Spring Critters in the Desert

We're supposed to be outdoors, working today... but there's a front coming through, and the winds are up. Not only that, but the project/area that we're in is associated with windmill farms (read: that place will be even windier than anywhere else). Now, since we're supposed to be experienced field workers, we've learned a thing or two about working in the wind => it sucks (and the hubby often ends up with a sinus infection). If we have to work with others and can't change the schedule, we're now experienced enough to dress for the weather. Here we are last year, when we were working in the same area, just a different project. A friend took the photo and called it "Desert Bandits" because everyone thought we were so silly to wear those face coverings... well, by the end of a month of working in the wind, a couple folks sheepishly whispered that they wished they had those face coverings!!

For this day, we were just scheduled to work with ourselves, so we opted out of the outdoors for the day. I consider it operating costs. You see, the desert, esp the Mojave is known for its wind. We're on the cusp between the California coast and the Great Basin inland. The temperature difference between these regions creates a huge pressure differential which, in turn, creates some pretty big winds. Hence the wind farms. Its a fact of the region, and if you're going to live amongst it, you learn not to deny its reality and its power (hence the wind farms!).

Today I'll share with you a couple fun critters that we found nearly a month ago. The high levels of rain that some regions of the desert recieved were great for much of the wildlife and plants. We've been experiencing chronic shortages of rainfall, and its creating stress on everything. Usually when we think of desert reptiles, we think of hard-scaled creatures like the desert tortoise and lizards. But, when conditions aren't as difficult - at night - there are other reptiles that make their appearances - such as this fellow, the western banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus). Yes! A gecko in the desert! On the ground behind our friend you can see a shiny metal object. That's the discarded muffler which the gecko was found underneath (actually, it has a nice, humid burrow under the muffler, which provides its delicate skin even greater moisture in the harsh desert habitat). My coworker found the gecko. Personnally, I didn't expect anything. We were on the edges of a desert town and this was one of the offroad dumping spots where people love to discard old car parts, sofa's, etc. I was just annoyed. My coworker kept working - and found life! See, the desert isn't all that deserted.

Here's a "Where's Waldo" exercise for you. Look into this photo. Do you see anything other than rocks? Look into the center. See the round "rock"? That's a baby tortoise!! Talk about good camo! This leads me to another discussion. My brother was just visiting a couple months ago and asked me, "Why does every single road have fences alongside it?"... Yup. Its a myth of the West that there are wide open places. I mean, there are, but you first have to get through that barbed wire fence to get at it. Why is this?? Well... first off, consider that its private land and the person is trying to exclude others from getting on there - either to dump garbage, hunt on it, mine it, drive an off-road-vehicle (ORV), or graze their livestock.

Otherwise, a heck of a lot of land out here is public land - U.S. Bureau of Land Management land (yours and mine, but leased out for "Multiple Use"). Its those multiple uses that require the fencing. Don't forget that a mere 50+ years ago, everything was heavily grazed for livestock (cattle and sheep). Those animals aren't like our impression of horses - grazing on grass. They also subsist on eating shrubs... and in the west, they have to, because that's what they're grazed on. Recent laws put into effect by Pres. Bill Clinton right before he left office addressed the issue of grazing on public lands in the southwest, decreasing the number of livestock that can be grazed per acre on BLM land. Still, however, the land is grazed. You might not ever see a live animal out there, but believe me, the land is being grazed. They now just usually ship the sheep herds from location to location throughout the deserts. And if the sheep aren't there - wild horses and burros still are. I seldom see them, just their tracks.

In addition, we've still got major amounts of ORV riders, and the numbers increase daily. These folks are usually supposed to stay on trails and generally are not supposed to cross highways... but nothing is perfect. I know the fences are also supposed to restrict ORV's from crossing the road just anywhere. I'm sure its also road safety, so yahoo's don't run off the highway to do donuts out in some playa by the side of the road either.

But, most importantly (to me), a new trend for these fences is to keep desert tortoises from wandering onto the highways. I mean, a tortoise looks like a tank, but put that little fellow next to even a Geo Metro, and, well, there's no contest. The one time a Geo is a big car!! As a mitigation measure on many highway and utility corridor projects, the company is also now required to install tortoise-fences on these road-side barbed wire fences. A tortoise fence is just an 18-inch tall length of hardware cloth that is attached to the fencing and slightly buried (no tunneling beneath!). Tortoises are notorious wanderers and have often been observed near roads (in addition, road surface run-off generates larger plants just alongside roads, which is called an "attractive nuisance" that entices tortoises to be near roadsides). It is suspected that these fences are saving the lives of hundreds of these critically endangered species. Little "Waldo" shown above was found just a mere 1/4 mile from Interstate-15, a 6-lane highway that I have NEVER seen empty. Although Waldo is most-likely too young to wander, here is Waldo's buddy, Wally... found nearby and just 1/2 mile from I-15. There is no doubt in my mind that Wally's life is much much safer thanks to the efforts of people to have these fences installed and maintained.

