Gates Pass Sunset

Wild Horses in the Tortolita Mountains

The Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists, based in Tucson, posted this video of wild horses in the Tortolita Mountains on their Youtube channel. Wild horses are not at all common in Arizona, so the trail builder who shot this video was very lucky. Hohokam people lived in the Tortolitas for seven-hundred years and there are accessible Hohokam sites there today.

Foggy Morning

I woke up to another morning of dense fog. Fog offers uncommon lighting in the usually bright desert, so I grabbed my camera and shot a few pictures. A humid 39 degrees felt like an old friend to my New England bones.


I don't know if these little lacewings were taking shelter in the cholla fruit or eating it. Perhaps edible shelter?

Dry Neighbors

Erin spotted this desert tarantula (technically an Arizona Blond Tarantula) huddled on the threshold of our kitchen door this morning. It's been raining and cold here in Tucson for a few days, so his burrow must be pretty inhospitable, possibly flooded. This fellow is probably male or juvenile because it's not a very big tarantula (though still damn big for a spider) and the females are larger than the males.

We don't mind sharing a little heat. Keep warm, buddy.




Update: I didn't originally post the following pictures of the tarantula because it was sitting near a pile of packrat turds, which is pretty gross, but upon looking at them again, I noticed that one of those turds is actually not a turd at all, but a regular sized spider. The contrast between the two spiders justifies posting the shots.

Chickadees

One thing I miss about living in Massachusetts is chickadees. They're really fascinating birds to watch. If you've got a feeder, spend some time watching the chickadees.

How Did the Bighorns Cross the Road?

This photo, captured by a remote camera set up by Arizona Game and Fish Department, shows a desert bighorn sheep crossing one of three newly constructed overpasses built just for them. U.S. 93 crosses right though their habitat, isolating the Colorado River on one side. Though a few sheep have crossed the highway in the past, many were too afraid. The population was split, making it more susceptible to disease and diminishing the gene pool.

The overpasses span the highway. They are paved with dirt and not connected to a trail or other roadway. They're just for the sheep. It's uncertain how or when or if the sheep will use them extensively, but early signs look hopeful. Desert bighorns are rare and endangered. The Black Mountain population, those near the Hoover Dam expected to benefit from the overpasses, accounts for a large percentage of the remaining population. Read more here.

Ocelot Sighting in Arizona

According to this article on Arizona Central, an ocelot was recently spotted (pun intended) near the Huachuca Mountains in Southern Arizona. This photo was taken by Tony Battiste. This is pretty cool; I'd love to see an wild ocelot.

Ocelots are bigger than house cats, but smaller than most other wildcats. They live primarily in Mexico, Central, and South America. They're protected by the Endangered Species Act in the U.S., or at least as long as that legislation still means anything.

Apparently, a man was working in his yard when his barking dog called his attention to a large cat up in a tree. He called Fish and Game it reported it. They showed up and confirmed that it was an ocelot. They gave the animal some space and it eventually went away. Right now it hasn't been confirmed whether the cats is wild or an escaped exotic pet. Let's hope it's wild and stays wild. Let's also keep our fingers crossed that  AZGFD doesn't try its particular brand of "wildlife management" on this one.

Birds and Animals of Oak Creek Canyon and Northern Arizona

Oak Creek Canyon is located near Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona. If you're not familiar with Arizona's different climate zones, you might be surprised to learn that it's not all desert nor all hot. Areas of higher elevation, such as areas on or above the Mogollon Rim (the edge of the Colorado Plateau) are much cooler, temperate zones that host lots of flora and fauna familiar to folks from cooler climates. Some areas even get lots of snow!

This nifty postcard includes a key to identifying the birds and animals on the back:

Bat Murder

The U.S. has recently encountered mysterious instances of animals, mostly birds, dying together in huge numbers. No one knows what killed the birds. These incidents have occurred primarily in the southern States.

Here in Arizona we've seen the unfortunate wildlife deaths, too, but we know the cause - it's the work of assholes. For example, a little while back some piece of shit name Edwin Jess in Bullhead City, AZ murdered a great blue heron with a golf club. He just walked up to it and smashed it with the club for no reason. He was golfing and the bird had the audacity to sit near some water on the course, a mistake it paid for with its life. The bastard didn't really even get in trouble.

