Meet the Neighbors - The Black-throated Sparrow

One of my favorite new additions to the yard is the black-throated sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata) (BTSP) (it has a lovely song, which you can hear through a link on the Cornell Bird site (linked above), or by clicking here and here. I prefer the second links because they capture more of the lyricism than the Cornell clips. These sparrows in particular are bold, curious, and vocal. They're a great addition to the yard, because they enjoy hanging out "where the action is", usually in a shrub nearby where I'm working in the yard, often making their high-pitched twinkling calls and songs.

Sounds like the sparrows' population is in decline, mostly linked to hotter-burning fires in the Great Basin region and habitat conversion, which is too bad. Here's a nice little essay about the loss of BTSP due to suburbanization.

The BTSP prefers habitats with mature cacti and enough vegetation to provide their seed-based diet (they also eat insects, esp during breeding and nestling season). It was a nice "compliment" to the yard to have the BTSP choose to call it his territory and decide to breed here.

Seems its not as easy as just showing up - in the three years that a BTSP has called the yard his territory (I assume its the same male, but we can never be sure unless we banded him), there have been only 2 years where a mate has shown up and they've bred. In fact, this year, I wasn't even sure if a female sparrow was in the yard (in this species, the male and female have the same plumage, which means that, unless you see two sparrows hanging out togther, you don't know you have more than one). Then, I was looking out the back door, and, lo - I saw it!! The baby black-throated sparrow!! The pic to the left is the first one I was able to snap of the chick. You can see that it still has that big-billed baby look. There is no black throat and the white eyebrow is just begining to form. The chick has the characteristic brown speckling that many baby birds have - great camo in the nest, in shrubs, and on the ground!

The pic on the right was taken just a couple days later. The chick has already developed the characteristic white eyebrows. The black throat won't appear until the winter molt. To the left is one of the babies (there ended up being 2 this year!) begging in a shrub. I heard the typical BTSP chirping; but this time it was particularly high pitched. Chasing down the sound, I found the baby perched within the safety of the many-branched creosote bush shrub, loudly begging for food. It would also flutter its wings rapidly. The pic isn't in focus - my cheap point-and-shoot camera couldn't focus very well with all the random branches. An example of why the baby uses the shrub for cover!

I sure hope this successfull nesting event means more black-throated sparrows in our yard many years into the future!

Quail Diaries: The Return of Lady Coop

She's back!! Yes, making a sooner-than expected visit to our yard was a top predator of our resident California quail (Callipepla californica) covies, a female Coopers hawk (Accipiter cooperii). Usually the coops are found in our town only in the cooler months of late fall, winter, and early spring. Otherwise, they live up in the higher elevations, within deciduous and coniferous forests. We very recently had a rare monsoon rainstorm; which brought a number of the mountain birds down to forage in our yard, including a brightly colored western tanager.

Hawks have what is know as reverse sexual dimorphism, where the female of the species is larger than the male. It is hypothesized that this has been an adaptation associated with diversification of feeding and prey-capturing. Females hunt for larger birds (such as mourning doves and quail) and males hunt for smaller prey (such as sparrows and larger songbirds). This means that it is usually the female coop who is a threat to the quail.

Coops are amazing hunters and are known for their comfort with running on the ground to pursue their prey. Here's another lady, last winter, who had chased some quail into the bushes (to the right). As you can see, she's looking into the bush, ready to chase. Don't worry, our little quail friends were safe!! (This time... actually, in the winter, the coopers hawk will hunt our yard up to 4 times a day!! I suspect its that often when her hunts are unsuccessful...) After I snapped the shot, the hubby (who was waiting for my Go) ran out and chased her away.
The presence of the Lady Coop strongly affects the covey behavior of the quail. Just before her arrival each fall, the quail have massed into one huge covey that wanders the neighborhood, relaxes in the shade, and call to one another across the acres. After a couple days of her incesent chasing, they break down into small, quiet groups that hug the shade, cautiously skurrying from shelter to shelter.
This was the first time that the juvenile quail who were born this season have met their most-feared predator... and they were definitely scared. I knew she was in the yard because I heard the adults make their alarm call for 30 minutes! See, I feel guilty now because I'm trying to learn the quail calls. There are many of them and some sound alike. The alarm call sounds oddly similar to the "lets eat" call... Took me a long time until I realized that something was up in teh yard. I look out the back door, and there she is, Lady Coop, just 20 feet from my face, waiting in a low branch for an unsuspecting victim to come eat the bird seed!!
Luckily, she was only present for a couple days this time. Then the summertime temps returned and Lady Coop must have high-tailed it back to the mountain! I wonder if she is one of our regular winter residents and knew exactly to come to our ash tree? I mean, she was perched 5 feet above the exact spot where we *always* throw out bird seed. How did she know that?
And, as a final parting shot, here's a picture of the super-family I mentioned before... As part of their daily wandering and circling through the yard, they regularly cross our "stream" (we dug the drainage, flood it with a hose, and planted native wetland vegetation). The quail moms especially love to take their chicks through the stream because the tall bunch grasses provide both cover and forage for her babies. Cute!

