Just to even things up, here’s what it feels like to be BIRD-WATCHED:

(Photo E.Shock)

This is “Hoover” the semi-tame wild African collared dove who inhabits our neighborhood, wondering why we don’t have a handful of peanuts NOW.

To indulge in a moment of natural history, notice how the eye is set in a slightly pinched or narrow part of the bird’s head.  This enables both forward and rear vision, in addition to panoramic side-vision.  This eye placement is typical of prey animals (the pursued) rather than predators (the pursuer), whose eyes tend to be placed for superior forward vision.  Except for the beak (!), a dove’s head shape is very much like a rabbit’s.  Without the big ears, of course, which would definitely be an aerodynamic liability.

For other Three Star Owl posts featuring Hoover, click here.

Here are two new Spot the Bird photos.  The visual puzzle is the same in each: huge background, tiny bird.  No camouflage involved, none at all; just hiding against a big landscape.

The first photo of an enormous oaktree (?) in Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior Arizona, east of Phoenix, is a photo I took because the branches of this tree were so amazingly massive and lofty.  It was only when I got it home and onto the computer that I noticed there was a bird in the shot, because it had been silent.  Lucky it wasn’t a jaguar, I guess.  By the way, you’re not looking for an intrinsically small bird, just small by comparison to this tree.  (If you find the bird, click twice for a fairly clear embiggening of its image).

I think this second one is easier, especially if you click to enlarge. This photo, ostensibly of a robust saguaro behind a line of newly leafed-out mesquite and the foot of a basalt flow in back, shows a genuinely small bird — a moderately Dinky Dude of the Desert, in fact — doing its singing thing for spring. Hear the jingling sound?

Neither of these will be hard for everyone, especially for folks whose eyes are sharp from being out in the field looking for small things in big, leafy vistas.  I’ll publish enlarged versions of the pictures in a subsequent post.  Extra credit for IDing the birds to species (not that there’s a prize or anything, except kudos to augment your birding kleos.  And, to wax perturbingly didactic, EXTRA extra credit if you know the diff between kudos, Gk κῦδος, and kleos, κλέος).

And if you know what the big tree in the top photo is, please let me know, because I don’t…

Good Luck — I hope you SPOT THE BIRD!

For other Spot the Bird posts, go to the sidebar on the left, and click on the category, spot the bird.

(Top photo, A.Shock; bottom photo, E.Shock)

A while back, I posted about my process for making horned lizard bowls (affectionately known as Horny toads) from clay.  Here are the next few steps, all shown in one photo, below.

To the right is a now completely assembled and textured horned lizard, in the leather hard stage, drying.  In the center is a bone dry and partially tinted lizard — note that the clay is now a lighter buff.  I use a sponge and mute slip colors to give the textured skin a mottled appearance, like a horned lizard’s camo-flecked pelt.  (You may remember that slip is a paint-like water and clay mixture with mineral oxides and stains added.)   The colors, which look very contrasty and unnatural at this point, will calm down and become more subtle during firing.  Normally, adding slip is done no later than the leather hard stage to avoid flaking, but the refined slips I use have no problems hanging on.  On the left is a completed horned lizard awaiting its first, or bisque, firing. I’ve added the ants with a very fine brush (a 00 squirrel liner), also in slips.  This is a touchy job: the fine work requires a fairly long process of painting delicate lines — the more ants, the longer the work time — and a lot of handling of a bone dry piece with pointy sticky-outy bits.  If you’ve worked with clay you know that this bone-dry phase (where all the liquid water has evaporated from the clay body) is when a piece is at its most fragile.  On top of that, if something like a horn, a toe or a leg snaps off, it is difficult or even impossible to reattach it trustworthily.  Not that… ahem… that ever happens, or if it did I would admit it… These guys, Regal Horned Lizards, have 10 coronal horns, and so I have to be careful while “anting” them.

<< A favorite teeshirt of E‘s, a mimbres horned lizard design.  Nice depiction of the lateral spiny scales along its flanks.

A note on the ants.  They are Pogonomyrmex, a genus of harvester ants, called Pogos for short, understandably.  These are the guys you see issuing forth from their nests, with every seed and scrap of vegetation gleaned clean to the grit for a 5 meter radius around the entrance.  They have a potent and painful bite, but despite that, they are Horned lizards’ most favoritest thing to eat.  It’s tough to capture their essence in a sludgy, opaque medium like clay slip, because they’re waxy like tropical fruit: sort of clear but satiny, too.  I can get close to the effect by depicting them with highlights in white on their red bodies.

