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' ?!?
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.
d 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.
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.
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.
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 o
ut amongst the greys and mellow greens of the desert.
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.)
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.
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.
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).
