the succulents in the yard are perking up a little. Here’s a shot of a luncheon-plate sized flower of a nocturnal, non-native Cereus aethiops columnar cactus, taken at dawn before it faded in the rays of the sun.
(Photo of Cereus aethiops blossom by A.Shock)
This was weird, and sad for sure.
In previous posts, I’ve mentioned the unfortunate similarity of our swimming pool to the LaBrea Tarpits. Especially in the summer months when there are lots of inexperienced young animals out and about, we often have to carry out water rescues. Since my studio is at home and looks onto the pool, this is often in the nick of time: desert cottontails, house sparrow fledglings, tiger whiptails, european honeybees, beetles, moths, sunspiders, and even the occasional “cowkiller” (AKA velvet ant) have all been successfully fished out to live another day.
Unfortunately, not everything that takes the inadvertent plunge is so lucky, and daytime critters often fare better than nocturnal ones, because I see them, and can help. So, often, the first thing I do in the morning is check the pool for watery unfortunates: the closer to the surface, the better: the bottom, not so good. Most days, there’s nothing. But one morning, I was surprised to see this Striped-tailed scorpion (Vaejovis spinigerus) standing on the side of the pool about 18 inches below the surface (the infrequent drowned scorpion we encounter is generally on the bottom, belly up). The poor thing must have fallen in and, unable to get out, found itself a place to stand ready for anything, with its tail fully armed, and stuck there until it expired. I fished it out, and took some pix for reference, and left the soft, waterlogged body for something to make a meal of. I never saw what scored it — probably cactus wren or thrasher — but it didn’t take long; less than an hour later the little body was gone.
Here’s a close-up of it, eye-to-eye, a view we don’t often see of these close to the ground tiny arthropods. If you’re wondering how this mildly venomous stingy thing differs from the more venomous stingy-thing, the Bark Scorpion (Centuroides spp.), the thicker, bulbous tail with longitudinal stripes on each section is the easiest characteristic to note. The Bark scorpion has a much thinner, more gracile tail and pincers, and often holds its tail coiled to the side.
(Photos A. Shock. Apologies; since upgrading to the latest version of WordPress, the editor doesn’t seem to support the “click to enlarge” feature… Don’t know what’s up with that, but I’ll fix it as soon as I figure out how.)
After our latest monsoon event, the yard was freshly rinsed and all dampy. Everything was making the most of the moist: the succulents were sucking up water, the trees were drinking and dripping, and the whole world was washed in that most deserty perfume of creosote.
Also, the Cactus Longhorn Beetle came out. Here is its picture, on a “Bunnyears” prickly pear (Opuntia macrodasys).
From a horticultural point of view, the cactus longhorn beetle (Moneilema gigas) is a serious pest: its eggs hatch into larvae which bore into the tissue of cactus, especially Opuntia, and the adults are happy to munch on tender growing edges of cactus pads. The boring larvae exude their waste as an unsightly tarry goo on the cactus outside their boreholes, and their tunneling can be fatal to susceptible individual plants; the damage gnawing adults do to pads can alter an even growth pattern in new leaves. So, many desert gardening sites recommend the barbaric “Insta-stomp” approach to relating to this large beetle. (They’re flightless and are easily captured.)
E took pictures of this adult, possibly just eclosed after the monsoon rain, and we left it to trundle off, having admired its long “horns” with the white “elbows” on them. Stomping just didn’t seem like a viable alternative — frankly, I don’t know if flip-flops are up to the task of exterminating such a robustly-crusted arthropod (note the mediaeval spines around its thorax). Anyway, there’s plenty of Bunny Ears to go around.
Most Sonoran desert plants bloom in spring after the winter rainy season, but there are many that take advantage of the Monsoon rains, and bloom in late summer and early fall. This barrel cactus in our yard, a Ferocactus herrerae, is currently putting on an extravagant floral display.
(Both photos E. Shock)
…just passed within a block of our house!
Turns out the street at the edge of our neighborhood — two houses away from ours — is a convenient 
north-south thoroughfare for Leaders of the Free World on their way between Sky Harbor Airport and resort row up on the shoulders of Camelback Mountain. George W. Bush used to pass by every time he was in town en route to his favorite Phoenix digs, the Royal Palms, and on this trip the Obamas are staying at the Phoenecian.
Yesterday afternoon, we missed President Obama by a middle-aged minute — we were still hurrying over the front garden wall when the shiny black limos, trailed by mysterious subdued gray vans, zipped past the end of our street. How disappointing! I’d even made a polite sign about health care reform, with markers and a box to brandish, but we were too late.