Out Standing in Their Field(s)

Field work, as glorious as it may sound....

Does it sound glorious? (I've always wondered that!)

... isn't always a walk in the park. In fact, that's usually what field work is NOT. I thought I'd share with you a few fun photos taken over the years and over different terrain. One theme I'd like to express - always make the best of everything. And be prepared for the worst!

One of the favorite pastimes of field biologists is the pursuit of a good locality for writing field notes. A well-formed rock outcrop can make my day!! (If you note the wind-swept look of the trees above and the bandanna covering my face, you'll have to pretend to understand what the photo can not show - its really windy there. One of the benefits of laying low is being out of the wind... so a nice seat, low to the ground, is a great find!).

The desert presents its own set of challenges - paramount is the grabbing of any shade to be had. To ignore such an opportunity is to be lazy. And who wants to be lazy when it comes to comfort seeking?

And... lest you think we professionals never slip up... I've got the proof!
Not to worry, we always carry a little shovel (and squares of wood AND metal plates called "Tow In A Box" AND tow straps. Yes, and we have used them all through the years!). This road was just graded, so when we pulled off on the side to check out some stuff... the car didn't have much luck with the soft, moist berm. We got outta that one fast.

Because I get paid to hike doesn't mean I'm always very graceful about it! Sometimes the best way to get down a steep, talus-ey outcrop is to use yer head. Which means using yer @ss!

By the way, the rock-hugging green and red plant behind me is the urn-flowered alum root (Heuchera elegans), a California rare plant. In part, it is because the plant grows in a very limited geographic location. In part - it doesn't get reported often since it grows on steep, talusey slopes - places were most people don't find themselves sliding around on their @sses...

Getting that perfect shot is not a glamorous job at all; but we gotta do what it takes!


(yes, I do realize this pic actually displays my @ss even more prominently than the previous...)



And never miss a photo opportunity with an old, rusted out car!


Well... maybe not EVERY opportunity...


(thanks to my cousin, M, for the photo!)


Bye y'all!

Christian the Lion

I recommend you watch with the sound on. The sappy music absolutely does the image justice!

Well, there's a first time for everything, and here is my first post of an image that is not mine. Of course, I would say that it is very fitting for this honor. Its a wonderful story that has been resurrected through the medium of the internet, YouTube, facebook, blogs, and everything else. I'm happy to have it here too...
This brought tears to my eyes!! If you want to read more about the story of Christian the lion, here's the link that my hubby found. Its a great story: Christian the Lion.

Photos of Wildflowers From Over 2 Months Ago

My, how time flies! And we've been very busy. Lots and lots of work this year. This is good, since its been a pretty decent rain-year, and therefore many native plants have sprouted and flowered. Here are more photos of wildflowers from one of our work sites on the north end of the Antelope Valley (that's the same valley where the famous Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve is located). I took these photos over 2 months ago, and I'm finally finding the time to post them for you. And, rest assured, I have been snapping many more great shots in the mean-time!




We were working in an area that was composed of soils with lots of clays. Many of the California Floristic Region flowers love these soils, such as California Goldfields (Lasthenia californica), the little yellow flowers in the photos here.


Another amazing clay-loving flower that we found was the Mariposa lily (Calochortus kennedyi). Brilliant! Being a bulb, this plant appears to prefer tough-to-dig clay soils so that digging mammals like gophers cannot eat their succulent underground flesh. I tried to take a photo that could impress upon everyone the awesome display that these lilies form. There's a flowering lily about every 10 feet in some areas. Unfortunately, cheap digital cameras just can't capture the subtlety and drama of this flower.

