Other parts of the Phoenix area had been rained on already in this monsoon season, but so far our part of town only had dust.  Big dust, impressive dust, haboob-style wall of silty grit in your eyes, teeth and hair dust, but no rain.  At about four this morning, however, that changed with the slow onset of rumbling thunder, brief flashes of lightning, and (after suitable meteorological prelude) buckets of rain.  About four tenths of an inch came down over a couple of hours, a perfect pace for sluicing dust, soaking gravelly soil, filling flower pots, and refreshing everyone and everything that lives here.

Lots of things come out of the ground during heavy rains: Spadefoots, scorpions, centipedes, and various snakes either choose to or are forced to emerge from their underground refuges to flee the flood or to hunt others who have come out to drink, mate, or search for food.  Unfortunately, a small hunter with inadequate eyesight and no capacity for swimming fell victim to our pool during last night’s downpour: a tiny Western Threadsnake.  Not good for the snake, but good for photography.  We’ve  seen these guys in the yard a only couple of times before, usually unearthed during gardening and gently reburied, but we’ve never managed pictures.

<< Western Threadsnake (Leptotyphlops humilis), with a dime for scale.  Its scales are so translucent that you can see a couple of its last meals as dark areas in various points along its digestive system.

Threadsnakes are tiny silvery-pink worm-like snakes with two blunt ends that look alike, except that the tail ends in a harmless spine which it will poke aggressors with defensively (on larger nuisances, such as humans, this has no effect).  The other end has its nearly featureless face, which consists of two darkish spots below the scales that are eyes and a small, practically toothless mouth. >>

The eyes are almost blind because the snake lives predominantly underground, and the mouth is toothless because the little snake’s prey — ants, termites, their larvæ and the like — are swallowed whole. In general, the entire snake maxes out at 15″ in length, the last 0.3″ inch of which is the stubby tail.  As you can see, this one was barely 10″ from snout to tail-tip; here’s a picture of my rusty studio straight edge, with threadsnake for scale, a reptilian Dinky Dude of the Desert:

(All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge)

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).

<< Here are my next-door neighbor’s cucumber plants, with a snake napping amidst them. The neighbor noticed it when he was rummaging around in these leaves looking for cukes for dinner. I happened to be in our backyard, and saw him and his wife standing just on the other side of our shared block wall, and went over to see what they were looking at.

“A gopher snake.”

The wall is six feet tall, and I can’t see over it. So I asked him if he would mind snapping a shot of their snake with my cell phone. He obliged, and handed the phone back to me. As I walked away, I checked to see if the picture was in focus; cell-phone cameras are capricious that way. Nope, in fine focus (photo above).

“Umm, Dane? I don’t think that’s a gopher snake.” I fetched a flimsy plastic chair to stand on, and peered over the wall straight down onto the comfy animal. It was a beautiful Western diamondback rattlesnake, curled in the ‘cukes, snoozing and digesting its latest meal. I could see the sun glinting off of its rattle, concealed deep in the center of its keely-scaled coils. >>

The Fire Department was called, and a re-location made. The Scottsdale FD is equipped for reptile removal. They only take snakes from settings urban enough that the reptile might be considered “out of place” — if you live in the foothills, or on the edge of open desert, they will tell you your snake isn’t a suitable candidate for removal, because it’s at home in your yard. But in our mixed suburban-desert zone they came for the neighbor’s rattler, in a huge, danger-green fire engine — three strapping, uniformed Firemen with their names embroidered on their dark blue uniforms (why would a desert community make their public safety officers wear dark blue in the desert sun?) redolent of calm and expertise. The guy with the snake-tongs had on shorts. The entire scene was calm. No one was horrified, or panicked, or officious. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the neighbors have a 14-month old grand-daughter and an overly-mouthy not-too-bright black lab, I think we all would have been happy to let the snake stay put and take in more roof-rats. There’s plenty to go around, along with the pocket mice, cottontails and those tomato-thieving rock squirrels who disemboweled Shelby’s patio furniture cushions to line their nest in our attic with. All of us would have traded the snake for the rodents, any day. But… the grand-toddler… So unless there are more rattlers, the gopher snakes will have to take care of the rats.

