…was patrolling our yard yesterday, an overcast Thursday morning.

I was working in the studio and noticed yard birds scolding harshly.  But my brain was busy with clay, and it only spared enough attention to ID the calls — cactus wren, verdin, curve-billed thrasher — and forgot to be curious about what was setting them off.  If you’re really paying attention, sometimes it’s possible to tell from the calls whether it’s a ground predator or an aerial one — hawk, kestrel — and sometimes even if it’s cat or snake. Snake creates the most fury, or panic, and the longest-lasting, loudest scolding.  But it wasn’t until I noticed E heading outside with his camera that I thought to check out the scene.

In this case, it was the local Gophersnake (Pituophis catenifer affinis, the Sonoran Gophersnake), gliding through the dried leaf litter around the citrus trunks.  Although we can’t be sure, I suspect this is the same individual we see periodically, although it’s much longer than it was the first time we saw it a few years ago, swallowing a very young cottontail practically on our doorstep (E was able to get fabulous pictures of the process from capture through constriction through engulfing, but I’m of two minds about posting them).  Thursday’s snake was close to 5 feet long, and robust, although gophers are not as thick as rattlers.  Gophers are Arizona’s longest snake, and can reach 6 feet in length, so this guy has a way to go yet; I’m hoping he’s finding lots of roof rats to help him get there.  Right now there’s a new batch of rabbits, rock squirrels and quail around, and these along with bird eggs, other snakes and lizards would all be on his menu.

He was moving slowly around the yard, intent on any prey items he might come across, but also moving toward a daytime hiding place, so E was able to get lots of pictures.  At one point, we got a little close for the snake’s comfort, and it gave us its best impression of a defensive rattler: it pulled up into an s-curve, and gaped its pink mouth, hissing and making a mock rattling sound (photo above).

This picture also shows the amazing coloration of the gopher snake: a series of mottled chocolate brown patches and spots on a creme-colored ground, grading into a bold dark brown and yellow striped tail.  This rattler imitation is both a blessing and a curse for the snake.  No doubt it discourages many potential threats like coyotes, but it also causes people to mistake them for actual rattlers, with unfortunate results for the innocent and effective rodent-hunter.  The display was impressive; we gave him a little space, and he quickly resumed his slow perusal of the yard.  Eventually it took cover under a big quartz boulder by a fence, and that was that, until the next time.

For more info, click here to link to the useful Reptiles and Amphibians of Arizona website.

(Photos, E. Shock)

Days are getting short until Three Star Owl‘s third appearance at Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival, and I’m in a groove, making pieces for the event.  As posted, I’ve been making mugs, and also owls.  Lots of owls.  Even more owls than usual.

So recently I turned to the hairy side of Sonoran fauna, and have been doing Javelinas.  Javelina items are popular with Three Star Owl clients, both Arizonans and visitors to the desert.  Interestingly, it’s often people who have lived their lives in the less urban areas of AZ who are NOT fans of the rooting, tusk-bearing mammal: they may have grown up thinking of them as pesky neighbors, and are weary of battling them over landscaping, gardens, and garbage, or are tired of sewing up the hound.

But in general, javelinas have lots of fans.  I was thrilled when a herd temporarily moved into our neighborhood a few years ago. They were flooded out of their usual habitat during a rainy year when the Salt River swamped the Goodding’s willow woods growing up in its channelized banks.  They did a bit of damage in yards, including ours, but I also still remember the thrill of hearing clicking sounds coming up the street, and looking up to see a mama with two quite young piglets following her!

Javelinas are not true pigs: they are pig-like mammals in the peccary family, Tayassuidae, and have a New World origin as opposed to pigs and swine, family Suidae, which originated in the Old World.  Our javelinas are also called Collared Peccaries, and live in a wide geographical range and a variety of habitats in the arid Southwestern U.S.  There are three other species of peccary in the Americas, which live throughout Central and South America: White-lipped, Chacoan, and Giant Peccaries.

Three Star Owl will be offering Javelina candle-holders and salt and pepper shakers for your table.  Here’s a colored pencil drawing of a pair of shakers in progress.  It’s not the drawing that’s “unfinished” it’s the clay objects, which are in two stages of completion, still in wet clay.  One is modeled and textured, the other not yet detailed or textured.  The shaker holes are the nostrils at the end of their snouts, and each one is re-fillable through neat rubber plugs in their bellies.

And here is a larger candle-holder, completed. The salt and peppers will have the same coloration, matte slips and oxides, with a little sparkle in the eye.