The newest chapter in Arizona's moron-assault on our animal population is particularly sad. Thousands of bats have made Tucson's man-made structures, like bridges, their homes. Most of these bats are Mexican free-tale bats. Each one of these little bats is about as big as your thumb and weighs 13 grams. They eat tons of insects and pests, like mosquitoes, ironically repaying us for dropping our concrete world down on their desert. Many Tucsonans love the bats. We've gone down to the bridges at dusk to watch thousands of bats pour out and other people are often there too, watching as they drop down, swarm under the bridge, and then shoot off into the night. It's pretty impressive.

However, last month some scumbag killed 80 bats with a BB gun. Just shot them while they were sleeping under the bridge. AZ Game and Fish were offering a $750 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer. An anonymous donor has upped the stakes, adding an addition $1000 to the reward. Even if the killer isn't caught, this is terrific news. It's important for the community - local, state, and regional - to send the message that we will not tolerate reckless losers killing our wildlife. If law enforcement understands that we care about these crimes, and that leniency will anger and disrespect the community, perhaps we will see more prosecutions and fewer instances of wildlife destruction. If we can nurture this mentality and extend it to Mexican wolves and other controversial species, then we'll really see an improvement in conservation efforts; apathy kills as many animals as bullets.

If you have information about the bat murder, here's what you can do:
Per AZGFD -"Individuals with information should call 1-800-352-0700, anonymously if need be, and reference OGT# 11-000017. Calls will be taken 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Information may also be provided through www.azgfd.gov/thief."

Wolves in Trouble

 

Macho B must be rolling in his grave...er...on his taxidermy mount. Who is Macho B you ask? Macho B was the last known jaguar in the United States. In 2009 scientists from AZFGD intentionally captured Macho B in a cruel leg snare. When it took the jaguar a while to adjust to its new radio collar, the AZ Fish and Genius Department mistook this readjustment for distress. AZFGD recaptured him, shipped him to Phoenix and euthanized him.

The event gained some media attention, but AZFGD just let some low-level workers get crucified for it and resumed making terrible, terrible ecological decisions. Now, AZFGD have like minded people in Washington, including that joke of an Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who, for whatever reason, feels it necessary to try to undo decades of conservation efforts and remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. If you grew up in the 1980's and 1990's, you'll remember how there were no wolves in the lower 48 states when we were young and what an amazing success story their recovery has been. Until now.

The Endangered Species Act requires that decisions to de-list species be made in view of scientific evidence. Now congress wants to de-list gray wolves. Congress is full of idiots, not zoologists, ecologists or biologists, so their qualifications to make such a decision are, well, nonexistent. Only their elevated sense of self-importance could explain why they would meddle with wolf conservation...or their transparent desire to gain votes at all costs. Either way, they are not qualified to decide what happens to wolves. Furthermore, allowing congress to determine the fates of native species sets a dangerous precedent and it must be stopped. You can contact the White House, voice your concern, and talk shit on Salazar here.

This is the wording of the congressional legislation:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law (including regulations), the inclusion of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) (including any gray wolf designated as "non-essential experimental") on any list of endangered species or threatened species under section 4(c) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 ... shall have no force or effect."

See how it goes around the need for scientific evidence? It doesn't say they're off the list, just that the wolves' position on the list "shall have no force or effect." Evidence of both cowardice and duplicity.

Here in Arizona, the situation for wolves is particularly dire. Mexican wolves, a subspecies of the gray wolf, have only recently been reintroduced in the southwest. Fewer than 50 wolves remain in the wild. Yet, the worthless clowns making decisions over at AZGFD support the delisting of the gray wolf! You can read their convoluted, short, contradictory, shitsmear of an official statement here. It's not even well-written. 

So what can we do? The immature, but oh-so-gratifying, thing to do is to go to the AZFGD Facebook page and voice your disgust over their support for delisting wolves. The mature, responsible thing to do is to write your legislators and tell them not to delist wolves or put the power to decide which species deserve protection in the hands of politicians. You can find your congressman or congresswoman here or your senator here.
Lobos of the Southwest (mexicanwolves.org) are the leading champions for the conservation of Mexican wolves and their website has a full toolbox of options to help concerned nature lovers help defend our wild canine neighbors. If you sign up for their e-mail list, they really only send emails when urgent action is needed, not whenever the intern is bored like some other organizations. Or you could make a blog post to raise awareness of the imminent threat to wolves throughout the country. Just sayin'...