The capture was uneventful; the snake’s belly was bulging from recent feeding, and it only rattled a little. It was taken away along with repeated assurances it was destined for safe relocation (I chose to believe the nice officers). The fireman with the snake even paused to let us take photos — my neighbor had his video cam and I was still hanging over the wall with my camera. The rattler, which was only about three feet long, just looked pissed off.

The folks next door have lived in their house since the 1970s, and they’ve never seen a rattlesnake around here in all that time. But the Army National Guard just paved over a generous chunk of their desert two blocks south, and the city has an on-going streets improvement project a couple of blocks in the other direction. I’ve seen more coyotes in the past few months than in the rest of the time we’ve lived here, including one IN our (totally walled) yard. We suspect this habitat loss and upset is forcing critters there to move into our streets.

Not infrequently the topic of snakes comes up among the folks who live here, and I often mention what a good idea it is to not kill snakes because they eat rodents (we’re in a part of the Phoenix area plagued with non-native roofrats). One of the reassuring things I tell people is, “Anyway, all the snakes around here are non-venomous — we don’t have rattlers any more in this area.” Oops. Also, I’ll be carrying a flashlight when I go out into the yard at night, now. There hasn’t really been a need: the raccoons are scrappy, but they’re not venomous.

And it’s still not a good idea to kill snakes.

(All photos A.Shock; click to enlarge)

This morning my foraging strategy was to cook oat bran, spangle it with almonds, and sweeten it a little with agave nectar.  This left the sink full of dishes.  Someone else’s foraging strategy — a fox? a coyote? — was to dig out pocket mice burrows, hoping for some warm, moist, furry, squeaking protein.  This left loose dirt and awkward footing under the lines when I went to hang out the wet laundry.

Another foraging strategy was to hit the hummingbird feeders as soon as the sun was up.  Hummers and woodpeckers — both Gila and Gilded Flicker — are the usual habitués, but since around the 20th of May Hooded Orioles (Icterus cucullatus) have also been sipping nectar at the feeders.  They may have been in the neighborhood from time immemorial, but this is the first breeding season we’ve been aware of them in our yard, other than as infrequently seen migrants.  So, I’m excited.  So excited that I’ve done two things: one, put up a purpose-made oriole feeder (like the hummer feeders we use, but bigger, oriole-sized, and orange), and two, inflict you with the following two barely adequate photos, from my digital point-and-shoot.

Hooded orioles (Photos A.Shock) >>

Yes, these are not great pictures, but as I say, I’m excited to be infested with orioles, and they’re the best pictures I’ve managed so far.  So here they are. The birds are both shy and busy — they tend to go from one feeder to the other (these are hummingbird feeders in the photos) after less than 10 seconds on each one, and so are a tough target.

I’ve only seen a male at our feeder one time, when three birds arrived all at once (perhaps a family?).  Unlike the subtle gray and pale-yellow females, the males are what we think of as oriole-y: a blazing golden yellow, with black wings and tail, white wing bars, and a black mask and bib.

<< In this photo (by www.naturespicsonline.com) you can see a male on a mesquite.  Hooded Orioles love to build their woven, pendulous nests high in palms and other trees, so high and inaccessible (to humans) that most biologists tend to look up at from the ground and proclaim “Yup, that’s a hooded oriole nest!”: for a not un-common bird, very little info exists on their nesting habits, or any of their habits, actually.  (Read more about Hooded oriole’s natural history, listen to sounds, see more images at Cornell Lab’s All About Birds here).  If you think of these orioles as I do, as golden birds with black parts, “hooded” makes less sense than “masked”.  But if you think of them as black birds — and orioles are in a taxonomic sense Blackbirds, or Icterids, related to blackbirds, bobolinks, meadowlarks, caciques, and grackles, to name a few — if you think of them as black birds with golden bits, including a golden hood, then their name makes more sense.  Check out the photo of the male again, with new eyes.

