One of my simple pleasures is going on early morning walks with E around the buttes in Papago Park. We can walk there from our house, and though the walks are for health, we always make note of birds and the other animals we see.

A first impression of this landscape is accurate: a worn scrap of urban desert, surrounded by buildings and golf courses. (At 1200 acres, this scrap seems to be getting smaller all the time, as the City of Phoenix doesn’t seem to be able to keep its hands to itself: even this morning we noticed a shiny chain link fence slashed across the creosote flats, closer to the butte trail than just a few days ago; a golf-course expansion, I suppose, because Phoenix doesn’t have enough acres in fairways?) I don’t have a biologist’s expertise, but the buttes and the land between them don’t seem to be a rich or terribly diverse environment. Next to the lush Zoo and wonderful Desert Botanical Garden, where the birding is always great, the part of Papago west of the parkway seems especially barren. Sometimes we only see a handful of bird species, and no mammals but other humans and their dogs (and only a few of those in our early hours). But over the years and through all seasons in all weather, we’ve discovered that there’s more in Poor Old Papago than you might expect.

This morning’s walk was a perfect example. In addition to the numerous mourning doves and house finches, there were two Loggerhead shrikes in the park, fierce “functional raptors” looking for a protein-rich breakfast like a grasshopper or small lizard. They were making their ratchety “shrike-shrike” call from the tops of the greened-up creosotes, so we heard them before we saw them, though once we got closer the shrikes’ bold gray, black and white plumage blinked in the sun. The verdins saw the shrikes too, emitting incessant alarm calls and flicking their wings.

The serious, top-order predators were out, too: a Red-tailed hawk launched itself with a cry off the rock we call “Jaws” and flew south to the biggest butte, Barnes Butte (named after Will C. Barnes who is known himself for writing a book on Arizona place names). And the ‘yotes were out: Coyotes are pretty common in the park. This morning we saw two together, an apparent family: an adult and young one, looking a bit scruffy, like the park itself. We’ve seen coyotes actually stalk dog-walkers, maybe keeping an eye on things until the other four-legs are off their patch of land. When fire engines hurtle by, the Butte “goes off” and invisible ‘yotes howl and yip until the sirens are faint.

There’s plenty for the coyotes to eat, actually, if they can catch it. Stray cats, for instance. (When we first started walking in the park, one of our landmarks was “Half-cat Stash” — a bit of feline jerky with clumped, sun-bleached pelt patches that was gradually being reduced by some not very picky predator) Also, there are Black-tailed jackrabbits. We’ve seen as many as eleven during one walk, their radiator-ears glowing pink with the low sun shining through them. Desert cotton-tails are common, too. These tough lagomorphs are numerous enough in the park so that the City has had to chicken-wire the young saguaros to keep them from being girdled by gnawing teeth. The cactus situation is at best marginal in the park: there are few new ones coming up, and some of the old saguaros are dying: one we called the “Condo” because it hosted numerous starlings and a Gila woodpecker or two just recently came down in a monsoon windstorm. Now it’s lying there rotting, gradually watering its nurse tree. Hard to believe this land was designated Papago Saguaro National Monument from 1914 until 1930, known for the stately columnar cactus. But now, Papago definitely calls out for some succulent guerilla gardening…

Even after all the walks we’ve taken In Papago Park, E and I are still seeing things for the first time, like the barrel cactus we found this summer only because the monsoon has been better than usual. Normally invisible against the gravelly soil the heads of several barrels blazed out in the washes because rain had soaked them over night and their normally dry, brown spines had taken on their true color: bright red. We know where one hedgehog cactus grows, having seen it only because it was in full bloom. There are even pincushion cactus, Mammillaria grahamii (or “mammo-grahams” as we’ve nicknamed them, Graham’s nipple cactus) tucked away on a sunny slope of the little butte. One day we hope to catch them blooming, too. Even more invisible was a Lesser nighthawk on her nest, staunchly incubating through the monsoon season, hidden in plain sight under a small creosote. We don’t know for sure if she successfully fledged her young, but we’d like to think so.  Can you find her invisibly sitting tight on her nest in the photo above (Spot the Bird)?