Costa's Hummingbird Chicks

Welcome to our hummingbird world! We currently have 4 hummer feeders in our yard, and are looking to put in 2 more. We have also planted a lot of hummingbird-friendly vegetation (remeber my YouTube video, Costa's hummingbird on penstomens?) - more on that in the future... In the past couple years, the hummer population in the yard has exploded! We generally have Costa's hummingbirds (Calypte costae), but occassionally we've seen/heard a black-chinned hummer (Archilochus alexandri), although they usually occur farther east. Everywhere you step in the yard, you either hear hummingbirds, or you get "buzzed" by one as it whips past your ear. They're great fun to watch, and I'll write more about them in the future...

But this spring has had a great suprise: one of the hummers built her nest in clear view of our kitchen window!! She built the next in a mesquite tree, which doesn't leaf-out until late spring, so we had a clear view the entire time to observed the developement of the nest... and then the babies.

We first observed the female busy making her nest. She would even fly around the house and pick off cobwebs to use for her nest. Eventually, this is what we saw: two little beaks poking out of the edge of the nest.

While in house, I saw a couple great "family moments" that I took a photo of. The pictures were heavily zoomed, then cropped, so they aren't the greatest quality.

The entire chick development only occured for a couple weeks. The female built her nest in February (early!), we saw the first sign of babies around the 16th of March... and then, on the 2nd of April, we got home from a couple days in the field, and the babies had already fledged the nest!

This is the last photo I got of the chicks. I'm sure they're hanging

around the yard, waiting for handouts from mom, I just haven't

had the time to really look for them.

Springtime Wildflowers

I'm baaack! After a long pause, I'm ready for posting again! This time I'm going to try to write less, and post more often. We'll see how that goes...

The desert and parts of SoCal have been great this spring! There were patchy rainstorms, and flowers are depending upon that. The eastern Mojave Desert got some great fall monsoonal rains and good cold winter rains. Here are some shots near Baker, CA. For those of you not in the know... the verticle line in middle of the second photo - that's the Baker thermometer, the largest thermometer in the world! Oh yeah.

This is a spot north of Barstow, CA. They got rain in some of the higher elevations. This may not look very floriforous, but its very impressive in-person.

Isn't this one great?!? This is near the windmill pass east of Los Angeles. Plants that live in drier regions develope spiney hairs to protect themselves from herbivores. This gives them a nice "soft light" when back-lit from the sun. This spot is pretty amazing... I was going to post photos of it last year as an example of one of the ugliest places I've ever worked... then we returned this year... and the high rainfall in the LA region germinated all the flowers! Well... okay, I think you just have to see this! Here's a photo from last September:

San Gabriel Mountains

We're working up in the Angeles National Forest these days. ANF is comprised of the San Gabriel Mountains, a fault-lifted zone just north of the San Fernando Valley (the Valley Girls valley just north of Las Angeles). Being in the mountains is nice this time of year... but don't be too jealous. These mountains are steep, covered mostly with chaparral, and rather hot and dry.

There are still some nice critters and plants to be found, however, and we're doing our best to discover them.

This is a sagebrush lizard, which is uncommon. The male has the bright red under his chin, either to attract females or to threaten other males (or maybe me?). Who knows?

The plants aren't doing so well this year, as I've mentioned (drought year), but we've found one particular species that's just booming: the Mt. Gleason paintbrush (Castilleja gleasonii). Yes, the paintbrush, everyone's favorite, known for its brilliant red blooms and long-lasting flowering duration. This species is doing particularly well because its getting a little help from its "friends". You see, the paintbrush is a hemiparasite, which means that it derives part of its nutrients from its chlorophyllus leaves, and part of its nutrients from another plant (to which its attaches by the roots). This plant is a Forest Service Special Status and California Rare plant, which makes it especially exciting to find so many of them.

Here's a view of some of the earliest-bloomers - the chamise shrubs within the chaparral. The white dot in the background (on top of the far ridgeline) is the Wilson's Observatory. Its a landmark for the San Fernando Valley, something they can see on those (occassional) clear days. Speaking of clear skies, we had some clear ones when we were working up there, and got some views of Los Angeles at night. It was strange to be camping, and to have city lights so bright along the horizon. They just went on and on and on...