Pogonomyrmex ants photographed at Kartchner Caverns State Park (A.Shock)   >>

They’re extraordinary animals: physically very strong, and focused in their social pursuits, with big bolster-like heads (which appear to be larger than their abdomens) sporting impressive grasping mouthparts you would have no trouble seeing with your naked eye, if you got close enough.  Or, you can just click on the photo above — which I call Pogos Agogo — and look at the solitary ant to the lower left.

If you love excellent up-your-nose close-up photos of ants (and who doesn’t?) check out the site of Alex Wild, myrmecologist, or studier of ants.  Better still click here to see his photos of Pogo ants in particular, to get a much better view of the fearsome mouthparts than in my photo above.

Etymological side-bar. In Homer’s Iliad, Achilles’ posse were the Myrmidons. μύρμηξ, myrmex, is ant in Greek.

You can see finished horned lizard bowls in the Three Star Owl Shop.

Sometimes when you say “Goats in Trees,” people say, “No way.”

Way.

Here are goats in trees.

(Photo by E.Shock; Oman, 2010)

Had a nice morning walk in Papago Park (Phoenix AZ) this morning — the spring air was breezy and clear, and the high skies brought out a number of aerial show-offs.  The main attraction was a Peregrine falcon, spiraling and soaring between the two largest buttes in the Park and the Army National Guard reservation, over McDowell Road.

<< Peregrine falcon soaring; note typical peregrine dark “hood” and pointed falcon wings (Photo E.Shock)

The falcon’s showy overflights attracted the peevish attention of the local pair of Red tailed hawks, who flew up to try to show it the door.  In terms of aerial agility, the big, broad-winged red tails are no match for a nimble sickle-winged falcon, but we did witness some serious stooping on the part of both species, and even one brief roll-over with talon-grappling incident.

<< Redtailed hawk, in a power glide.  Note black patagium — leading wing edge close to head — one of the best field marks for IDing red-tails aloft (Photo E.Shock)

This action went on among sparse clouds of White-throated swifts — was the probably migrating Peregrine trying to nab a quick swift-to-go before heading north, the raptor equivalent of a drive-thru fast food breakfast burrito?

No wonder the Redtails were upset — a little searching with binox of the inaccessible red rocks on the Military’s property turned up the hawks’ nest, a substantial stick-pile wedged in a ledge on the butte.  We’ve suspected they were a nesting pair, but now we know for sure.

A loggerhead shrike was on duty, as well.  Spring has been cool, and there are still very few insects around, which suggests that the Lesser goldfinch and lingering white-crowned sparrows in the desert park might wish to keep sharp.

<< The last thing the grasshopper saw. Loggerhead shrikes are sometimes called “functional raptors” because although they’re Passerines (perching birds) they prey on insects and small mammals, qualifying them as birds of prey.  Dig the tiny white “eyebrows”.  (Photo E.Shock)

The photo of the p-falcon’s a bit grainy due to having to magnify it, but please click on the Red-tail and the Shrike images to enlarge them so you can admire the good feathery detail.

<< Oh, and here’s King Kong…  Their nest is near here, and the Red-tails love to perch on his brow and warm themselves on a sunny morning.

<<  Two of these equals these. ↓

Desert cottontails abound in the yard right now.  The desert is green from the late winter rains, so there’s lots to eat.  Adult frolicking leads to tiny bunlets.  The two in the photo above on the right were stashed by mom in a shallow scrape right out in the open.  When we discovered them, while checking on the mantis egg case, they were barely 3 inches long.  A day later, they were gone, leaving only the “form” behind in the mesquite leaf litter.  Moved by mom, eaten, or hopped off under their own power, we’ll never know.

(All photos E.Shock)

This is the fifth installment of the Ganskopf series.  Read the first, second, third and fourth here.

“Professor Harrower wants to speak to me?” I asked, surprised.  Miss Laguna nodded, and pushed the phone towards me in the air.

