Today I actually got outdoors to breathe air, soak up sunbeams, and take a look at what’s up, and what’s in the air.  It’d been awhile, and I thought I’d celebrate by passing along some of what’s happening along the Salt River, smack in the middle of the City of Phoenix, AZ.

<< green Goodding’s willows, brittle bush, Desert willow, and chuparosa at Rio Salado; photo A.Shock

The Rio Salado Habitat Preservation Area, as it’s officially designated (here is the website), is an  ex-horrific-riverside urban dump that’s been cleaned up and improved in order to attract and showcase permanent and migrating wildlife, including birds, mammals, and insects.

Along the Salt River just south of downtown Phoenix, the RSHPA is less than 10 miles downstream from the riparian area at Tempe Town Lake (see here), and has a variety of habitats, from mesquite bosque to shady bands of Goodding’s willows (the bright green foliage in the photo above.)  Each time I visit, the vegetation is better established, both naturally (Goodding’s willows are said to be able to grow something like six feet per year), and with the help of human hands — many native desert and riparian plants have been planted along the bike path and walking trails that weave along the river, on both sides.  Right now, the Goodding’s willows are in bloom.  The screwbean mesquites (right) are still bare, making their tightly-twisted seed pods stand out against the blue sky, clustered like little brown bouquets of rattlesnake rattles.

The river is high today after all of the rain in both the metro basin and in the high country north east of Phoenix, but it’s obviously been higher recently: big piles of flood debris are left on both sides of the trail. Cormorants (Double-crested and Neotropical), American coots, and Killdeer are common along the river, and the ponds and oxbows host a variety of waterfowl, like this handsome Ringnecked drake (left), Cinnamon teal, and Common moorhens.  But we were especially on the lookout for dinky dudes — in this case, an out-of-range straggler, a Black and white warbler that’s been hanging out at the Rio for at least a week.  It proved too dinky to photo, but we did get crippling looks at the tiny tourist, wrestling an enormous caterpillar into its gullet.  It was keeping company with a Brown creeper, numerous Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped warblers, Ruby crowned kinglets, a Blue-gray gnatcatcher, and other dinky dudes.  A casual couple of hours of birding yielded a list of more than 35 species of birds, including a House wren.

But for me, the surprise of the day was provided by our furry mammalian neighbors: there’s a beaver working the Rio! We didn’t see the critter itself, but check out the evidence of Beavers At Work. right >>

I love the industrious pile of wood chips under the chewed ends of this downed tree.

Anyone birding in the Phoenix area during autumn through spring seasons might wish to check out RSHPA .

Remember — it’s an urban birding gem, so you might wish to bring a friend, and don’t leave anything valuable in your car.

Don’t be discouraged by the urban nature of this area, it’s got its advantages, too, like some really nice public art along the paths, and under the bridges on otherwise blank concrete supports.

>> Local wildlife painted under Central Ave bridge, RSHPA (all photos A.Shock)

A new batch of clay horned lizards under way — early steps:

From top to bottom:

1) Rough out body shape by pinching; head and tail included in starting clay lump.

2) Create appendages: horns, limbs.  Allow to “set up” or slightly stiffen, while: refining body shape of liz.

3) Further refine body shape; note detail in head, side fringe.

The next steps are where time starts becoming a factor — these guys won’t “hatch” for quite a while yet. Stay tuned!

(Photos A.Shock)

“Hoover” the semi-tame  African Collared Dove who inhabits our neighborhood came around for a handout of sunflower hearts and peanuts on Valentine’s Day.  It’s a bit of a sad story, in that he used to have a female companion, but no longer.  So far this spring he’s spent much of the day in plaintive calling — woooHOOOooo — over and over, as of yet to no avail.  There are others of his species living ferally in the area, but their numbers seem to be down from a few years ago.

So it seems appropriate to combine President’s Day with Valentine’s Day in wishing Hoover the best of luck this season of love and the executive branch in finding a feral girl-of-the-feather to hang with.

A recent post, Spot the Pipit, inadvertently marked the inauguration of a series of themed posts in this webjournal: Spot the Bird.