And another clay lover - a little onion, Allium denticulatum. This little onion absolutely covers the ground in some areas. These photos only partially capture the magic of being amongst a field of blooming onions. Oh, and they bloom for a couple weeks, and are gone. Like the goldfields, the mariposa lily, and all other desert annuals. They are but brief visitors to our world!

Turtle Time !!

A tortoise is a turtle, but a turtle is not always a tortoise... Okay. Now that we got that one over with!!!

[See, they're all turtles, but a tortoise is a turtle that is terrestrial. Turtles can be further defined as tortoise, "aquatic turtle" or "semi-aquatic turtle".] I always call them turtles because I prefer the sound of that word. It just rolls off the tongue better!

I've been amassing photos and movies of the tortoises, but in an effort to not take too too many photos (they are so cute in their odd way!), I don't have a lot of recent pix. Its never difficult, though, to get nice shots of turtles eating. They love eating! This spring, with all the nice native annual plants we saw this year, we were able to gather up a tasty buffet for our pet desert tortoises. Desert tortoises have been found to selectively prefer legume plants like the ones in these photos. Above, Megagodzilla is eating an Astragalus didymocarpus. To the right, Godzilla (left) is joined by Gamara. They're eating Astragalus and Lupinus bicolor. These leguminous plants are known for their nitrogen-fixing capabilities. This also benefits desert tortoises... when tortoises eat legumes, their bodies do not require as much water to metabolize the food. This is a great benefit for Mojave Desert tortoises, which experience rain only for very short times in the early spring.

And here we have Bruiser, one of our young African spur-thighed tortoises, looking very tortoisey... wouldn't you agree? Our four spur-thighs are now 5 years old, and just about to hit their growth-spurt age. They are a little larger than a grapefruit, but will grow to be over 100 pounds as adults!! (that'll be another couple decades, since they live to over 100 years old.) Next to Bruiser on the photo below is our runt, little Monster X. He even behaves like a runt - he's picky with his food, easily scared by the larger tortoises, and very very easily distracted. Usually I feed him separately from the others. Oh, by the way, these turtles are too young to know their gender, so I'm referring to them in the universal Him. In this photo, you can see the "spurs" on the thighs of Bruiser's back leg (the little horns). They protected the tortoise from predators when they lived amongst the mega fauna of Africa - lions and hyenas.

I'll leave you with a video I've called, "Tortoise Feeding Frenzy" As you can see in the movie, these tortoises live up to their names - Merciless Eating Machines. They nearly inhale their food! Spike, the final of the four to enter the movie, displays a funny turtle quality - linear movement. These tortoises seem to insist on moving forward in a strait line. If that means climbing over something... so be it... Seems like maladaptive behavior for something so clunky; but they've survived with this behavior (we believe) for hundreds of thousands of years, so it must benefit them somehow!! The video also shows little Monster X (aka Runtlinger) and his picky eating style and easy distract ability. He barely eats anything while the other tortoises inhale their greens.

Check out those melons!

This is a coyote melon (Cucurbita palmata). It can be found in the desert, usually growing on a bank alongside a seasonal drainage. Coyote melons develop later into the year, flowering and fruiting after every other plant has dried out. Its always strange to walk in the dried-out desert vegetation and come upon a green melon plant with its HUGE yellow fruits. They're a real handfull, ya know what I'm sayin' ?!?

Happenings In the Yard

We had a couple of warm days here - it got up to 106 F in the shade!! Came on pretty suddenly, and some of the critters were breathing hard (esp. some warblers, like the Townsend's warbler, which travel through our valley on their migrations, but live up in cooler temps in the summer). The cacti are in full bloom (some already past bloom), and I thought I'd share a couple of the ones with spectacular magenta blooms.

Got a nice shot of Super Mom with her chicks (her myth is explained in my last entry). If you look carefully, you can see how some are larger than others (story below). I've been watching her, to try and understand her "super" style... and I see that she's a real leader and a herder... she keeps the babes in line and moving along, as this photo is evidence. I can count 13 chicks in this photo, and I know more were hanging out to the side with pop.