Update 12/8/2010: AZFGD released another press release yesterday reaffirming their commitment to wolf conservation. You can read it here. If you read MOCS1986, or scan it, you'll realize that I'm not a Negative Nancy; I'm not a political griper and don't have an axe to grind with AZFGD. I would like nothing more than to believe that AZFGD is both committed to wolf conservation and capable of protecting wolves. However, as this second, equally vague and ill-explained press release indicates, AZFGD is already going about this in the wrong way. There are too many unanswered questions that anybody with an established plan would not leave open. Why is removing ESA protection for wolves a way to better protect them? Frankly, I'm not buying the idea that removing the Feds from this will make AZFGD nimbler or more effective stewards of wolves; I suspect the real reason AZFGD supports delisting wolves is in the press release's subtext - it will save money.  Secondly, AZFGD does not have a great track record with animal conservation. Certainly, neither does the federal government, but, at the risk of invoking the same ghost too many times, the way AZFGD handled the very recent Macho B situation does not suggest that they have the capabilities to manage wildlife effectively, particularly not big carnivores. Finally, federal protection incorporates a group into this scenario that is more disinterested in the AZ economy than AZFGD and, therefore, less likely to be influenced by ranchers, hunters, or others who want to kill wolves.

It really blows my mind when Terry Johnson states, "Continuous litigation on wildlife conservation efforts, including wolves, has left wildlife management decisions to the judiciary instead of with the experts – the natural resources agencies." He is supporting de-listing wolves by an act of congress, an unprecedented act that further removes the influence of experts. This is not about returning decision making to experts. Quite the opposite.

Monarchs of the Superstitions

As the weather gets colder, millions of monarch butterflies begin a southward migration. You may have heard of it; it's one of North America's most famous animal migrations. Throughout October, monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains head south into Mexico, eventually gathering in huge numbers in the high elevation pine forests in Michoacán. Monarchs west of the Rockies head south and overwinter in various warm locations. I was happy, though not surprised, to see many monarchs hanging out in the turpentine bushes along the trails of the Superstition Mountains. They weren't alone, either. Many bushes and wildflowers were in bloom and alive with bees, butterflies, beetles and moths. I spent most of time photographing the transient monarchs, but of course I had to take a couple shots of Weaver's Needle and a curious hawk.





I think I attracted this hawk when I scared up a dozen or so Gambel's Quail along the trail. It watched me from atop a saguaro for a bit, then hovered around me for a while, possibly hoping I'd scare up a quick meal.

Weaver's Needle is in the upper right.

I ran across a few petroglyphs too. Always a neat find.

George L. Mountainlion

George L. Mountainlion was, not surprisingly, a male mountain lion who lived at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Actually, there were several George L. Mountainlions, each named in order - George I, George II, George III and George IV - like members of a royal house. Here on this postcard, George II sits next to the memorial for George I. The first two Georges were hand-raised and remarkably tame. They bonded with their human friends and met Museum visitors while walking on leashes.

George was very popular and received lots of fan mail. On kid wrote him a letter that confessed, "This is the first time I have ever written to a lion." Probably not a necessary confession. I would  liked to meet the person who makes a habit of keeping lions as pen pals. 

Poor George I had hepatitis and died only two years after arriving at the museum. He died at the San Diego Zoo in 1953. Here's what Bill Carr, the founder of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, wrote for George's memorial:

I freely give all sights and sounds of nature I have known to those who have the grace to enjoy not man-made materialism but God-made beauty.

The magnificent Arizona sunsets I have watched from my enclosure, I bequeath to all who see not only with their eyes but with their hearts.

To humans who are tired, worried or discouraged, I bequeath the silence, majesty and peace of the Great American Desert.

To those walk the trails, I bequeath the early morning voices of the birds and the glory of the flowering desert in the Springtime.

To the children who have enjoyed seeing me purr, and watching me turn my somersaults, I offer the precious gift of laughter and joy. The world so needs these things.

And lastly, I bequeath my own happy spirit and affection for others, to all who may remember me and my museum where for three years, I did my best to show people that I truly liked them. 
 
It's probably not a good idea to bring tame, large predatory animals around people and American museums and zoos don't do that very much anymore. Though these animals become "ambassadors for their species," introducing them to the general population endangers the animal and people. Where large predators are concerned, there's a fine line between the type of fear that keeps us safe in the back country and the type of fear that leads to the extermination of valuable species; the first is to be encourage and the latter, discouraged. I understand all this, but I sure would have liked to have met George and scratched his chin. He's reported to have liked that; it made him purr.

Here's a recent story on George from the Arizona Daily Star, a Tucson newspaper.

I and the Bird #133

One of my favorite blog carnivals, I and the Bird, has a new edition up featuring my recent hummingbird post. It's hosted over a A DC Birding Blog. The blog-o-sphere is full of great birding blogs and great bird photography. I've learned a lot about birds recently from reading good bird blogs. Go and have a look and thanks to John at A DC Birding Blog for putting it together.

