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)

…a little pointy beak?

Here is this morning’s photo of the Anna’s hummingbird Hen on her Nid.  I began looking very carefully for evidence of nestlings yesterday, April 1, since that was my estimate of the earliest her eggs might hatch.  This morning, I checked first thing, and still didn’t see any sign of young birds.  But on examination of this digiscoped photo, there’s a tiny dash of a black line visible at the rim of the nest, showing against her gray fluffy undertail coverts.  Is it or isn’t it a little beak?  I can’t tell.

I’ll check back on the Nid when the Hen is away; more might be visible.  Stay tuned.

(Photo A.Shock)

Here is the Hen today, sitting tight on her tiny cup nest built on two pine cones in our backyard Aleppo Pine.  She fills the whole opening like a cork, horizontally oriented.  Usually we see hummers either air-born or perched, in vertical orientation: it’s the horizontal arrangement, with her tail sticking out behind her and her back practically parallel to the ground, that makes her so Henlike.

She sits absolutely still for long stretches of time, with only the blink of her tiny eyelid to give away her presence.

I’ve been peeking up at the Hen infrequently, so as not to stress her with “eyeball pressure”.  She seems to be on-Nid most of the day.  I’ve tried a couple of times to catch her away from the nest, looking down on the Nid-bough from an upper bedroom window, to try to see eggs, but she’s always been there, strongly suggesting there are.  (The views from above are through a screen, so efforts at pictures from there have been unsatisfactory.)

Assuming she’s incubating now, and has been for a day or two — I’ll use 16 March as an estimated laying date — she will sit on her eggs with no help from the male for about 14 -19 days.  The young will fledge around the 23rd to the 26th day.  That would mean if the nest succeeds (and my calcuations are in the ballpark) the eggs should hatch around April 1, and the young will be in the nest for about another week after that.  That puts the Hen right at the peak of Anna’s breeding phenology according to the Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas, which shows nesting records for the species in the state peak around the start of the month, with a second shorter peak near the beginning of May.

While she’s incubating, an Anna’s female will leave the eggs periodically to feed, primarily on tiny insects like gnats, but fueled with nectar from flowers or sugar water feeders.  We’re keeping our feeders well-stocked and particularly clean (thanks, E!), with the first hot weather of the year.  The garden is more than doing its part, with hummer favorites like penstemon, aloes, desert lavender and above all, chuparosa all in peak bloom.

(Digiscoped photo A. Shock)

Much building activity: as of today the Anna’s hummingbird hen in our Aleppo pine is still finessing her nid.  This morning, she could be seen bustling and fussing at the site (yes, I anthropomorphize, get over it please, I’m not an ornithologist!), making frequent trips away and to, coming back with light-colored fibers, some of which could be seen stuck to her beak in the morning sun.

Beautiful looks through the scope, but focus continues to be a challenge with the camera, as my digiscoping is low-tech (camera lens hand-held to scope eye-piece).  Above is a new shot from this morning.  It’s an action shot, with the downwards-pointed bill apparently in the act of applying fluffy material to the outside of the nest and smoothing it.  The nest is getting taller, and very slightly narrower.

To the left is a photo from this afternoon, where the Hen is screened through the needles at the top of the cones.  Again, click on the photo to enlarge it a little.  You can see her scattering of throat-spangles, which look black because the sun is on her other side.

She seems to be sitting tighter now than in the middle of the day.  Anna’s will sometimes lay before the nest is complete, or rather, continue improving the nest even as they are incubating.

(This photo is with a 250mm lens, not digiscoped, and focus seems a little easier, although obstructions like pine needles are still a bit of a problem for photography, clever nest concealment though they are).

More as it happens, or if I get better pics.

(All photos A. Shock)

We go from desert Gryphons to desert Chimaeras — of course, not real chimaeras, in either the mythological or the genetic sense.  I’m talking about planting desert perennials in clumps, so that with maturity comes an exciting mixed-plant combo that combats the tedious “Plug-a-plant” school of xeric landscaping we see so much of here in Phoenix and other desert cities.

Many yards and businesses suffer from this dull technique of desert landscaping: start with a flat space topdressed with gravel, plug in a desert perennial, like a Rain Sage (AKA Cenizo, Leucophyllum spp.) or Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa), then plug in another one 20 feet away, and another, and another, ad nauseum, like the last pieces on a chessboard chasing each other around.  Worse still, these tough plants are then often abused by being trimmed into lollipops or wonky cubes.  To my eyes, it’s a sterile and unnatural look that people latch onto for two simple reasons: it looks tidy, and it’s considered “easy-care.”  These are not bad things.  But what some would call “tidy” I would call “severe”.  And the “Plug-a-plant” plan isn’t really easy care: Because although the plants selected are often natives, both the space between them and the pruning-up of their foliage allows sunlight and heat to reach the soil and even the base of the plant, which means they usually require supplemental watering to thrive.