And, with the warm weather, out come the desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis), who are endemic to our yard. One of my favorite residents is Stumpy Joe, who can be identified by the fact that his long back toes are no longer present. He either lost them through fighting with other males (or females?) or from getting away from predators (road runners, gopher snakes, red racer snakes, etc.). As you can see, he's also re-growing the tip of his tail. What a scrapper! Joe could have been living in our yard for years... but we have so many iguanas now, its difficult to truly tell them apart (some - the babies and the gravid females - are easier to identify than others). Its only through his lost toes that I can tell him for who he is. And what a character! Truly a ruler of the yard. These photos are from when I came upon him as he was hanging out on the tallest mound in our yard - a real territory treasure. And he's the one who commands it. Stumpy is fun to feed meal worms (got a photo of the hubby feeding Joe last year posted on the blog) and he's always willing to run up to us and see if we've got a treat for him. I ran out of meal worms and fed him some creosote flowers instead. He enjoyed them... but they certainly aren't as exciting as meal worms! Here's another shot of Joe. How can you NOT love that face?

And to close us out, I'll give ya another photo of another nice cactus flower. Its a beauty!! The yellow is so brilliant, our semi-cheap digital camera just can't deal with it - that's a common problem when photographing cacti flowers. Those pink petals just freak the camera out! Maybe its time to learn the Program Mode of the darned thing.

Quail Diaries - The Legend of Super-Mom

Well, I'm a week late for the official "Mother's Day" holiday... but anyone who knows me is aware that I'm not very good with these dates... I wanted to write about our tortoises; but the quail have been so active, and I've gotten such great photos of them... we'll focus on Super Mom first. Yes, there she is to your left... Super Mom. As I had written in a previous entry, the California quail (Callipepla californica) that naturally occur in our yard are known for communal raising of their chicks - at times, a couple parents will join forces and raise their babies together. This greatly reduces predation, a big problem for both the babies and adults - quail are highly desired by the predators out there, and are constantly wary.
The quail in our yard seem to be "figuring out" this technique, and, for some reason, this mom has ended up with the babies from three (3!) families! She's got about 18 chicks following her (impossible to get a real count on 'em) and she and the dad have been leading these babies through our yard for the past couple weeks. I don't know how she ended up with all of them... somehow they imprinted on her and her chicks, not their own mom. If you look carefully at the photo here, you can see that some chicks are almost twice the size as others. Its a little tough to see; but its there... We hope momma can handle the responsibility... We hope some mommas start helping (there's a family that lost their babies to her, and are walking around with a single baby chick... why they don't pair up with Super Mom, I'm not sure...

Here's another fun photo of a different mom with her chicks (we've got about 3 or 4 families in the yard right now, never mind the counting mess that Super Mom has created). I opened up the back window-door shade at 6 this morn, and saw this very plumpy female resting in the yard. Look closely, and you'll see all her chicks scrunched in, trying to stay warm under her feathers. Cute!!! The quail used to be very difficult for me to photograph. They were scared of the camera lens (the Big Eye)... but each successive generation has adjusted and habituated, so that this mom allowed me to snap several shots.

And finally, lazy days and resting babies!! Here are 3 chicks from

Super Mom, resting in the sun. They love to lay down on their sides and stretch out their massively big feet.

Native Desert Plants

I've got so many photos of so many pretty flowers, I don't know where to begin! There are certainly more than I want to add in a single post, so stay tuned for more...

Let's begin at the begining of the spring... with a monkeyflower, Mimulus bigelovii. This flower likes to grow in wetter spots. In the desert, that means along the edges of seasonal washes. Just that little extra bit of water that flows in the shallow channels adds enough moisture to support these beautiful flowers. This plant usually fades and disappears rather quickly in the spring (unless the wash is pretty big), so its a nice one to come upon when you can. Its flower color really sticks out amongst the greys and mellow greens of the desert.

The desert calico (Loeselliastrum matthewsii) is a great one to find. The intricately-colored flowers are a favorite amongst photographers.