New Hummingbird Neighbors

My parents gave Erin and I a hummingbird feeder for Christmas last year. We didn't have a secure place to hang it in Tucson, but at our new house here in Glendale, we found a good spot. I'm no ornithologist, but, judging by their coloration, I think they're broad-tailed hummingbirds. I could be wrong, though, because broad-tailed hummingbirds' primary habitats are mountains and forests, not desert. But, hey, with all the stupid lawns and imported trees, Glendale sure doesn't resemble the desert. If we don't have to respect the integrity of our natural desert environment, why should hummingbirds stick to the rules?

There are two hummingbirds that hang out by a feeder, a male and a female. I'm assuming they're a pair. Male hummingbirds are territorial and these two are quite chummy, though they seem to enjoy chasing each other from pine trees to palm trees and back the feeder. 


You can see the rest of my hummingbird shots here on our Flickr page. They weren't very wary of me and were pretty obliging for their early morning photo shoot. Still, I didn't get too close or stay too long. I'd rather see the real birds than look at a nice picture. That being said, I think I got some OK shots, though nothing as nice as this one of a female ruby-throated hummingbird that Erin took at the Worcester Audubon Society a few years back. One final note, if I incorrectly identified these hummingbirds, e-mail me or set me straight in the comments.

Phoenix Bat Colony

I found an article on AZCentral the other day called "50 Must-See Hidden Gems in Greater Phoenix." One of the gems is a colony of 5,000 Mexican free tail bats that live in a diversion tunnel for the Arizona Canal. It's near the corner of 40th St and Camelback Road. There's a similar bat colony in Tucson under the Campbell Street Bridge over the Rillito Wash that we've seen before. Seeing thousands of bats take flight at the same time is pretty awesome.

The Phoenix bats are a bit tougher to get to. It's about a half-mile round trip walk along a path that runs along the canal. That's not a long walk, but walking along a dark path in Phoenix at night makes it feel pretty long, though it seems like a nice enough part of town. Also, the Phoenix area is a heat island, so, unlike Tucson, it doesn't cool down properly at night. It was still a 107 degrees as we walked the canal path at sundown. This is because of all the man-made materials that trap the heat during the day and release it slowly at night. Overused water (wasted water) has contributed to raising the dew point in the valley, making it feel even hotter. The city is quite a bit hotter than the desert at night. Tucson has desert landscaping and city planning that minimize this effect.

Oddly enough, though we went on a Saturday night and the location was just featured on the Arizona Republic website, we had the place to ourselves. As we approached the colony, hundreds of bats and a fair number of nightjars were swooping along the canal eating insects. If you look closely at the photo above, there are some blurry spots on the water and those are the bats.

Here's a couple more photos from the area.

The Condor: A Magazine of Western Ornithology

"The Condor" began in 1899 as "The Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club" and changed the name to "The Condor" in 1900. For years the journal was dedicated to studying birds of western North America. This is issue is from 1931. I found it at Bookmans here in Tucson, AZ; there are many more there, and, at only $2 an issue, I think I'll try to find an older one next time. I grabbed this one because it has models of homemade hummingbird feeders.

The Condor is still around today, but it's changed a bit. The scope has expanded beyond the North America and it's now a peer-reviewed academic journal; it's edited by Michael A. Patten, who's a professor in the Oklahoma Biological Survey at the University of Oklahoma, amongst other things. The Cooper Ornithological Club has become the Cooper Ornithological Society.

Since its inception, The Condor has promoted bird conservation.  Considering the environmental changes and urban sprawl throughout the West over the last 111 years, I'm sure Chester Barlow and the original writers had more birds to see than we do now in habitats that no longer exist. It got me thinking about what's been lost and what was never discovered. We tend to think of science as absolute, plodding, and, in some ways, interminable. We learn new things all the time. Yet, we're destroying things all the time, so we must be destroying things before we know about them at all, let alone understand them scientifically. Older scientific publications, like back issues of The Condor, seem dated. "We've come a long way since then" is a scientific truism. But eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century naturalists were looking at things that no longer exist, things we have no way to observe now, and I wonder when a field of study will emerge dedicated solely to reevaluating former research. It's terrifying to envision this as the future of ornithology, zoology, or naturalism...

Javelina Homicide

Javelina, originally uploaded by Svadilfari.