After posting Spot the Pipit, it occurred to me that in the Three Star Owl photo files were other pix which showed birds that were more or less hard to see, but which were fun to look for.  Most of these shots were entirely by accident — at least one bird was so well hidden I didn’t even know there was a bird in the picture until I got the file downloaded to my computer and enlarged — so I can’t claim any real credit, just a sort of 99 monkeys with 99 cameras and 99999 photographs phenomenon.

The birds in Spot the Bird photos may not be easy to find for a variety of reasons: some may be in plain sight, but exceptionally well camouflaged; some may be deliberately trying to hide; some might be very very small or just part of a bird; some might not even be a bird.  Some might be visual jokes, or even manipulated photo images (which I will disclose).  And, there might be trick “Spot” moments…

So, keep a sharp eye out, and look for the Gilded (and very spotted) Flicker “Spot the Bird” logo (above), or search the Spot the Bird! category to find posts with a hidden critter photo challenge from now on out!

To get started, here’s an oldie but goodie that longtime readers of this blog will recognize: in the category of TUI (Totally Unmanipulated Image), I took this photo on the San Pedro River in Southeastern Arizona a few springs back. A version of it was featured in an older Three Star Owl post called Vertical Napping Bark, which also appeared as a guest post on Sharon Stiteler’s lively Birdchick.com site.

Can you Spot the Owl — or is it Owls?  Please let me know where the owl/s are, although there are no rewards except the knowledge that you Spotted the Bird.  (Click on the image to enlarge to make it easier, but not until you’ve given up otherwise)

(This is the fourth installment in the series: read the others here, here and here.)

Several months went by before I heard from Professor Harrower again.  This hiatus surprised me, because the press had kept up with a stream of cheesey, sensationalist Ganskopf “mystery relic” articles, keeping public interest simmering.  But eventually a letter came in which Harrower requested that I return to the Ganskopf Foundation special collection to draw another batch of  owl “fetishes”.  He didn’t say anything about whether the completed drawings were satisfactory or not, and I didn’t ask, since the payment for each had come promptly.

So before long I once again found myself waiting in the secure reading room for the librarian, Miss Laguna, to return with the items nestled into a black velvet pillow.  Hoisting my bag onto the battered tabletop, I set out my lamp (I’d upgraded to a natural light fluorescent, which, conveniently, didn’t get hot and produced a clear, color-true light), mechanical pencil, spare leads, small sketchbook, drugstore magnifying glasses, and kneaded eraser.  It still bothered me not to be able to use calipers for exact measurement — I was never allowed even to touch the pieces so calipers were out of the question — which for me put my finished product in the realm of illustration rather than technical rendering.  While I waited, I looked around the Collection reading room for changes, but saw none.  There was still a security officer at the metal detector, and once again, there was no sign of other patrons, including the sleek “Dr. Danneru” and his contraband mug of tea, who still was the only person I’d ever seen consulting the collection.

Miss Laguna came back with the pillow, and set it on the table in front of me casually. I noticed there were no purple gloves in sight.  I looked at the new set of “owls”.  “But…” I exclaimed.  Miss Laguna shrugged and walked away.

On the pillow lay three stamped metal lumps.  I’m no numismatist, but they appeared to be ancient coins, pretty straightforward artifacts: one, clearly a silver Athenian tetradrach, one a very small gold coin, perhaps Hellenistic or Roman (that late stuff was never my strength in Art History), and the third brass, which, on closer inspection, emitted the air of forgery.  Except for the fact they each depicted an owl, I couldn’t see any connection between these and supposed “mystery relics”, but it wasn’t my call.  Shaking my head, I started to draw, working as quickly as possible without being careless. As with the other fetishes, I made notes for each one, but will not include them here.

The sketches didn’t take long, but I had one more thing to do.  When Miss Laguna returned to fetch the group of owls, I held out a photocopy of a grainy photo which Becca the computer maven had dredged up from an old newspaper obituary, in an only slightly fruitful fit of detective work after my last visit to the Foundation.

“Oh,” she said, “that’s Doktor G — Dr. Ganskopf.  Just before he died.  Poor man; he was sick for so long,” and handed the photo back to me.

As she did — and before I could get any questions asked — the library’s desk phone rang.  “Excuse me,” said Miss Laguna.  I began to pack up.  I had just gotten all my equipment back into its bag, when I realized that Miss Laguna was waving at me with one hand, and holding the phone up in the other.

