…on the northwest Oregon coast.

It’s not very much like the Sonoran Desert here. Everything’s either wet or damp, and when it rains it’s not a pounding monsoonal deluge that ends quickly, but a steady long-term soaking, which might last hours, days, or the rest of the year.  Things that live here are water-loving organisms, like Loons and Mushrooms.

E got great photos of some of the numerous – and poisonous – Fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) pushing up through the evergreen needles on Clatsop Spit. There were other varieties of fungus in abundance too, little brown guys with caps so transluscent their gills showed through, and big slick yellow ones with a slime sheen on top. As well as fungi, the moist forests had sprouted mushroom hunters galore: some with five gallon plastic buckets topped with edible varieties, perhaps chanterelles.

Less colorful but still nice to see were an assortment of loons: Common, still sporting a bit of their black-and white summer plumage; a juvenile Pacific loon with its silvery neck; and a pair of Red-throated loons close to shore (left), with their distinctive pale tip-tilted bills, and backs whose pattern looks like the texture on a manhole cover.

Fortunately, sea birds and waders are out in all weather, so even on the wind-whipped estuaries and rain-lashed beaches, there are things to see, like this distant dotted line of Brown pelicans speeding down-wind on a gale at the South Jetty at Fort Stevens State Park.

(Top photo: Fly agaric mushroom, E.Shock; middle: Red-throated loon, only adequately digiscoped by A.Shock; stormy Pacific coast with brown pelicans, A.Shock)

Recently a neighbor came across the street to tell me in a concerned way that she had “had to” kill not just one but two non-venomous coachwhips in her yard out of fear for the safety of her pet, a feisty little terrier whom no self-respecting coachwhip would allow near enough for trouble.  So it was very good to discover that “our” coachwhips on this side of the street, whom we see with some frequency, had managed to reproduce, to help offset the unnecessary slaughter.

This handsome youngster and I surprised each other under the hummingbird feeder in the palo verde, and it held still enough for long enough that we were able to get some photos.  I suspect it was after young Tiger whiptails, among other things, as they’re still out and about (the larger adults seem already to have retreated to their subterranean refuges for the season, for the most part).  In fact, nearby on the same day, quite a young whiptail was chasing small ants with gusto.  It no longer sported its blue tail, but had the slim body and large-headedness of a young reptile.

Coachwhips (Masticophis flagellum) lay their eggs in June and July, and the young begin to maraud in August and September.  So this well-camouflaged youth is probably a month or two old, and already a whippy thin 13 or 14 inches in length.

“When frightened it flees so rapidly it appears to magically disappear into the desert,” say Brennan and Holycross in their excellent 2006 Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Arizona.  And that’s exactly how this encounter ended, when the little snakelet finally decided it was time to vamoose.

(Photos: Top: A.Shock; bottom, E.Shock)

Scorpions are not a thing at our house.  We don’t see them frequently, and as previously posted, they’re more likely to be encountered outside as victims of the swimming pool than inside the house.  But last night E liberated one from the front bathroom, and temporarily incarcerated it in a pint glass.

In the morning, I wanted to watch it glow.  Here’s a picture of it viewed under a UV light, with the glass’s Duralex logo for scale.  It’s another “striper”: Vaejovis spinigera, a stripe-tailed scorpion, our most common species.

There are places in the Greater Phoenix famous for their scorpionicity.  So much so, that you can find maps of the frequency of scorpion stings on the internet, for the benefit of people new to the area who might want the info while searching for a house to buy. (We looked at a map of Superfund sites, but everyone has to prioritize their own worries).  Such a map is to the right: the darkest areas show the areas with the most stings reported, so it’s more likely to reflect factors such as human population density or likeliness of going to the hospital than actual scorpion presence.  Also, the map doesn’t indicate actual numbers or a unit of time, so there’s no knowing if the darkest red are so many stings a year, or so many stings a minute.  But, it provides a rough idea of who should invest in a hand-held black-light, and who’s most likely to subscribe to weekly pest control.