So as E left for work this morning, he called home to say the police units were once again positioned along every side street, including ours. Determined not to be so lame this time, I waited until I heard the chopper overhead, then grabbed a camera, a hat, and my sign and went out to wait at the corner in the shade of a mesquite tree. 
On the other side of the street a bunch of kids from the local parochial school were already out baking in the sun, and there was a sweaty pink cop who told me to stand back from the road. In just a few minutes, flashing lights could be seen up the road. Then steadily rolling down off Camelback Mountain towards us came a phalanx of motorcycle officers, some vans, two or three black limos with tiny side flags whipping, just like in the movies, white vans with clear windows crowded with Secret Service agents, Press Corps, and others, 
the mysterious gray vans again, an ambulance, and other serious-looking vehicles deemed necessary to keep POTUS safe on his way to a Stimulus Support speech at the Convention Center downtown.
Did I see the Prez or First Family? Nope – just heavily tinted windows. I was waving, so I didn’t even get a picture of their limos (if they were in them!), just some of the auxiliary vehicles. But to me the important thing was that I was there with my mild little message, and for a split second in time, the President of the United States might have seen it.
That, and now I can add Presidential Motorcade to the Yard List.
(All photos A.Shock)
Yes, that’s “Cnemie-philia” — the love of lizards in the genus Cnemidophorus, now more properly called by their current genus name, Aspidoscelis, or Whiptails. Our locals are Sonoran tiger whiptails (Aspidoscelis tigris punctilinealis), and they’re the most commonly seen lizard in our Phoenix area yard. They like it hot and are out and about during the the day, except in the highest heat, constantly looking for prey such as insects and ants, which they are welcome to, as our ants have out-sized painful defense methods. (Yet I love the ants, because they feed the flickers and the whiptails). The young whiptails have been more in evidence recently, too — tiny whippety slippets of things, sleek and fast with brilliant blue tails that largely void their stripey camouflage against granite gravel. Maybe the flashy and detachable nearly-neon blue tail is an effective decoy for color-visioned predators, distracting them from more critical body parts.
(Various watercolors in Arches 140 lb coldpress sketchbook, A.Shock; click image to enlarge)
Here’s a watercolor study of a tiger whiptail who, sadly, fell victim to the LaBrea Tarpit of our pool. I finally took it out of the freezer drawer of our fridge, much to E‘s relief, although there is still a Vaejovis scorpion chilling in there (this is when zip-lock bags really shine, I feel). When I was through drawing, I took pictures and put the limp, thawed carcass out for a Curve-billed thrasher to find for a meal, but ashes to ashes: the ants found it first, bringing the lizard’s life full circle in a nutritional sense.
Lately I’ve been slacking off on supplying etymologies for things, but this one’s already been covered, at the very bottom of the Desert iguana post, along with a swell photo by E of a (Plateau?) tiger whiptail we saw at the Grand Canyon.
Working nocturnally in the studio gives observation opportunities not available during the sunny daylight hours. Geckos (the non-native Euro-variety) march up and down the raccoon-ravaged screens stalking moths larger than their heads. Here’s a picture of the ventral surface of one with a successful catch, all swallowed but for the wings, the reflection of my red clay-water bucket and camera visible in the clay-spattered glass. (Photo A. Shock)
Unsolicited plug: For those of you into such things, there’s an invaluable new field guide available, Lizards of the American Southwest, a photographic fieldguide, edited by Lawrence Jones and Robert Lovich, published by Rio Nuevo Press just this month. Authoritative, detailed, lavishly illustrated by good photos; maybe a little big for carrying into the field, but throw it into the car for that road trip to Northern Arizona or New Mexico. It’s all in here!
Late each spring, later than most other neotropical migrants, the Brown-crested flycatchers (Myiarchus tyrannulus) return to our neighborhood (and other places in southern Arizona) from their wintering grounds in Mexico.
They are relatively large tyrant flycatchers, about the size of the more familiar Cardinal, but unlike Cardinals they’re not usually seen on or even terribly close to the ground. They are Birds of Trees, and favor woodland and riparian areas, as well as the occasional suburban or park setting. They need trees with trunks large enough to contain generously sized holes, because they’re cavity nesters. A saguaro will do (a “Crest” once checked out a woodpecker hole in our now defunct saguaro, but didn’t select it), or a cottonwood, or any other tree a good-sized woodpecker like a flicker has excavated a hole in already. We’ve got Gilded flickers and Gila woodpeckers around, so there are holes big enough for the Brown-cresteds to raise a brood in. Excellently, the BCFL is one of the few native cavity-nesting passerines able to out-compete Starlings for nest-holes.