Back to foraging strategy: orioles eat insects, nectar and fruit.  So, like hummers, they use the nectar ports on feeders, but as in the photo on the right above) “our” female/s seem to prefer hanging upside down to drink the sugary drips left by the swinging, sloppy woodpeckers.  At this time of year, when the hummer feeders are busy with the new crop of young birds, and adults feeding themselves and nestlings, this can lead to a back-up of scolding hummingbirds who usually approach to drink only after the larger birds are done.

Orioles also eat fruit, and I had some past-their-prime oranges from our tree that I halved and impaled on a twig above the feeder — the orioles and woodpeckers cleaned them out, leaving only the skin with the interior membranes perfectly intact.  Right now, there’s a watermelon on the kitchen counter waiting to be cut up whose sweet rind I intend to share.  BTW, if you want to put out a nectar feeder for orioles, oriole nectar is 6-to-one parts water to sugar (hummer nectar is sweeter, at 4-to-one water to sugar).  As with hummer food, bring water to boil, add sugar and stir until liquid is clear, bring back to a brief boil, let cool with a lid on, and fill feeders.  Even if you don’t have orioles, woodpeckers will drink this mixture, too.  And it may take some of the congestion off your hummer feeders.

Though the lady bug life cycle has been covered here before, I can’t resist posting this photo of a brand new Lady Bird Beetle and its recently exited pupal casing.

>> the bug and the box it came in. Click to enlarge, it’s a nice big file (photo A.Shock).

Just a couple of days ago, I’d noticed the pupa on an artichoke leaf in the veggie garden. It was practically the first evidence I’d seen of the spring lady bug generation’s progress since finding the eggs on the cilantro earlier this month. Later, I’d only managed to find one active larva, so I was pleased to locate this pupa. Sunday morning I went to show it to E, and there it was — split open now, while its erstwhile occupant, having backed out of the crack in the posterior of the casing, pumped its new flight wings full of hemolymph in the bright morning sun. The unripe-tomato-y quality of the elytra at this stage is perfect, starting out transluscent waxy-yellow and slowly deepening to the familiar cherry-tomato red. The spots appear and darken gradually like darkroom images, gaining contrast and intensity as the carapace dries and hardens.

This time of year the world is pregnant with nests full of eggs, tiny cottontails hopping and hiding in the yard, fledgling birds following their parents food-begging insistently, new yellow-green leaves and catkins on the mesquite trees, and glorious cactus blooms.

<< Praying mantis egg-case on a Palo Verde twig (photo E.Shock). >> close-up of a mesquite catkin (photo A.Shock)

But as this acceleration of generation increases, we see another side of abundance: broken eggs on the ground, young birds not experienced enough to stay out of the street, small mammals learning the hard way about the swimming pool, an adult gopher snake swallowing a tiny cottontail.

Spring is a scavenger’s prime-time. We’ve been watching an Inca Dove carcass decompose under the tangerine tree. In the dry desert, this isn’t a grisly thing: if not enjoyed by raccoons, foxes, or feral cats, the soft parts are quickly consumed by the local scuttling scavengers, usually ants or dermestid beetles and the like. Inca Doves are small, anyway — there’s not much to them, and small bodies don’t have time to bloat, liquefy, or smell very much.

>> Inca dove skeleton (photo A.Shock)

Decomposition is short and if not sweet, at least efficient. What was an intact dove carcass lying in the leaf litter a couple of days ago was, by yesterday, an articulated partial skeleton. The head was gone, but the ribs were still festooned with a few feathers, and the pelvis dangled two femurs and a foot. The ants’ tidy de-fleshing revealed a possible cause of death invisible to us before: egg-binding. Look below the rib-cage under the vertebrae and pelvis, and you can see an intact egg, cracked but still heavy with its contents, in place in the abdominal cavity.