There are always surprises: last fall a gleaming, swift Prairie falcon lingered in the high rocks and air overhead; we watched it for two weeks before it moved on. Also, what was left of a Barn owl, abandoned on the top of a rock after it had become a meal for a Great horned owl (they’re there although we’ve never seen one — occasionally there’s a softly barred feather caught fluttering in a shrub). There are strangers, too: an exotic male zebra finch hung out with a flock of native house finches for a week or so; and nearby there’s a thriving breeding population of Budgies (parakeets) nesting in saguaro cavities.

Lodged in the cracks between Phoenix, Tempe, and Scottsdale, Papago Park may not seem a terribly wild place, but it is something very precious in the middle of the metropolitan area: open desert space in an area that’s been the residential heart of the Rio Salado settlement for thousands of years.

Poor Old Papago Park. There’s been talk of “improvement” for Papago for years. Does it need improvement? In my view “Improvement” doesn’t always include parking lots, pavement or pathways. Because the beauties and benefits of Papago are subtle and in their natural state, I fear they will be overlooked by ambitious city managers, profit-seeking developers and even well-meaning citizens eager to “improve” something that doesn’t need improvement, but rather a little appreciation for what it is.

All photos©threestarowl.com. All photos in this post taken by E. Shock in Papago Park, except the Loggerhead shrike, taken on the Margie’s Cove trail in the Maricopa Mountains.

About horned lizards

Though sometimes called “horny toads” these reptiles are not toads at all but flat, round lizards which inhabit dry open areas of the western US and Mexico. They are especially well-armored with keeled scales, knobs, and yes, horns, making them look like little dragons. But they feel surprisingly soft when you pick one up, not unlike a beaded purse. (The grumpy-looking guy in the photo below is a Greater short-horned lizard E and I found trying to bask on a cloudy day on a ponderosa log on a backpacking trip in the Gila Wilderness of western New Mexico.)

Failing camouflage and flight, their ultimate defense from harassment is to shoot blood from their eyes. This isn’t an old wives’ tale like bats getting snarled in long hair — they really do it. It works pretty well, often startling the lizard’s captor into dropping it.

Horned lizards favor ants, especially of the genus Pogonomyrmex, Harvester ants, which comprise a generous portion of their food intake.

Most horned lizards lay eggs, but species like Short-horned which live at higher altitudes where the breeding season is too short to incubate eggs, give birth to live young — from 5 to 48 at a time!

These amazing animals have a specialized solar receptor under a clear scale on the top of the head. It’s called the pineal gland, and it’s linked directly to the brain. Although its function is not fully understood, it plays a role in the regulation of body temperature. The pineal gland has many features similar to the structure of an eye, though it is not linked to the optic nerve. Look for the small pineal gland on a Three Star Owl horned lizard bowl, indicated subtly on the top of the skull between the eyes.

Herpetologists currently recognize 13 species of Horned lizards, 8 in the US and 5 in Mexico.

My favorite horned lizard resource is the book Introduction to horned lizards of North America, by Wade E. Sherbrooke, UC Press 2003.

Horned lizard bowls from Allison Shock and Three Star Owl

I’m currently making horned lizard bowls representing two species, both native to Arizona and other parts of the Southwest: Short-horned lizards and Regal horned lizards. You can tell them apart by their horn configuration: Regals have an even corona of ten longish horns on the back of their skull, and Short-horns have 6 very short horns divided by a deep notch.

Both eat ants, so I depict Harvester ants in their bellies. The Short-horned is a live-bearer, so some have young lizards shown inside.

These bowls are handmade from stoneware, and fired to cone 5. Each bowl is different, and each scale is done individually by hand, as is the slip-painting in their bellies. There is no glaze on these pieces, but the mineral-pigmented slips are fired in place, and are indelible. Because of the lack of glaze, I don’t recommend them for frequent food use, or storing liquids. Primarily they are meant to be gazed at adoringly. Click here to see a picture of Horned lizard bowls on threestarowl.com.

