A few days ago, we drove far out into sage-covered lava rocks to check out some hot springs on the east side of the Sierra Nevada.  After walking to the top of the hill, walking around the next hill and between two other hills, seeing what birds were around and about, and while E was nearby doing Science in Hot Water, I felt I’d had enough wind — since we were above 7000′ feet, it was a cold wind — so I sheltered in the cab of the truck.

The rock I watched >>

If this seems like a nature-phobic sort of thing to do, let me recommend it: a vehicle makes a wonderful blind, great for observing otherwise human-wary wildlife.  I watched a Wilson’s warbler, a sweet scrap of yellow with a smart black cap, struggle in the gusts from one juniper tree to another right in front of the hood; an Audubon’s warbler, too, was getting buffeted about in the same nearby trees. And, next to the truck was this large Rock (top photo).  I studied it, thinking about making a sketch.

<< Ground squirrel and spiny lizard (far right edge of rock)

It was clear that this rock had been heavily used — most obviously by people, who’d built fires under it, but also by plants who’d sprouted in its cracks, lichens crusting its surfaces, and by animals, who were sunning themselves on it. Although I never made a sketch, I was able to watch and photo a series of species — seven in all, ultimately, although I only could photo five — as they used this rock as viewpoint, shelter, sunning place, food storage or source. (All photos A.Shock; be sure to click on each image to enlarge for better viewing.)

Birds landed on it briefly, including the Wilson’s warbler, and a vivid Western tanager male.

<< male Western tanager on the Rock

Being hydrothermally altered (so I’m assured by E), it was porous and full of useful cracks and refuges.  A small movement caught my eye, and in the darkest crack in the darkest center of the sooty overhang, a Piñon deermouse had packed the crevice with soft needles and moss, and was turning this way and that in its snug, sheltered nest, running tiny paws over its big ears.

<< Piñon deermouse in crevice nest in the Rock

Best yet, I happened to look over at the upper dark hole in the rock just in time to see this little face peering out, checking on how things were in the middle of the day.  It’s a Long-tailed weasel, a native here (unlike in New Zealand), but still an active and industrious predator.  I was alarmed when the ground squirrel above made a short trip into the very hole the weasel had just gone back inside.  But there was no disaster, and the squirrel came right back out again, presumably with all its parts, and with no dramatic nature-show confrontation music to mark the event.

Long-tailed weasel outside its hole in the Rock >>

The seventh species I observed on the Rock was Homo sapiens.  It was one of the two dudes that came by in a battered Isuzu Trooper (like the one I drove for years).  Although I didn’t get a picture of him up on the top of the Rock, we were particularly glad to see this human being: something you won’t often hear me say.  The reason he was a fine sight on this backcountry, rocky road?  That’s another story.  I won’t tell it here, except to say that it involved jumper cables…

…was a “life snake” for us, meaning we’d never seen one before we stopped to photo this graceful specimen crossing the road on the way to Titus Canyon on the east side of Death Valley.

The Mohave patch-nosed snake (Salvadora hexalepis mojavensis) is a diurnal generalist, with good eyesight and quick reflexes; this one was sunning itself on the rocky dirt road on a east-facing hill.  We kept our distance, but moved closer after we’d photo’d it, so it moved off the road to safety.  (Photos A.Shock)

Be sure to click on the close-up to enlarge it, so you can see the big rostral scale on the nose-tip of this burrowing, non-venomous snake.  There’s even a little bit of grit still sprinkling its broad head-plates.

Recent posts have been about lady bugs, and prickly pears.  Here’s one about both: a lady bug on an Opuntia blossom in the Mojave desert.  (Both photos A.Shock)

You can’t tell, but this particular prickly pear lives in a little piece of Nevada jammed between Arizona and California.  Its chief attraction is that it’s also stuffed with Joshua trees, which we’re finding there are more of in the world than we ever thought:

…our aphid-infested herb garden.

Last week, we found a lady bug (AKA lady beetle, lady bird beetle) wandering around on the ground; we scooped her up and put her on a cilantro plant badly infested with aphids.  A few days later, the flower stalks of the plant were alive with the black-and-orange alligator-like larvae of the ladybug.  There were so many aphids on these stems, the larvae stuck around, pupated, and hatched into mint new beetles.  Here’s the process in photos (A & E Shock).

We didn’t think to look for eggs, so the first thing we saw was about two dozen larvae slurping up aphids on the cilantro plant.  In the picture on the right >>, the final instar of a larva (lower) is attaching itself to the stem in preparation of pupating.  The critter above it, which looks like a wrinkly beetle, is what it becomes: a pupa, waiting for the beetle inside to reach adulthood.