<< Here’s a side-view. The large blade-shaped bone on the right is the little dove’s keel, or breast-bone; the egg sits snugly — perhaps a little too snugly — under the tiny pelvis.

I don’t have my own photo of an Inca Dove — although they’re common in our yard, they’re camera-shy, at least in my experience. But if you need the reassurance of a living image, or more info about Inca Doves, click here, for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology entry on the species.

And just to sweeten the pot because after all it is the holiday season, here’s a photo I posted last spring, of two terribly tiny bunnies snuggled into the form their mother scraped out for them. Go ahead; click to enlarge to see their tiny fluffy details. It was either this or one of the gopher snake eating a baby cottontail, but I think I’ll save that for next Easter.

>> two infant cottontails stashed in a form (photo A.Shock)

Yesterday an MLO (Medium Large Owl) emerged fresh from the kiln, all mute greens and golds, looking wind-blown and content.  I’d built this owl outside on the back porch, in a plein-air studio annex location during our in-between-not-too-hot-not-too-cold season, and I put it back outside to save indoor shelf space. Anything on the porch is considered Part of the Field by the local wildlife: the raccoons drink from the water bucket on my work table, the finches and doves and cactus wrens forage around it, and Hoover the hand-tamed African Collared Dove, perched on it, hoo-ing, as he had all through the construction process.

<< Hoover on MLO (all photos A.Shock, click to embiggen)

For him, landing on the clay owl’s head to cock his seed-beady eye at me and beg for safflower and peanuts is no different from landing on a branch or a chair-back to seed-schnorr.

So, the next time you’re tempted to try to “scare birds” from your roof or garden with one of those Plastic Owls, here’s your pin-up poster of how effective it will be: Not.

Still, Good Feathery Detail is its own virtue — this plastic Snowy Owl purchased here in Phoenix (and fully 100% guaranteed to be totally unrecognizable as a threat to desert birds) became ours simply on the strength of its shapely molding and piercing yellow eyes.  It stands impotently in our herb garden perfectly disregarded by greens-pecking quail hens and greedy-cheeked rock squirrels.  Still, despite slightly opaque corneas (UV causes cataracts, you know!), you can tell from its expression that it takes its job very seriously. And in fact, we never have had even one lemming in the garden yet.

By the way, the Medium Large “Windblown” Owl (18″, top photo) will be available (without dove) at the Three Star Owl booth at the Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival at the end of the month.  It’s hand-built, glazed stoneware, one of a kind, and perfectly suited to deter pests (or not) in your garden or outside living space.  (The cheap plastic snowy owl effigy is not for sale, sorry; we fear too greatly potential inroads of the arctic vole here in Phoenix.  You can’t be too vigilant when it comes to inroads, or so our governor tells us.)

Last fall our herb garden hosted a successful crop of parsley, cilantro, and Lady bird beetles (AKA Lady bugs).  But we only noticed the bounty of bugs when we found roving hordes of hungry beetle larvæ voraciously devouring hapless aphids.  Pictures of the process of larval metamorphosis were captured  and posted here, but all the eggs had already hatched, leaving the beginning of the adventure undocumented. Now the cycle has begun again, and happily this time we caught it from the start.

>>Here are lovely saffron-colored lady bug eggs on our bolting parsley, awaiting transition into fearsome predatory eating machines. (Thanks to E for the photo.)

We’ll have to be careful when we harvest for tabbouleh!

They don’t all make it.  E found a dead fledgling hummingbird in the path across the wash, under the palo verde tree. It was dried, mummified, an inoffensive inanimate thing, not even worth the ants picking over.  We buried it under a nearby chuparosa, a favored food of hummers.  (Photos E.Shock)

Top: detail of foot, with primary feathers behind.

Middle: detail of rump feathers and tail feathers, showing juvenile buffy-edged plumage with a hint of metallic green.  The green deck feathers (middle tail feathers) are just growing in.

Bottom: whole little corpse, with partly-grown baby-beak.