In the Real Desert, plants don’t grow that way: in all but the most parched deserts, plants clump, intertwining and growing up through each other.  That way, they shade each other’s roots, and provide sun-protection for young plants, and wind protection in an open landscape.  This is such an advantage that to some degree it outweighs the disadvantage of competition among close neighbors for resources like water and nutrients.  The classic example is a saguaro growing up under a “nurse tree” like a Palo Verde or Ironwood: the tree shelters the young cactus until it’s tough enough to survive the hot sun and drying wind on its own, when it comes up through the branches of the nurse tree.  Many desert cactus, like Graham’s Nipple Cactus (Mammillaria grahamii) struggle in the full sun of the low desert, and grow their entire lives under the eaves of perennials like bursage and brittlebush.

An excellent example of how nature and gardeners differ is where each grows the excellent Sonoran twiggy shrub Chuparosa (Justicia californica).  Once established, it’s a low-care plant used along highways and in yards and commercial plantings, usually planted alone in full sun and lightly irrigated, where it takes on a robust cage-like growth pattern of its green, photo-synthesizing stems that in season end with lots of small red, hummer-attracting tubular flowers.  Very nice.  So imagine my surprise when I first saw it growing in the wild on a hike in the McDowell Mountains: it was clambering up inside palo verdes, ocotillo, and other shrubs and trees almost like a vine with shaded roots, its stems growing upward to the sun and offering its blooms to pollinators several feet in the air, often inside the shady branches of its support plant.

Once I observed this, there was no going back: Chuparosas went in under many of our mesquite trees, and intertwined with ocotillo, wolfberry (Lycium spp.), Ruellia (R. peninsularis) and the Chihuahuan native, Woolly butterfly bush (Buddleyia marrubifolia), Pink fairy duster (Calliandra eriophylla) and even red Chuparosa with the yellow-blooming variety.  When everyone’s in bloom it’s a mosaic of color.  Here are some photos, taken just this week in our yard.  Be sure to click on each to enlarge.

Above left: blooming chuparosa, up a mesquite.  When the chup is young, it’s protected by the light shade of the mesquite, but it quickly grows up to the light, where it blooms.

Next, right: a Pink fairy duster, red chuparosa, and a non-native senna.

Left, a yellow variety of Chuparosa growing entwined with a Ruellia.

You can also plant plants next to one another so they grow like different-looking parts of the same plant.  Here’s a blooming Pink fairy duster twinned with a Triangle-leafed bursage, also in bloom so that it looks like a half-green-half-pink plant:

I suppose I would have to admit that, like plug-a-plant, this style of desert landscaping might not be to everyone’s taste, as it does give the impression of lots of rambling natives and spots of mixed color.  But allowing your plants to follow more natural growth-habits does have the advantage of cutting down on or even eliminating supplementary watering, and NO PRUNING except in cases of particularly rambunctious growers.

All photos A. Shock.

One bit of advice for desert gardeners: don’t forget to water newly transplanted plants for a couple or even three years, until they’re well established. Plants grown in nurseries for sale in containers are grown very wet, even desert varieties.  This can actually shorten their lives as it it can hasten them to bloom, and it also makes them water-needy in your garden. Even desert natives need extra water to make the transition from pots to landscape.  Seedlings are another story: consider growing desert natives from seed — they establish rapidly without much extra water, adjusting their size and growth rate to what’s availble to them naturally.  So don’t despair if your gallon-sized Penstemon only lasts one season — as long as it flowers, you’ll have drought-hardy seedlings next year.

Another tip for low-desert gardeners is regarding the ever-present Creosote bush, or “Greasewood” (Larrea tridentata).  It’s one of the toughest, most drought-hardy desert shrubs around (and smells great in the rain), but it’s got a chemical defense system that “discourages” (i.e. kills) some other plants, or inhibits seed germination.  (In fact, this plant is the exception that proves the rule: it’s got this defense to keep shade-sharing and water-sucking free-loaders away.)  So, if you’re planting under Creosotes, make sure you’re putting in creosote-tolerant species.  For instance, we’ve had luck with Christmas cholla (Cylindropuntia lepticaulus), but less luck getting Chuparosa started under creosote.