Oddly, the scorpion-rich areas are not all desert neighborhoods as you might expect: there’s a hot spot in Tempe with lawns and sprinklers and rose-bushes, and another in the central corridor of older Phoenix.  We’ve got friends who live there, and they see scorps way more often than we do, and have been stung.  As a kid in Phoenix, I remember being afraid of scorpions after hearing stories of people leaving wet washcloths on the bathroom floor, and finding several of them clinging to the underside of it when it was picked up next morning.  (Scorpions love getting under things and hanging there upside down.  Biologists call this “reverse geotaxis”: the habit of aligning yourself in reverse to the surface of the earth.)  Fortunately, in our area, for most people the sting of most scorpions is a painful inconvenience, and nothing more.  There are places in the world where there are much more potent scorps, and their sting is a medical matter and is even occasionally fatal.

After its photo-session, I released this striper in the back yard, under a Cenizo bush, where it clung to some foliage.  By the time the sun strikes the plant, it’ll be back in a hidey-hole until night falls again.

(Photo A.Shock; scorpion wrangling E.Shock)

The weather has cooled a bit, and even the succulents in the yard are perking up a little.  Here’s a shot of a luncheon-plate sized flower of a nocturnal, non-native Cereus aethiops columnar cactus, taken at dawn before it faded in the rays of the sun.

(Photo of Cereus aethiops blossom by A.Shock)

Although the days are still hot here in the Phoenix area, there are signs that summer is sliding into fall: migrating Red-tailed hawks soaring over the park this morning, and over Papago Buttes a couple of accipiters (probably Cooper’s hawks) swirling through a cloud of White-throated swifts, hoping for a quick fistful of breakfast on the wing; also, cooler nights and a less intense light from the sun not rising quite so high in the sky.  It’s about time for our wintering ducks to start arriving at desert lakes, both genuine and artificial, in both wild and suburban settings.  The Phoenix Zoo is a great place to see wintering waterfowl: here’s a picture of a Ring-necked duck on the entrance pond.

Ring-necked ducks confuse people who have just met them: Looking at the obviously ringed bill pattern, they often ask: Why aren’t they called Ring-billed ducks?  This white ring around the end of the bill is visible at a distance, in nearly all light conditions.  The eponymous ring around the neck is much less frequently seen, but it shows in this un-enhanced photo: a deep chestnut almost iridescent maroon band between the chin and the breast of this natty adult bird.

(Photo: E.Shock)

This was weird, and sad for sure.

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned the unfortunate similarity of our swimming pool to the LaBrea Tarpits.  Especially in the summer months when there are lots of inexperienced young animals out and about, we often have to carry out water rescues.  Since my studio is at home and looks onto the pool, this is often in the nick of time: desert cottontails, house sparrow fledglings, tiger whiptails, european honeybees, beetles, moths, sunspiders, and even the occasional “cowkiller” (AKA velvet ant) have all been successfully fished out to live another day.

Unfortunately, not everything that takes the inadvertent plunge is so lucky, and daytime critters often fare better than nocturnal ones, because I see them, and can help.  So, often, the first thing I do in the morning is check the pool for watery unfortunates: the closer to the surface, the better: the bottom, not so good.  Most days, there’s nothing.  But one morning, I was surprised to see this Striped-tailed scorpion (Vaejovis spinigerus) standing on the side of the pool about 18 inches below the surface (the infrequent drowned scorpion we encounter is generally on the bottom, belly up).  The poor thing must have fallen in and, unable to get out, found itself a place to stand ready for anything, with its tail fully armed,  and stuck there until it expired.  I fished it out, and took some pix for reference, and left the soft, waterlogged body for something to make a meal of.  I never saw what scored it — probably cactus wren or thrasher — but it didn’t take long; less than an hour later the little body was gone.

Here’s a close-up of it, eye-to-eye, a view we don’t often see of these close to the ground tiny arthropods.  If you’re wondering how this mildly venomous stingy thing differs from the more venomous stingy-thing, the Bark Scorpion (Centuroides spp.), the thicker, bulbous tail with longitudinal stripes on each section is the easiest characteristic to note.  The Bark scorpion has a much thinner, more gracile tail and pincers, and often holds its tail coiled to the side.

(Photos A. Shock.  Apologies; since upgrading to the latest version of WordPress, the editor doesn’t seem to support the “click to enlarge” feature… Don’t know what’s up with that, but I’ll fix it as soon as I figure out how.)

After our latest monsoon event, the yard was freshly rinsed and all dampy.  Everything was making the most of the moist: the succulents were sucking up water, the trees were drinking and dripping, and the whole world was washed in that most deserty perfume of creosote.

