While a longer post about Gulf Fritillaries is in progress, please enjoy these images of Rosy-faced Lovebirds (formerly Peach-faced Lovebirds, Agapornis roseicollis) feeding on our sunflowers one gray morning earlier this month.

Rosy-faced Lovebird cling-feeding on sunflowers (photos A.Shock)

Having learned the older name, E and I still refer to them as Peach People (or more portentiously “People of the Peach”), and rush out to try to spot them overhead each time they bomb across the yard, squeaking and gibbering in small family groups.

Accustomed to their dry homeland in southwestern Africa, Lovebirds are a non-native feral species which seems to be establishing itself in apparently self-sustaining populations around the Phoenix area.  They are the descendants of escaped or released pet birds — often let go by people because of their noisy domestic ways.  Lovebirds are often found in and around Saguaros, where they compete with resident cavity-nesters like Elf owls and woodpeckers for the shelter of snug holes in the giant cactus.

Also, please note the previously discussed effectiveness of plastic birds of prey as seed-snatcher deterrents in the garden >> Actually, it’s an empty complaint — we grow the sunflowers for the birds, and would be crushed if the Desert Snowy Owl and the Birthday Falcon (still sheathed in plastic to mute its awesome aspect) actually worked.

But a very, very, VERY tiny one.

This morning we rescued this young scorpion from the pool, where it was stuck limbs akimbo to the surface tension of the water, sending out tiny struggling ripples. Since little scorpions look just like big scorpions except small, a close-up like this one doesn’t provide any clue to scale. So, know that the blue mesh it’s sitting on is the pool skimmer net, and each of the mesh squares is 1/20 of an inch, making the body of this Dinky Dude of the Desert about a quarter inch long, or less than 1/2 inch from head to tail tip (which, you can just see in the photo, is quite capably armed with a tiny but sharply barbed telson).

It’s most likely a Vaejovis spinigerous, the Stripe-tailed scorpion, our most common and not especially venomous species. (Click here for more info about AZ scorpions, and excellent drawings.) I put it over the fence; I don’t have the heart to crush them, even the grown ones. I’ll let the geckos or foxes or thrashers take care of it, or not. Seems only fair to let it try to make its way — after all, it’s only very, very small.

Here’s one of E’s photos:

If you can enlarge the top image twice, do — the photo isn’t perfectly sharp, but you can see the lil sensory hairs on its limbs, all the better to find dinner with, since the eyes aren’t so sensitive. (Upper photo A.Shock, lower E.Shock.)

Here’s a post-script from the subject of the previous post, which, despite its mildly peevish tone, I’ve included at the author’s request:

Ah yes, that’s my ground-bound, tail-dragging cousin, much less economically armed than us pseudoscorpions, with all that extra apparatus dangling off the rear. I’d like to see one of them hitch a ride on a bird or a wasp; the image is grotesque. And, really, is it absolutely necessary to have such unpleasantly potent venom? — it strikes me as strident, and certainly doesn’t win you any friends. Still, I suppose it works for them — they’ve been around since the Silurian.

……………………………..or a scorpion!

Fear me only if you are a springtail, or a mite, or any arthropod smaller than me.  I am the size of a lentil, so although my scissor-like pincers look fierce and outsized for my body, and the pedipalps wielding them are Popeye strong and elbowy, you are a looming threat — I run from the shadows of your hands, and the clicking black boxes you hold over me, by scuttling rapidly backwards across the exposed surface you expect me to sit still on.  I am the pseudoscorpion, an arachnid, little cousin to spiders, solpugids, and amblypygids.

<< me, much larger than life on the folded edge of a piece of regular paper (photo A.Shock)

My family and I are tiny predators found all over the world who, if you must use your own reference point to validate us, beneficially snap up even tinier creatures which, grown larger, might trouble you: newly hatched mites and ticks, for instance (they’re cousins, too, and I certainly enjoy that branch of the family, if you catch my drift).  Usually I go contently unnoticed, but this past weekend I found myself exposed to sunlight, spied by thumb-mammals who were trying to pack up a buffet they’d set up for me in the pine dirt on the roof of Arizona (they called it a tent and slept in it, which is rude: I don’t doze on their dinner plate). I had been grazing all night on minute leggy snacks that also wandered up from the forest floor onto the buffet — admittedly, stuffed to the spiracles (it was a plentiful spread!), I was a little muddled and got lost in the folds and channels and couldn’t find my way down by sunrise.