After months of contact by letter — and snail mail at that — to say that I was surprised to be called on the phone, at the Ganskopf Library, by Professor Harrower was putting it mildly (not to mention how much it sounded like an Accusation in Clue).  I put the phone to my ear, its tangled coil-cord knocking over a cup of pens on Miss Laguna’s desk.  “Yes?” I asked.  The professor spoke in a quiet voice, tinted with a soft accent I couldn’t quite place.  With no pleasantries except a “good afternoon”, he made his request directly and said goodbye.  I handed the phone back to Miss Laguna, who had managed to take the entire length of the call to reorganize the pen cup.

“Miss Laguna, do you know Harmon Harrower personally?” I asked.  She nodded, and explained he made infrequent trips to the Collection.  I asked, “Do you happen to know where he’s from, I mean originally?”

“Texas,” she replied, “born and raised.  I believe his PhD is from Rice.”

“No kidding?  He’s an Owl?”  This seemed too odd to be coincidence.  “Well, Professor Harrower has another two ‘fetishes’ he wants me to render before I leave.  How late is the Library open?”

“Until 9pm.  There’s plenty of time if you’d like me to pull them for you,” she said.

“Then, would you mind?” I gave her the scrap of paper with the accession numbers, and moved back to a table to unpack my kit.  She returned promptly with two tiny figures, this time with hands once again carefully encased by purple latex gloves.

Here is the finished aquarelle pencil and ink illustration:

Again, I omit detailed notes on them here, except to say that the items were stone owls, no more than two inches tall, perhaps made owl-like by human hands, or perhaps just fortuitously owly cobbles.  I leaned as close as I could to the velvet pillow, and peered at the objects through my magnifying glasses.  There was a shininess or patina on them — especially around the bellies and beaks — that could have been made by frequent handling or rubbing.  I leaned back.  I suppose if I ever found an owl-shaped stone, I’d pick it up, too: just because they might not be fabricated didn’t mean they weren’t artifacts.  My gut feeling was that human-shaped or not, they could be very, very ancient; prehistoric ancient, even.

For these two “fetishes”, I chose a stippling technique to render their patinated, weathered cortex, remembering how effective that technique was for drawing Acheulian stone handaxes and other cobble-based implements during a summer internship at the Lancaster Anthropology Museum.

As I worked on the preliminary sketches, various facts kept the analytical part of my brain occupied: Professor Harrower wanted the illustrations for an article.  But he had been working on this article for an awfully long time — wouldn’t he want to catch the wave of public interest in these “mystery relics”?  And also, why were his payments and re-imbursements to me always in the form of money orders, rather than checks from his University?  On further reflection, I decided this might be because he was moonlighting — writing a piece for a popular publication, not a technical journal.  This could explain why exact measurements weren’t critical; also, why he had asked for colorful renderings.  (The objects themselves tended to be mute in color, so I’d solved this with bright backgrounds, which had seemed to satisfy him.)  But mostly what I reflected on was this: the absolute certainty that, based on the speaker’s accent, my phone conversation today was not with a Texan.

With provocative thoughts like these, time passed quickly, but it was a little after nine when I finished up.  Miss Laguna had already put on her coat.  I asked if she would let me buy her a quick dinner by way of thanks for holding the Library open a bit late (I could afford it, I was working with a per diem).  She smiled, but said she had to get to her night job, so I just grabbed a slice of pizza on the way back to the hotel.

In general, the food here isn’t as good as in New Elgin, and the pizza was heavy and soft with flabby cheese.  As I walked along the street struggling one-handed to keep it from dripping oil on my sweater, I wondered: what do you suppose a special collections librarian does for a night job?

To be continued.

A praying mantis egg-case is not something you can easily find if you’re looking for one.  So, imagine our surprise — again! — when E looked up at a random, leafy, and low branch of the big backyard mesquite, and said, “Hey, look!”  There was a tiny brown-loaf-looking mantid egg case, stuck to a thin twig towards the whippy tip of a branch.

This was our second mantis-related sighting of the week — the other is described here, in the latest post on this blog.

So, we’ll be keeping an eye on this one, to see if it hatches, now that warmer weather is here.  And, who knows how many more are out there?  With luck, the yard will be mantis-rich before long.

Praying mantis egg-case on mesquite twig, finger for scale (Photo A.Shock) >>

And stay tuned to read about what I encountered under the mesquite just now, while checking on the mantis-egg case…