Also, the Cactus Longhorn Beetle came out.  Here is its picture, on a “Bunnyears” prickly pear (Opuntia macrodasys).

From a horticultural point of view, the cactus longhorn beetle (Moneilema gigas) is a serious pest: its eggs hatch into larvae which bore into the tissue of cactus, especially Opuntia, and the adults are happy to munch on tender growing edges of cactus pads.  The boring larvae exude their waste as an unsightly tarry goo on the cactus outside their boreholes, and their tunneling can be fatal to susceptible individual plants; the damage gnawing adults do to pads can alter an even growth pattern in new leaves.  So, many desert gardening sites recommend the barbaric “Insta-stomp” approach to relating to this large beetle. (They’re flightless and are easily captured.)

E took pictures of this adult, possibly just eclosed after the monsoon rain, and we left it to trundle off, having admired its long “horns” with the white “elbows” on them.  Stomping just didn’t seem like a viable alternative — frankly, I don’t know if flip-flops are up to the task of exterminating such a robustly-crusted arthropod (note the mediaeval spines around its thorax). Anyway, there’s plenty of Bunny Ears to go around.

Bonus Monsoon cactus flowers

Most Sonoran desert plants bloom in spring after the winter rainy season, but there are many that take advantage of the Monsoon rains, and bloom in late summer and early fall.  This barrel cactus in our yard, a Ferocactus herrerae, is currently putting on an extravagant floral display.

(Both photos E. Shock)

…things are more colorful in the tropics.

Let’s unofficially extend International Vulture Awareness “Day” to “Weekend”, just so we can examine the glorious elegance that is the facial skin of the Lesser Yellow-Headed Vulture, a cousin of the widely distributed Turkey vulture that most of us Norte Americaños are familiar with.

You could argue that the King Vulture, also a New World vulture, is even more colorful, especially taking into account its snowy white-and-black plumage, but among the “Cathartes” vultures, the Lesser Yellow-headed takes the prize for chroma.  This colorfulness is limited to its face — in other ways, its plumage is so similar to its “cousin” the Turkey vulture that in flight, at a distance, the two are possible to confuse.

I’ve seen Lesser Yellow-headeds in Belize and Veracruz, and it’s always a thrill to feel that small jolt when you realize the bird gliding above the pasture that you were about to pass over as yet another Turkey vulture has that little extra something… the sun-colored facial skin gleaming in the tropical daylight.

(Photo by A.J. Haverkamp, from Wikimedia Commons: Especially, note the Pervious Nostril in this shot!)

Lesser yellow-headed vultures (Cathartes burrovianus) live in Central to South America, and are birds of tropical lowlands, seasonal wetlands and agricultural areas.  Like the majority of vultures around the world, they are carrion feeders. It’s widely reported that they have a mutually beneficial relationship with King Vultures: King Vultures, which lack the keen putrescine and cadaverene-sensing olfactory prowess of the Cathartes vultures, follow Yellow-headed vultures to locate fresh carcasses.  But the Yellow-headeds lack the mighty hide-ripping bill of the King.  So they wait at a carcass for the King vulture to show up, to “start” the meal.

(Photo: coastal agricultural wetlands of Veracruz, typical Yellow-headed vulture habitat.  A.Shock)

In an earlier post, I recalled an uncomfortable encounter with a bison on Catalina Island.  For the past few days, we were in Yellowstone (no internet anywhere in the Park!), and our interactions with large mammals were definitely calmer and thankfully more removed.  Here is one, placidly grazing by a park roadside.  He’s been head-butting vegetation in order to beautify himself for the bisonettes, and is admirable in his festoonage, which includes a small pine bough.  I’m unable to report if its piny freshness improved upon his bovine musk.

One of the things about Yellowstone is the range of scale of amazement in the park.  There is really really big amazing stuff, like bison, the Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Grand Geyser, and the size of the volcanic crater at the center of the park itself.  But there is also amazing tiny stuff everywhere, too.  Here are some branches that have fallen into hot water, and become festooned with minerals. There are even tinier things — so inconspicuous as to be hard to see unless you know to look for them — in the form of the crazy-hardy and diverse thermophilic organisms that live in the scalding chemical brews of the hot water in the park.

(Bison in the Hayden Valley; branches at Mammoth Hot Springs; Morning Glory Pool, Upper Geyser Basin.  All photos A.Shock)