They picked me up — I swear they were about to crush me as a loathly tick, but the next thing I knew they had carried me over to their table where they held me captive for a while, which made me alternately freeze hoping they wouldn’t see me, and flee, which didn’t work either.  So I kept waving my pincers at them until no doubt fearful of my ferocious aspect, they put me back in the needles and dirt, and I went on my way.

<< their idea of scale

my idea of scale >>

You may never have seen or even heard of my family, but we’re numerous and famous.  We’ve been around since the Devonian; that’s 380 million short years, O Primate — fossils attest to that.  Note my efficient body design: NOT “primitive,” please — why improve on perfection? But you seemed to notice us, or care enough to write about us, only since the time of Alexander the Great.  Please don’t look so surprised, of course we know about him — pseudoscorpions have lengthy ancestral memories.  My 2347-times-great grand-cousins inhabited Alexander’s libraries and kept them free of booklice, dust-mites, and silverfish larvae (no doubt King Darius’s libraries, too; we’re the Swiss of the Arthropoda).  Anyway, Alexander’s elementary school teacher, who always had his nose in papyrus scrolls, spared a few words for us and some cousins (who live in clothing and keep them free of moths and other undesirable animalcules, unless he’s referring to lice, which are the undesirable animalcules).  Wait, I have his famous quote about us by heart:

Oh, you need a translation?  Allow me, it’s easy Greek: “Still others occur in books: some like those in mantles, others like scorpions without tails, totally small…”  That’s us.  Then there’s some stuff about fig wasps… he goes on and on about them; those Greeks do like their figs.  Anyway, you see? a shout-out from Aristotle — not too shabby!

So how do we get into your books, or for that matter, high up into the mountainous roof of Arizona?  That is a prized family trait — some of us are phoretic.  (Honestly, the high-falutin’ term shouldn’t surprise you, didn’t I just quote Greek?)  It means we hitch rides on larger organisms, like flies or wasps, and let them carry us around for a while before dropping off (pincers again: very useful things for gripping as well as dining).

<< a pseudoscorpion latched onto a fly thigh (photo by Sarefo, Wikimedia Commons)

We may be commensal, but we’re not parasites: other than a little drag on our ride’s flight efficiency, we do no harm, and it’s a great way to get around to greener, or rather, more joint-leggedy pastures.  And you don’t notice, but we cling to the underside of firewood or potted plants you bring inside from the garden.  From there, it’s just a hop scuttle and creep into your woolen carpet (lots of yummies there!) or bookshelf.  You’d have nothing left to wear or read if it weren’t for us.  A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but without doubt we are excellent guardians against hungry woolen moths, carpet beetle and other dermestid insect larvae, not to mention our less human-centered roles in natural ecosystems: we are leopards on the Serengeti of small-scale soil horizons — though you may need magnifiers to detect our depredations, or to count the legs of our prey.

There’s so much more — I haven’t even told you about our ability to weave protective silken cocoons for ourselves or our offspring by spinning them from spinnerets at the tips of our chelicerae, or that some of us dance elaborate dances before spermatophore transmission (not that that’s any of your business), or that we’re relaxed regarding the concept of eyes, having one pair, two pair, or none at all, or that there are more than three thousand species of us, some limited to single cave sites, others making their living in giant saguaro cactus. But I suspect I’ve bent your ear enough on the efficiencies and curiosities of my large and ancient family.  So, here are a couple of websites (yes, that’s arachnid humor) you can visit, borne there on the underside of your computer’s elytra:

For excellent photos click here, for more in-depth info click here, and for those with inexhaustible curiosity about the order Pseudoscorpionida (thanks for noticing, you free-thinking Prussian, Herr Doktor Haeckel), click here at this excellent resource, or here at our Wikipedia entry.

It’s been nice chatting, but there are collembolids to collar and amphipods to ambush.  And digest.  Have a nice day, and please don’t bother to dust.  Really.

We have not been stuffing our keyhole with magenta tissue paper.

