Last post was the New Year’s first bird — a frosty Costa’s hummingbird — but this one is the Year’s First New Bird, and it’s a hummer, too.

We just returned from Baja California, and in the mission village of San Javier on the dramatic east side of the Sierra de la Giganta in Baja California Sur, Xantus’s hummingbirds (Basilinna or Hylocharis xantusii) were much in evidence. They’re pretty little birds, medium-sized for a hummer (about the size of Anna’s) and colorful, sporting a bright red bill, buffy chest and belly, azure and emerald green upper-parts, black throat, blue-black forehead, a white line behind the eye, and a cinnamon tail.

Behind the Misión San Javier de Viggé-Biaundó, in the three-hundred year old olive grove planted by its founding Jesuit missionaries, Xantus’s hummers zipped back and forth, feeding on chuparosa flowers sprawled over the bulky stone walls (photo right), perched in the thin tips of the olive branches (below), and scolded each other. This is a hummer that lives no where else on earth but central and southern Baja California, and we had tried unsuccessfully to see it once before on an earlier Baja trip, so it was delightful to get so many good views.

(All hummer photos thanks to E.Shock and his magic big little zoom lens, in difficult light conditions with tiny moving targets! Click to enlarge.)

The man whose shares his name with the bird had an interesting history: Xántus János, John Xantus de Vesey (left), was a Hungarian exile who came to the US in the middle of the 19th century, and worked with Hammond and Baird (also names familiar to birders and biologists). He had a short-lived consulship in Mexico — according to Wikipedia he was dismissed for ineptitude — but was there long enough to collect a specimen of this endemic hummer.

In his lifetime, Xantus’s name was also attached to a blenny, a croaker, a gecko, a pelagic crab, a murrelet, a wrasse, a night-lizard, and several plants. In addition, according to an anecdote recounted to me by a Baja historian, during his consulship Xantus left quite a few of his own chromosomes in the local gene pool, along with his Hungarian family name Xántus, which reportedly can still be found as a surname in Baja.

>> A durable little male Costa’s hummingbird, perched two feet off the ground on an aloe-tip, in the gray light of a below-freezing desert dawn, the first morning of the year also the coldest of the season so far. (All photos A.Shock — click to enlarge!)

Moustachios a-flarin’ >>

Above: slurping at the feeder:

It’s surprising how often the shutter captures an extended hummer-tongue:

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, Costa’s hummingbirds are year round birds in our yard, although in the winter months their numbers can be sparse. Currently, I know of one male in the yard, this one, who holds court at the feeder hung in the palo verde shown here, and one female, who hangs out at a feeder at the back of the lot. Gnats must be scarce right now, but the Chuparosa (Justicia californica) — so favored by the little flower-feeders that the bird gives one of its Spanish names to the plant — are in fine bloom, their red tubular flowers full of sweet nectar.

…from the Holiday Otter and his Magical Hose of Joy.

In celebration of my friend Kate seeing Black-bellied whistling ducks in New Orleans, here is a Black-bellied whistling duck Spot the Bird.

The photo was taken in a coastal wetland in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, in Ocotber of 2008. I was scanning the greenery with binx when I spotted the ducks — I suspect I would never have seen them with the naked eye — and took the picture, hoping it would come out just like this: a photo with birds that are virtually invisible, except for their extraordinary bill color. (If you don’t know what a BBWD’s bill color is, click on the link above to Kate’s photo to make the search easier.) I’ll post a photo key later, but in the meantime, don’t forget to click to enlarge. By the way, the head count is three ducks, as far as I can tell.

It’s not a reindeer, and it doesn’t have a red nose.  But, a yule mule deer licking its nose with a pink tongue is as close as I could get…

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas anyhow!

(Muledeer in Hualapai Mountains, AZ; photo by E.Shock)

Along the Verde River in the Yavapai Indian Nation, a Bald eagle sits low in the field of view, framed by a dramatic snag, golden cottonwood foliage, and saguaro and brush-covered hills behind.  Out of sight, the river flows to the right, between the eagle and the saguaros in the background.

Vignetting, distortion, noise, and other fatal photo flaws result in moody painterly effects created by distance, heat, and the multiple lenses of digiscoping. (Photo A.Shock; no “artistic” Photoshop filters used)

The eagle’s own view of me taking the photo would likely have been sharper than this image.

A looming Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) casts a long shadow in the late afternoon sun, standing on a bermed farm road east of Phoenix (photo A.Shock).  Despite its scientific name, it was being silent, and not vociferus at all.  And despite its common name, ungulates don’t have to worry, but you invertebrates? — quake in your lowly, mud-coated exoskeletons.

…it’s hard to hide in bright, falling foliage if you’re a flying tiger…

Here’s one of a pair of Great Horned Owls we happened upon yesterday in a cottonwood grove along the Verde River east of the Phoenix metro area.  We were scouting for Tuesday’s official Christmas Bird Count of the Rio Verde area, and accidentally flushed the pair from their day-roost just before midday.

The owls flew a short distance then resettled, each in a spot they felt was secure.  One hid well, disappearing from view, but the other became a shadowy shape in golden foliage.

Great horned owl (Photo A.Shock) >>

It evidently felt sufficiently concealed, since it didn’t fly again, despite our nearness and a raven and a cooper’s hawk hassling it.  Look carefully — even through the screening leaves, you can pick out the owliness of its outline: a solid, chunky form with wispy cranial tufts. “Stink eye” — no one likes their nap interrupted — can be deduced, but not actually discerned in the photo.

I’ve classed this as a Spot the Bird, of sorts, just because.