(Photos: top, javelina dirt-napping at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, E.Shock; javelina in our front garden, munching spring wildflowers, A.Shock; colored pencil sketch on recycled, speckled paper, A.Shock; Three Star Owl javelina candle holder, A.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)

Arriving in the spring, they lurk like vultures for weeks on the crowns of blooming saguaros, waiting for the flowers to swell into fat green fruits.  When they do, the White winged doves (Zenaida asiatica) rip them open with their strong fruit-ripping beaks, exposing the sweet red fruit and feasting greedily.  Sometimes several doves will stack, treading clumsily on one anothers’ backs, vying for access to their favorite food.

“White wings” are big doves, and during their breeding season, which are the hottest and driest months of the Sonoran Desert year, they rely heavily on the fruit of the saguaro for food and water.  So heavily in fact that in this habitat biologists consider them “saguaro specialists”.  In other parts of their large range, which includes the Caribbean and parts of Central America, they are agricultural freeloaders, and vast flocks of them take advantage of bountiful farmland for food and roosts.  Here they are considered “tropical doves” by ornithologists and “pests” by farmers. As such, they have been hunted energetically, and their population numbers are subject to wide swings throughout the year and decades.

This pesky mooching aspect of this big dove is not hard to imagine: they are agressive and a bit greedy at the yard seed feeders, and will lower their heads and charge at smaller doves, like their “cousins” the Mourning doves, making a hoarse hoo that’s the columbid equivalent of a growl.

But perched picturesquely on top of a fruiting saguaro against a desert blue sky, their frequent “who cooks for you” call means summer to me, and a welcome sign that the desert cycles are intact and thriving.

(Sketch book drawing, graphite, and photo, A.Shock)

The Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) has an agenda well-befitting a Columbid: “Must Colonize New World.”

Actually, it started before that, and a lot farther east: a native of central Asia, the Collared Dove had populated Europe as far west as Great Britain by the 1950s.  By the early ’80s, a population had taken hold in Florida, likely coming from the Bahamas where they also had been introduced (or escaped captivity) in the 1970s. From there, the large doves filled the southeastern US, and have been spreading inexorably west and north.  The first documented report of the species in the state of Arizona was in Eager, AZ, on March 6, 2000, and they were regularly sighted in Maricopa County by the end of the same year.

As mentioned in a previous post, they’re quite similar to the African Collared Dove (which used to be called the Ringed Turtle Dove), but they’re bigger, and a darker beige, and have different vocalizations.  In the Phoenix area and over much of Arizona, Eurasian Collared Doves have become quite numerous — on some days I would ungenerously call them a pest in our yard — and a few theories exist as to why they’ve spread so rapidly.  One is that they fill a niche left empty by the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon  (Perhaps in the Northeast U.S., but I’m not so sure that applies to the desert regions?).

Like the African Collared Doves, they show a disturbing willingness to become tame, and quickly learn  to fly down to empty feeders when they see someone coming out with a bag of birdseed.  I’ve caught them lurking on top of my studio — their toenails clicking on the roof, their pink foot skin glowing hazily through the translucent plexi panels — as if lobbying for the filling of neglected feeders in a kind of inexorable zombie-like way.  They’re hard to miss since their arrival is a dry noisy wing flapping, the thump of a hard landing of a big heavily-wingloaded airship, and the inevitable repetitive hoo-ing and gibbering that follows.

(Images: pencil sketchbook drawing and photo by 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)

For a few days I’ve been whiffing a whiff, which has caused me to search for the dead mouse in my studio.

Then, I noticed the Hoodia is blooming.  It sits on the shelves right outside the work tables.  That window is always open, being the draw-source for the swamp cooler air.  So the stinkitude of the big radar-shaped flowers was being propelled directly into my work area.  Here’s a picture of the offending vegetable; you can see glaze bottles and a banding wheel through the glass behind it.

The genus Hoodia is comprised of cactus-like stem-succulents whose flowers are pollinated by flies.  To attract flies, it is desirable to smell like carrion.  So like their cousins Huernias and Stapelias, Hoodias put out flat flowers the color of puffy, pus-streaked dead flesh with a blood-dark target center.  They smell convincingly of rotting meat, especially in warm weather.