The local leaf-cutter bees have been trimming neat circles out of fresh, hot pink Bougainvillea bracts and carefully layering them with pollen in a tubular nest for their eggs. The eggs will hatch into grubs — females deepest* so that the woodpecker or cactus wren gets the vulnerable males near the opening (the population needs fewer males to successfully reproduce, the theory goes) — which will eat the pollen and leaf material and hatch into another generation of solitary bees.  Solitary bees don’t produce honey, and aren’t at all aggressive, but are vital pollinators in the garden.  If you don’t have handy keyholes in your screen doors, you can buy or make nest-boxes with drill holes or bamboo to encourage them.  A few scalloped leaves on your bougs or roses is worth it!

Collateral observation: I use this worn lever door-handle fifty times a day, and I never see it close up like in the photo — hadn’t appreciated the “greek key” design circling the hole.  Also, I’m pleased to see that its patina is just getting good!

*I couldn’t find out if the gender of the eggs develops as a result of depth, or somehow the female eggs are laid first.  The former sounds more plausible to me, but I’d love any ideas?

(For more info, click here . It’s by a British blogger, but the basic lifestyle info is the same for this type of bee on either side of the Atlantic; be sure to enlarge his photos of the cutaway nesting chambers and the circular cuts the bees make on thin, pliable leaves).

Driving home with E from campus this evening, we saw a turtle in the street. It was at the corner of Curry and Mill, lodged uncomfortably against the curb, traffic whizzing past just inches away — stranded halfway between the green lagoons of the Zoo and Tempe Town Lake, but blocks from either.

Heroically, E leaped out of the truck and ran back to check on it. It was a red-eared slider (I think; I’m no expert on turtles), and as far as we could tell, she was intact. E put her on the floor of the truck between his feet, and we headed to the zoo.

There is a chain of ponds off the zoo parking lot, a palm-lined man-made aquatic environment stuffed with turtles and ducks and perch and algae — a place that could easily absorb another turtle, or welcome back one who had wandered away.

We set her on the rocky shore right at water line, but she just sat there, head and legs still pulled in tight to her shell. Then GLOOP — she launched with a small splash, oaring madly to the bottom of the lake, and was gone.

Low desert mornings are beautiful in May and June, the air still cool and crisp before the slight sogginess of monsoon season sets in later in the summer.  The real desert is even cooler, but here in our corner of Phoenix there is enough open saguaro-y space in nearby Papago Park and few enough lawns in the ‘hood to maintain a deserty feel in the air.

Sunrise this morning was prime, overseen by a waning gibbous moon still high in the sky, and I wandered into the back garden early to see who was around.  I found a pair of complementary blooms: a passion flower winding up a sunflower — sunrise and moonset together on a garden scale.

While I was admiring them, tiny Lesser goldfinches flew into the sunflowers to fress.  We put out nyjer thistle in feeders for them, but even still they’re always hungry enough to rifle the seedy charms of a sunflower.  So we let the reseedlings take over the herb garden in the summer, and allow the basil plants and mexican hats go to seed for the little yellow dinosaurs, who repay us by spreading the seeds around for next year’s crop.

The Lesser Goldfinch below came within feet of me to feed.  Her boldness can be interpreted as lack of experience — she’s a juvenile, and not as jaunty as the big boys, but she’ll do. (Photos A.Shock: upper, with iPhone4/Camera+app; lower, with Canon EOS xti, 55-250mm zoom)

Our front porch doesn’t get much traffic: the occasional UPS guy, guy leaving door hangers flogging local pizza joints, signature-gatherer, political candidate, stranger, or neighbor will come down our sunbaked, overgrown front walk, all the way from the street to the garage to the front door.  But not very often.  The back door is where most of our domestic foot traffic flows.

I should clarify: by “foot traffic” I’m talking about during the day, and bipedal mammalian feet, unless it’s an occasional Cactus wren gleaning the crevices behind the Mexican metal cat mask or the Talavera wall planter with plastic cactus replicas.

At night it’s a different story.  The front porch is where it’s at.  It’s because of the porch light, and the overhang, and the textured vertical surfaces.  All these features seem to have combined to create an ideal locale for a night time hangout, part snack bar, part thoroughfare, and part pick-up joint.  Moths, beetles, and a host of night-flying insects are drawn to the light, while in turn cellar spiders, lacewings, huntsman spiders (big!), geckos and other predators lurk too, waiting for a slip-up among the herds of prey.