“Prof Harrower wishes to speak with you.”

To be continued.

There’s a small bird in this photo of lakeside rocks.  Can you spot the pipit?

Sunday E and I watched an American pipit (Anthus rubescens; photo E.Shock) working its way along water’s edge at Burnt Corral on Apache Lake east of Phoenix, darting after flies. beetles, larvae and other yummies around the cobbles in the shallow water. This is where it was working — not a bad view  (Photo A.Shock)>>

Pipits are sparrow-sized, sparrow-like birds which aren’t sparrows at all.  They’re the type of bird that people tend not to notice if they’re not birders.  It’s partly because pipits aren’t usually found in town or around neighborhoods — they breed in arctic and alpine tundra, and during winter, they frequent shores and coastlines, agricultural fields, and wild, open spaces.  Also, they’re easy to overlook: being beige and brown and streaky, they blend right into their backgrounds.  In the words of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

“The American Pipit is a small, slender, drab bird of open country. Although it appears similar to sparrows, it can be distinguished by its thin bill and its habit of bobbing its tail.” Click on this link to All About Birds for more info.

They share this habit of wagging tails gently up and down with other birds of stream-sides and shores such as Spotted sandpipers, wagtails, and dippers. Being in constant motion helps them blend in with their background of running water or wind-blown grasses.

The American pipit we were watching is in the center of this grainy enlargement, at the water’s edge, below the largest rock — click the photo to enlarge, if the bird’s still eluding you.  >>

But wait, there’s more!  Bonus international pipits:

It turns out that pipits inhabit wild open places the world around, even as far south as southern New Zealand, and also South Georgia island, roughtly between Antarctica and South America in the South Atlantic (and that’s a lot of “souths”).  Here is a photo of a shy New Zealand pipit which turned its head just as the shutter fired, and also a picture of the place it lives: this one was on the tops of heavily grazed sea bluffs in the Catlins, South Island NZ.

<< NZ pipit (Anthus novaseelandiae), an indigenous songbird of the island.(Photos E.Shock)

And, here is a South Georgia pipit (Anthus antarcticus), in its habitat, tussock (or, tussac) grass on the quite remote and windswept breeding islets off of the coast of South Georgia (Photos, A.Shock) <<

Seems as if pipits, although not very showy themselves, make their livings in some fairly spectacular scenery.

This is the first installment of:

It’s been an unusually wet gray week in the desert, and this has brought water to my mind in general, and some of its more colorful properties from wishful thinking.  So, here are some photos of brightly colored waters.  One is tinted by reflections on its surface, another by what’s under its surface, one by its sediment load, two by clarity and chemistry, and all by light.  The colors in the photos are natural.  (all photos A.Shock)

Autumn salt cedar reflected in the Salt River at Coon Bluff

Deep blue winter shadows on the Salt River from this past Sunday's trip up into the Sierra Ancha (see last post)

"Colorado" means colorful, and here is the mixing of the Colorado River (green) with its spring-fed tributary, the Little Colorado (aqua), at a red gravel bar in the Grand Canyon

Hot spring, Upper Geyser basin, Yellowstone National Park

Shallow water marine reefs seen from the air above Ambergris Caye, Belize. I'm pretty sure there are manatees down there, somewhere!

E and I went uphill today, to see what last week’s winter storms had brought to the higher terrain: a proper Sunday Drive.  We drove up into the Sierra Anchas, a rugged wilderness area east of Phoenix, east of Lake Roosevelt, a place we seem never to explore frequently enough.  In a surprisingly short distance, the road passes through a wide range of landscapes, from the deserty upper Salt River canyon, through yucca-studded chaparral, oak-piñon woodland, and up to thick ponderosa pine forest.  The recent storms had brought the snow level down to about 3800 feet, so much of the area above the desert foothills was still blanketed in heavy, deep snow.

Here are some images from our day. (Photos A.Shock, except Phainopepla, E.Shock)

Above: The snowy Sierra Anchas from the Saguaro-rich foothills below

Above: Spent agave blooms and prickly pear in the snow;  right, a male Phainopepla perched by his favorite food, mistletoe berries.

Below: Ponderosa Pines near Sawmill Flat.