A few months back, a new law passed allowing loaded guns in National Parks. The powers that be felt that appeasing the monomaniacal guntards was worth the risks.  What could go wrong? Well, this week two dead javelina were found in Saguaro National Park here in Tucson. One had been shot in the head, the other was too eaten by scavengers to determine the cause of death, but they were found together, so it seems likely that they were both shot. The Arizona Fish and Game Department is offering up to a $1000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the javelina killer. If you know anything about the killing, contact Arizona Game and Fish wildlife manager Diane Tilton at 310-7559 or  Operation Game Thief at 1-800-352-0700.

Javelina are peccaries, not pigs, and they are related to other species of South and Central American peccaries. They are also known as collared peccaries. They are fairly common in Arizona and they can be a nuisance. Though they rarely attack people, they sometimes like to eat garbage and dog food and most people know someone who has had javelina in their yard. Javelina are a unique native species, not destructive or feral like wild pigs. 

People do legally hunt javelina throughout the Southwest.  We non-hunters know that hunting is a tradition and, sometimes, a necessary means of population control, so it's not that the javelina were shot that is terrible; it's that they were shot in a National Park and just left there. The javelina are a part of Saguaro National Park, just like the trees, mountains, cacti, and rocks. We don't need armed people killing wildlife in our national parks. We don't need guns in our national parks. If Teddy Roosevelt could abstain from killing animals on his tour of Yellowstone, then what more precedent do we need? We need legislation to get the guns out of the parks. But first, let's hope the loser who shot these two animals gets caught.

Quail Adopts Family

This is was on AZCentral today. I wish a quail would adopt us, but I bet our kitties would have other plans.

My Objectsphere - (Owl Edition)

A while back I wrote a post about my "objectsphere." The idea of the objectsphere comes from an article ("Mrs. Delany and the Objectsphere") I read about ceramic by Jo Dahn. The idea is that we're intimately connected to the objects we own and they aren't just things we manipulate, but they also modify our actions. In my previous post, I wrote about my backpacking gear; this time around I'll focus on our owl collection. I'll include a little bit of a background or a story with each owl.

I think it's pretty clear that I like owls. And while it's debatable as to whether or not I'm making them cool, my enthusiasm should be beyond question. If it's not, then this post will put skepticism to rest. The photo at the top is an image of a John Audubon print of a barred owl and a squirrel that I bought at an antique store here in Tucson. I actually have a tattoo of this owl on my right arm, which was done by Andrew at Renaissance Tattoo(Andrew's now at Iron Hand Tattoo) in Rhode Island, so I was pretty excited when I found it.
 

We found these two owls (above) at the Salvation Army in Worcester, Massachusetts several years ago. The second one is actually made of yarn stretched around nails. It's cool, but collects a lot of cat fur.

I got this little owl as a present from my in-laws. It's head come off so you can hide small objects inside. There's a lot of anthropological work done on object circulation and gifting, and, as you'll see, a few of our owls were gifts. The little ceramic animals to the right are from Red Rose Tea.

We bought this small brass owl at the National Emporium in Calcutta, India. Each store in the Emporium presents artisans from a particular state. Our stuff got mixed up in our luggage so I don't remember which state it was from. We stayed with our friend Ari's family in Calcutta and I must say that his mother has an owl collection that puts ours to shame.

This wooden owls is actually made by a Native America artisan in Mexico to grind peppercorns. We bought it in Tucson.

Here is perhaps our cheapest owl. It's made of rabbit fur and we bought it in Chinatown in San Francisco. He used to live in Erin's cubicle when she worked somewhere that involved cubicles. We try not to think about our cubicle days. The owls sit on a shelf next to this skunk skull. Not sure I remember where I got the skull, but it probably came from E-bay.


Perhaps this should count as two owls. We also bought this one at the National Emporium in Calcutta. If you look closely at the second picture you'll see that there's another little owl carved inside the stomach of the big owl.


The picture doesn't indicate scale well, but this ivory owls is tiny. It was a gift from my brother, Sean.

We bought this one at the Grand Canyon, but it's actually made by Pueblo Indians in Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico. They make all their pottery without using a potters wheel.

Our friends Jen and Kevin gave us this owl lantern as a gift a few years back. Thanks guys! The bullet frame and the hand grenades in the back were crafts my grandfather made in his spare time while stationed on the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

Sarah and Damien hooked us up with this one. They also bought me an owl pellet dissection kit for my birthday one year. Thanks!

I couldn't tell you where this potholder owl came from, but it's dirty and I had second thoughts about posting it. Then I decided, why the hell not? My apologies to any sticklers for clean potholders.

If you've got cool owl stuff, post a link to a photo in the comments and if I get enough, I'll do a post on other people's owls!