<< Praying mantis on the screen door (photo A.Shock)

Last night, we had a small native desert praying mantis on the screen door, swivelling its big-eye head in the dim light.  In real life these aren’t blue, of course (that’s just photo-artsiness to distract from the low-light graininess in my shot) — or green like the giant asian species people buy online to release for garden pest control. These little ones are grayish brown, and this one is full grown at under two inches.  These are the guys whose breadloaf-like eggcases we find in the yard (or, once, in the house on a plant we took in for the winter; the hatchling mantids are green).

Love the mantis!  Or, if you’re very small, fear the mantis!

Today’s weather has been changeable, to understate the case.  After a week of early warmth, winter has barged back into the low desert in the form of a March Pacific storm, bringing intermittent rain, gusty winds, spotty sunshine, and nippy (for us) temperatures.

Folding clean laundry was the other option, so I chose fiddling on the computer, and this is the result: a highly-edited photo of a Bridled titmouse (Poecile sclateri) snapped up at Montezuma Well last fall, on the exciting fortuitous Tarantula Visit.  Overcome at the time by the thrill of encountering miniature possibly un-named by science marauding arachnids, the comparatively calm pleasure of a small gray bird was passed over until today, when I discovered some “lost” photos on my computer desktop.

<< Bridled titmouse (Photo shot by E and edited by A Shock)

These are the least plain of the titmice, which are known more for their jaunty demeanor than their subtle plumage, which is usually buffy gray and tan.  In fact, before it was split into “Oak” and “Juniper” species, the other western titmouse was officially known as the Plain titmouse.  But the Bridled not only sports a perky peaky head, but has a white face with ornate black “bridle” outlining it.  And look how much that natty head pattern looks like sticks silhouetted against the bright sky — the first and second rules of camouflage: break up your overall body shape, and blend in to the background.

We don’t see Bridled titmice — or any parids (chickadee-related birds) — in the desert very often: they mainly breed in oak-woodland or coniferous forests at higher elevations.  During the colder weather months, however, they can be seen down here, but not usually “in town”.  So spotting one of these guys uphill is always pleasant, and getting a picture of one isn’t easy: like all ‘dees they are dinky, chatty, busy, and speedy.  This was one of a pair foraging in low mesquite trees, gleaning twigs and bark for little joint-legged goodies, staying in touch with one another with continuous contact-calls.  To hear the Bridled titmouse’s punchy vocal efforts, click here.

Once again, and for the usual reason, my blog posts have dwindled to a sticky, paltry stream with occasional tart strands of zest, like marmalade that didn’t set.  It seems that when I really have to turn on the afterburners in the clay studio to meet a deadline, my brain shunts itself into non-writing mode.  This is acceptable because it results in Concentrated Clay Effort, but really making art doesn’t have to interfere with the amplitude or frequency of this space: after all, a picture’s worth a thousand words, and I can be fully entertained by one simple striking image.  Perhaps you are too, so here’s a double-duty photo for your perusal: self-promotional eye-candy, but still full of tasty chewy, glazy, custardy goodness, like a good doughnut.

You are looking into the woozy interior of a small repoussé sake cup: the swirly glaze is very sensitive to its own thickness which varies considerably because each tiny cup is owl-shaped, modeled by pushing out with the fingers and in, usually with tools, so that the inside reflects the outside.  The resulting curviness in the walls gives the glaze lots of moguls and dips to flow into and around.  (The opalescence of the rim is an artifact of light: it’s the reflection of the blue sky overhead, and if the cup were in your hand, you’d see the whole effect of the glaze was more like golden honey than sky-rimmed lava.)  The slick, glossy interior flows contrast with the hair-like scoring on the outside of the pieces like marmalade on toast.

Here’s the entire “Boiled Owl” sake set, two tiny cups and a small pitcher meant for sake but good for any potent liquid that needs judicious sipping.  >> This one and a small number of others will be debuting at the Three Star Owl open studio during the Camelback Studio Tour Friday Saturday and Sunday of this week (9,10,11 March 2012). I hope you can stop by and check them out.  More details later!

(Both photos A.Shock)