Does it work?  Yes; there are a number of flies buzzing inquisitively around the plant all day.  And — is it possible? — this morning as I was hanging out laundry to dry, there was a turkey vulture circling low, right over the studio perhaps aiming its pervious nostril at our garden…

This specimen blooms heavily around the middle of June every year, as long as it gets enough water in the growing season.  It is labeled Hoodia gordonii, of appetite suppressant fame, it having been observed by ethno-anthropologists that the indigenous people of the Namib use Hoodia to relieve hunger.  Hoodia are not cactus at all, but members of the subfamily Asclepiadoideae, and so are related to milkweed.

(Photos A.Shock)

The desert suburbs of Phoenix are Columbid-rich, that is, there are many species of doves and pigeons.  Yesterday I was putting out seed in a neighbor’s gravel drive just before sunset.  The area is quite open, and at that time of day it fills with fat, free-loading doves and pigeons who are used to being fed there and then: after only a minute, there were 30 birds chowing down, their heads bobbing up and down rapidly like sewing machine needles, almost all of them Columbids.  I counted six species both native and exotic — all the species regularly seen in our neighborhood and most seen regularly in the Phoenix area at this time of year: Mourning dove, White-winged dove, Inca dove, Eurasian Collared Dove, African Collared dove, and Rock Pigeon.

There was only one African Collared dove (Streptopelia roseogrisea).  This species, like its close relative the now-abundant Eurasian Collared dove, is an exotic.  But unlike the ECDO, which was introduced in one place and then spread itself across the nation, the African Collared dove (or Ringed Turtle dove) was originally released very close to here but hasn’t spread widely, even in the Phoenix area.

The plumage of the two exotic doves are somewhat similar: both are beige and have a black crescent on their neck.  They can be hard to tell apart, until you get the hang of it.  The African is a smaller, paler dove, almost white, with a gentle two-note call that sounds like the chorus from the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”: “Woo-HOOooo!”  The larger Eurasian is slightly darker in plumage and has a hoarse three-note call with the emphasis on the middle note: “hoo-HOO-hoo” which it utters incessantly.

Our neighborhood hosts a small population of the daintier African Collared dove, and one of them spends most of its time mooching in our yard and our neighbor’s yard.  Because of its habit of snarfing up seed rapidly, packing it into its crop and then flying off to digest at leisure, we’ve named it Hoover, like the vacuum cleaner. (Hoover used to have a mate, Eureka, but she’s not around these days).  These birds are quite “sweet”: by that I mean they are not very afraid of people, unlike the other doves which all have a proper wariness towards humans.  They will fly right down and land on the ground at your feet if they think seed is to be had.  Not surprisingly given these behavior traits, there has been debate among ornithologists as to how domesticated this species (or variety) of dove is, but currently it’s enjoying full species status.

(Images of ACDOs: sketchbook pencil sketch and photo, A.Shock.)

In our area, the first Gambel’s quail chicks of the year usually start showing up in early May, clustered around their parents under the mesquite trees in the yard, pecking expertly at the ground like the precocial youngsters they are.  This year, since we weren’t around then, we missed the “nebula phase” of their development — when they’re so small and move so fast that it’s hard to count them: a streaky brown cloud of down orbiting the adults like electrons, running everywhere because their legs are so short.

Now that we’re back, the feeders are full again, and the parents are bringing their broods around.  For the past two days there’s been a family of six cleaning up nyger thistle that the frenzy of fressing finches let fall from the front mesquite feeder: two adult quail and four chicks.  The chicks are still quite young, but no longer downy — adolescent really, and they’re beginning to get little nubs on their foreheads where their topknots will grow in.  They are still cryptically colored buffy-streaky so that they’re nearly invisible against the soil in the dappled sunlight let through by the mesquite’s tiny compound leaflets.  Papa usually stands watch as the family feeds, which they do at a more leisurely pace than when it’s the adults alone.  This may be a clutch incubated in the spiky tangle of our fan-palm, where a hen successfully raised a brood of 9 last year.

Normally I’d snap a photo of the family scene above.  But because I can’t get a decent picture through the reflection-hazed windows looking out onto the feeders (I’ve tried!), and going outside would start the whole shebang to flee, I thought I’d sketch from life (above).  I’m just finding my way around watercolors again after a very long absence, and haven’t managed to loosen up as much as I’d like — at this point, I seem to produce tinted drawings, rather than acheiving a freer painting style.  One reason for that is that it’s such a different process than capturing “birdness” in the broad, unblended swatches of opaque glaze color, which is what I normally do, as in this Three Star Owl male Gambel’s quail wall tile pictured to the right.