As flycatchers, they are also Birds of Air, and feed almost entirely on insects which they catch on the wing. They’re distinctively vocal, and it’s often easier to detect them by sound than by sight, as they give vigorous rolling brrrts and wheeps from the tops of trees. In addition, they seem to be the earliest singers of the morning, starting before sunrise with a gentle repetitive song that differs in note and pattern from their daytime vocalizations, but is similar in tone. Many people find it easier to identify them by sound: Brown-crested flycatchers have a look-alike smaller Myiarchus “cousin” the Ash-throated flycatcher, which is more widespread in arid regions of the southwest but utters different sounds.
Though they arrive late in spring, they also leave earlier than most migrants, and around the middle of August, I find myself listening each morning for the early song of the Brown-crested flycatcher, wondering when they’ll all have flown.
(Sketch book watercolor, A.Shock)
The sky on Saturday night was remarkable.
Somewhere south of the Phoenix area a big storm collapsed, and the gusty winds flowing down off the top of its towering cumulus clouds blasted a well-defined edge of dust that rolled outward for miles. It’s called a Haboob — fans of the the movie “the Mummy” will know what a Haboob looks like with a scary gaping face digitized onto it — and we get them in the desert during the Monsoon season each summer, without the evil high priest Imhotep’s face on them.
The top picture shows the very moment the storm arrived in our neighborhood. This is looking up at the leading edge of the dust cloud — that’s the peach-colored part of the sky. The blue is the normal as yet dust-free twilight sky. The color in these photos is neither enhanced or incorrect — this is really what it looked like for about an hour.
The next picture was shot in the thick of the dust storm, when everything was engulfed by swirling dirt. The nearby Papago Buttes are barely visible through the murk even though they’re only two blocks away. For contrast below is a photo of the same butte and the same mesquites next morning, looking more like themselves.
The final photo shows an infamous 2003 Haboob dramatically engulfing the Phoenix suburb of Ahwatukee.
Our little Saturday Haboob was impressive-looking on the ground here, but as far as monsoon events go, it didn’t live up to its own visual drama. Often these storms are accompanied by destructive winds, and followed by drenching, flooding thunderstorms, but this one brought none of that, at least in our neck of the woods. We must have been right at the edge of the storm as it breathed its last gust.
(Photos: top three: A.Shock; bottom, from Wikimedia Commons, with a thank you to the anonymous photo sharer who generously posted it there)
When the Gophersnake made its appearance, I was about to post on Costa’s hummingbirds, because “informal censusing” (= what we see in the yard) indicates that this is the season when the Costa’s hummer
population is highest in our Phoenix area yard: we are lousy with Costa’s right now.
I would guess it has something to do with post-breeding population movement, and the fact that there are a lot of YOY (young of the year) out and about. Right now, at least three of our back yard nectar feeders are being defended by male Costa’s, one of which is an immature bird, still showing just a few purple spangles at the corners of its throat.
These tiny feisty birds definitely fall into the “dinky desert dude” category. They spend a lot of time in exciting high-speed tail chases, pursuing each other and other larger hummers like Anna’s away from the nectar sources, even in the impressive heat we’ve been experiencing. In between, they sip intermittently at nectar sources both natural and human-made, using the energy-rich fluid to fuel their aerial gnatting forays which provide them with protein.
For now, the males seem to have quit their flight displays until next breeding season. But from their favorite perches — often on twigs under the canopies of open trees like palo verde and mesquite — they engage in quiet “singing” which is a descending sibillance so high and thin that some people can’t hear it. Even if it’s beyond your pitch range, you can always tell if a Costa’s is singing, because it “assumes the position”: a bit hunched, throat very slightly puffed, head forward and oscillating back and forth gently as the notes are emitted, as if to spray the sound evenly in all directions like audible air freshener, so other hummers in the area can hear it.
The top photo shows the typical neckless, puff-ball silhouette of a Costa’s, short-tailed and gray vested. In this light, the blazing purple of the “Yosemite Sam” mustachioed gorget is not activated, except for a patch behind the eye. Even without the bright color, the bird is easily identified by the pattern of dark and light, as in the photo on the left, with the white throat and neck contrasting strongly against the dark moustaches.
(Photos: top, Costa’s in yard creosote, A.Shock; bottom, Costa’s in Boyce Thompson mesquite, E.Shock)