<< The next photo shows a newly-emerged adult beetle clinging to its empty pupal husk.  The unripe tomato color of its wings deepens as it dries, possibly in response to UV exposure.  Also, ghostly gray dots appear and darken along with the elytra.  The wings, pale yellow and transluscent, retract fully under the elytra, and the beetle is ready to trundle — or fly — off.

The photo below shows two empty pupal cases, the sun shining through them and split open like… well, like invertebrate pupal cases, abandoned where their larvae attached to the stem.

Finally, the familiar mature, deep red-orange, sun-spotted lady bugs spread out, looking for food and mates to start the cycle all over again (below).

Hard not to appreciate the aphids giving up their sticky little plant-sucking lives for such a delightful result.  And, thanks, ladybugs, for clearing out the thuggish aphids.  Not to anthropomorphize or anything…

Yesterday was a rich day; with all sensory input oddly and schizophrenically split between very early and very late.  The day ended after midnight with a fun and funky evening at the CD drop party for the Groove Noodles, a friend’s band.  But it started before dawn in the outdoors, on Queen Creek and in Devil’s Canyon, a rock-girt desert riparian corridor east of Phoenix.  E and I were part of a team censusing birds in Pinal County for North American Migration Count.  There were great birds — including 7 species of warbler, both passing through and staying to breed, as well as orioles, and tanagers.  But one of my favorite sightings of the day was this Canyon tree frog (Hyla arenicolor) hopping up a nearly vertical rock wall, as we too were rock-hopping up and down the trail-less creek bed, which still contained large pools and slow flow.  We had to rely on our hiking boots to stick us to the water-smooth cobbles, but the frog has large suction discs on the ends of its digits, visible even at a distance (top photo).  It looks as much like a spot of gray lichen as possible, until it moves.  It also has delightfully colorful markings in lichen green and orange on its under-belly and under-thighs, which you can see better in this photo to the left <<.  I’m thinking the rotunditude of this particular frog may mean she’s a gravid (egg-filled) female.

Canyon treefrogs are, as I’ve stated before, “quite a toadly frog.”

(Photos E.Shock.)

Says me: few plants are more gratifying than prickly pear cactus, Opuntia spp. At least, if you live in the desert, or any reasonably dry place.

Actually, even in not so dry places: we saw some naturalized in Aoteraroa (New Zealand), which seemed frankly bizarre, knowing how much rain that island gets (see the photo hanging off the very bottom of the post, like how NZ hangs off the bottom of the world).

And there are species that grow in cold-winter climates — like one that used to surprise me every time I saw it in the dry glades of Missouri.  It would lie down flat under the snow in winter, and just wait, hunkered down, for spring.  I seem to recall its Latin name was Opuntia humifusa, which at least sounds like it means that it grows stuck to the soil.

So, pretty much anywhere you live, there’s probably a variety of “pear” that will grow and bloom in your conditions, with little care other than a basic knowledge of what kind of light conditions it prefers, and how much moisture it requires or can tolerate. (Photos E.Shock; not color-enhanced)

The top two photos are of a couple of Opuntia blooming now in our yard.  The first one is Opuntia aciculata, or Chenille prickly pear, named after its deceptively velvety cinnamon spines called glochids; the other is a variety of Santa Rita prickly pear (Opuntia santa-rita), named after the southern Arizona mountains that are its home range.  The purple color of the pads is natural for this cactus if it’s allowed to grow with available moisture: it gets greener when it’s grown lushly, or in monsoon season when rain is more plentiful.

<< A naturalized “pear” growning in Rotorua, New Zealand.  Probably a sub-tropical species.  The plant it’s growing up into could be Manuka, famous for the honey bees make from it.

You may know that Opuntia pads are actually water-storing stems.  The plant’s leaves, sometimes only present for a short time as new pads are forming, grow on the edges and faces of young pads; you can see some tiny green-and-red leaves on the newest pads above the yellow flower on the Rita-pear above.

Hoover the feral African collared dove has solved the problem of how to drink from the swimming pool: board the chlorine float.  The health ramifications of this (for the bird) may be dubious, but watching him neatly land on a floating, bobbing object with a smallish deck area is a thing to behold.  He fastidiously holds his tail up off the water, and bends over to drink, tipping the float steeply, but he still manages to hold on.

<< Hoover afloat (photo A.Shock)

We’ve seen other urban birds, most often Great-tailed grackles, a fearless, strong, and adaptable species, do the same thing.  They will also swoop low over the pool, and nimbly scoop meaty yummies like moths and beetles off the surface, risking becoming swamped if they make too much surface contact.  But we’ve never found a grackle in the pool, so it’s a successful foraging strategy for them.