Earlier this year, Sky Island Alliance presented their second annual Citizen Awards to people and businesses who have shown distinction in achievement, support or activism in the international environmental arena of the embattled Sonoran ecosystem. Instead of traditional trophies, SIA commissioned custom handmade plaques from Three Star Owl to honor the recipients. Each one was personalized with native species chosen for each recipient according to their field, interest, or accomplishment. Below are: Ray Carroll with Elegant trogon, Summit Hut representative with Coati, Sherry Barrett with Desert tortoise, Sergio Avila (SIA wildlife biologist), Carlos Robles and Martha Felix de Robles with Ocelot in an oak, and David Parsons with Mexican gray wolf.

The awards were thick stoneware tiles, modeled and carved in low relief and finished in mineral oxides and glazes. The project was a pleasure for me to work on for many reasons, not least because the species selected were ones I’ve been fortunate enough to see in the wild. And I was proud to have been part of the process of recognizing people making a difference in a critical effort. I hope to work with Sky Island Alliance again in the future. (My thanks to Shiloh Walkosak for finding me, everyone at SIA, and to Jessica Lamberton and Sergio Avila of SIA for sending photos.)

It is a long thin snake.

Working this morning in the backyard, E heard the scolding of cactus wrens, thrashers and other regulars of our deserty neighborhood. He tracked down the source: a sleek and mottled coachwhip marauding, trying to take advantage of the monsoon “bloom” of young animals. Coachwhips (Masticophis or Coluber flagellum) are swift and tireless daytime foragers, searching the ground for favored foods such as lizards, and easily climbing our shrubby, tangled palo verdes looking for eggs and nestlings.

They are patterned cryptically, and look like the long braided látigo used by Mexican stockmen. (We called these whips “bullwhips” as kids — favored souvenirs of weekends in Ensenada, primarily used to harass each other.)

The coachwhip’s pattern is surprisingly cryptic, because like the Gila monster, it’s pink and brown, yet it still manages to disappear effectively against pebbly desert soils, and is nearly invisible even slung in the green branchlets of a palo verde, where it looks just like a rosy-brown dead branch lodged there. They’re not aggressive animals — although irritable might be the word — and they’re more likely to use their notable speed as a defense than to bite, unless handled. The Coachwhip actually earns the rattler-hunting reputation the Gophersnake enjoys less deservedly, and will eat anything it can catch and swallow, including other snakes, even rattlers.

More info on the Coachwhip here, at Tom Brennan’s excellent website on reptiles and amphibians of Arizona.

On the left is a green limestone cylinder seal and the impression it leaves in wet clay. Six thousand years ago, it hung around the neck of a Mesopotamian scribe or businessman. Now it’s now in the Louvre and despite a nasty crack you can see lovely stout beeves in a wheat field marching around it, very pastoral and comfy. This kind of seal was used all over the ancient Near East (what we now know as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and other countries in the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia) to authenticate inventories and letters written on clay tablets, clay sealings on rooms, jars and parcels, bricks, and anything else needing a stamp of approval or ownership. A combination of archaic in material and modern in use, cylinder seals were the stone rubber stamp of their day, highly portable and personalized.

Clay’s property of taking detailed impressions when moist hasn’t changed over the millenia and potters, now as then, take advantage of it. Many Three Star Owl pieces, like Beastie Ware, are textured with cylinders I’ve carved in clay and then fired, giving me a way to pattern the clay just as distinct and personal as fingerprints.

The rattlers below get lots of use in making “Crotalus” items, like this oval jar with a roadrunner on the lid.

For etymology enthusiasts: Crotalus, a genus of North American pit vipers including many of our familiar rattlers, is derived from Greek krotalon (το κροταλον), a type of rattle or castanets held in the fingertips. They were used particularly by revelers of Dionysus, making the apt connection with rattlers both for their sound and their cthonic origins. Incidentally, I’ve read that Arizona has more species of rattlesnakes than any other US state.

Thanks to Ed Bustya Nature Photographer and Web Dude extraordinaire, Three Star Owl is careening into the present with this fine site. Although right now I feel like Mr Toad on his Wild Ride, soon there will be a way for visitors to view and even shop for Three Star Owl clay items. So, welcome, and enjoy! And, Honk if you love Owls…

…and is mildly miffed.