The desert lily is a great flower that "appears" a little later in the spring. You find evidence that they'll be there much earlier, but it takes a little while for the lily to flower. And when it does... wow, what a sight!! The best part (and too difficult for me to capture in a photo) is the image they create when they flower across the landscape - bold blotches of white as far as the eye can see! Before they flower, ya think there really aren't that many of them... and then POW - they're everywhere!! (I mean, everywhere where they occur - it takes a certain type of soil to keep a lily - the bulbs are edible treats to digging critters like gophers, and the lilies generally survive best where the soil has clays to it - which makes digging much more difficult.)

And, to finish us off for this post, an attempt to show you just how amazing the desert dandelion (Malacothrix glabrata) can be across the landscape. These guys can be very common throughout the desert, and even grow along sidewalks and roads in our town. They prefer sandy zones, which the desert has quite a bit of... This was the view one day during a nice long walk we had. Its not easy to see, but the hill slopes in the background are all covered in yellow, much of it from these dandelions.


Happy Spring!!!

Scaley Skins

We were working out in a valley in the Mojave Desert called Johnson Valley. Many people know of it because they ride motorcycles and other ORVs out there. We were there looking for rare plants. When walking, you see a whole other world. The slow side of the desert.

Amongst some rocky outcrops, we saw the rocky-outcrop-dweller, the common chuckwalla (Sauromalus obesus). This one is a male because it lacks dark cross bands on its back. Chuckwallas are a fun lizard. They're big, bold, and curious. Makes for easy viewing.

Next, we found this desert horned lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos). Doesn't it look prehistoric?!? In this first photo, we posed the lizard. That way you can get a good look at its head and flat body. The flat, round (pancake-like) body is why they're also called horney toads... but they are reptiles, not amphibians.

The desert horney toads come in a variety of colors, which generally seem to camouflage with their backgrounds. This fellow had a strong red and black coloring to it, which perfectly matched the red and black lava rocks in its immediate locality. Pretty cool! Do you see the lizard in the photo to the right? Yup, right there in the center. This way, predators like roadrunners can't find them as easily.

And finally... my favorite photo of the day - a Mojave green rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus)! And I took this particular photo! (Usually the hubby takes the close up photos of the rattlesnakes.) This is the very first Mojave green I've seen. I've wanted to see them ... I've seen the Pacific rattler, the Panamint rattler, and the sidewinder. Now the Mojave. By the way, this is the most-common rattlesnake to bite, and it has the worst bite of all of them. Seems the juveniles aren't good at biting out the proper dosage and often overdose the victim on venom. Not good! Oh, and, by the way, this particular rattler was a youngster, told by the fact that it wasn't really very green (or so I've been told by those who know).

This leads to my farewell joke. Possibly my favorite within the Redneck genre: You know you're a redneck when your final living words are... ..."Hey guys, watch this!"

Spring Update

Busy busy busy!! And we just can't avoid that wind. Guess that's life.

I've been seeing the baby Costa's hummingbirds and they are very entertaining. One (some?) of them sits on the hummer feeder attached to the edge of the kitchen window sill and stares at me (washing dishes) for several minutes at a time. Intense staring. For a hummer to stand still for 30 seconds is rare. Several minutes is unusual - this tells me it must be one of the babies of this year, and its learning its environment. I do believe that this hummer is one of the babies. Its difficult to see in the photo, but it *is* smaller than the other Costa's adults. Its also a little duller and fuzzier.

We've also seen some Anna's hummers, which are unusual here (they occur more towards the coast) they usually leave by the heat of the summer. I like them because their gorgets are red.

The desert iguanas are starting to emerge... which means the heat of the summer is arriving!

I also wanted to share this photo. It is looking south, across the Antelope Valley, to the California Poppy Preserve. See that orange?? Those are the California poppies!! We're so close, and yet so far... At least I can share several other poppies that I've seen this spring. To the right is the small-flowered poppy (Eschscholzia minutiflora). The flower is much much smaller (desert stuff is like that...).



And this is a prickly poppy (Argemone munita), which also occurs in the desert, but this one likes washes. You can see a rodent hole behind this poppy. Probably a desert kangaroo rat, one of the cutest rodents, ever! I've never seen one, only their huge burrow holes (I have seen the more-common Merriam's kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami), which even live in our yard). The desert k-rats must be big, because the holes are about 4 inches across. Kangaroo rats are not rats. In fact, they have cute tufted tails. They have large legs and hop around like kangaroos. Very cute.