Cactus Flowers, Pt 4

We've still got cacti flowering in our yard! As the flowering season wears down, we're getting some of our more-varied cactus flowers (ie, not just "prickly pear" types of cactus). Now the "pencil chollas", and some of the more-mesic associated cacti are flowering.

This is a diamond cholla. Isn't it cool? The larger flower is very unusual. Its called a "cristate" form, which is actually a fusion of a couple of normal flowers.

The smaller flower is what it should look like - round and like a rose.

This is a mamillaria cactus. It is one of the cacti associated with mesic habitats, and is often found growing in bedrock shelves along small desert washes (which are often dry most of the year, yet still more-wet than other desert habitats). They are tiny and cute-as-buttons. They are often difficult to see because they are so tiny and white; but these bright pink flowers really bring them out.

This is one of my favorites. Also associated with desert washes, but these grow on the secondary floodplain, just above the stream channel. They are called Devil's club cacti... which leads to the question, "why are so many things in the desert named after the Devil and why are there no Fairies-and-Puppies cacti around?"


Cane cactus

Barrel cactus










And finally... some pencil chollas for you. These seem to be very tastey cacti. They are constantly being eaten by our tortoises, the ground squirrels, and rabbits.

Our Babies Are Growing... Legs!!

Life in the pond is going well. When we first met our little western toads (Bufo boreas), they were just mere masses of egg strings.

Then the hatching...

And now - metamorphosis!!!!

All of the eggs appeared to have been laid within a single 24 hour period, however, we've noticed that the tadpoles appear to mature at very different rates. Must be some evolutionary adaptation thing...


Here's one of our little critters, complete with back legs. (The focus is a little blurry because the camera seems to insist on focusing on the water surface... argh!)


The next step... front legs and development of air-breathing lungs! Here's a freshly-metamorphed toady, ready to face the big, big world. Pretty cute, huh? We've got these little hoppers all over our pond area now. Its so much fun to watch them roam the mud flats, eating insects I can barely even see.


I guess it might be appropriate to also show you a picture of our little pond. Vegetation from left to right: The light green shrub is coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis). We like this shrub a lot because it blooms in the fall, and so helps to provide year-round nectar for our local insects. Its a huge favorite of the butterflies, and we get an especially large number of Painted Ladies (Vanessa cardui). The low green veg in the middle is Torrey rush (Juncus torreyi). The tall green veg is cattail (Typha latifolia). The cattail just appeared once the pond area became regularly innundated (all other plants were brought in as seeds or in containers). The large skeleton in front of the cattails are good 'ol sunflowers (Helianthus annua). The sunflowers started as seeds we would spread, but now they re-seed themselves each year. We enjoy the sunflowers because the birds appreciate them so much. We've had flocks of goldfinches (Carduelis tristis) come through and feed off of them in the fall. In the back, behind the bridge (the shiney white thingey) is deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens). It started as just a couple bunches, but the stuff has become a monster and is sprouting up all over our stream bed. Its all we can do to dig them up and replant them in more-desired locations.
And finally... I'll leave you with a second toad video, "Tadpoles in a Pond, II". You may notice that there is a tadpole in there with back legs. Very exciting stuff!!

A Little Lizard Told Me...

...summer has arrived!

And with it, the emergence of our favorite lizards/iguanas, the desert iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis). These critters don't even emerge from hibernation until temperatures reach the mid-90's. According to my Peterson Field Guide, the desert iguana has a normal activity range at 107 F, and a max voluntary tolerance of 115 F. They are native to our area, and occur naturally in our yard. There used to be many more iguanas in our neighborhood, but development of new homes and removal of native shrubs has diminished the local populations. We don't think that peoples' pets disrupt the iguanas since their active temperature is so high, most domestic animals are seeking shade by that time of day.

To help themselves deal with the heat (because 115 air temperature is often over 125 F surface soil temp out here in the desert), the lizards will climb up into shrubs. This also helps them to get to their food, as desert iguanas are herbivores and eat leaves and flowers.

This, however does not stop them from enjoying a tasty meal worm or two. I buy meal worms from our local pet store and, once the temp gets good and hot, go outside in search of iguanas to feed. They recognize me now, and even run up to me the very first time I see them each summer, remembering tasty meals from the previous year.

In this photo, you can see me with 4 iguanas.








Here the hubby is feeding one particularly enthusiastic male that I have named Stumpy Joe. This is another photo of that same male with a juvenile iguana in the back.
You'll notice that this male doesn't have all his back toes. Normally, lizards have very elongated toes on their back feet. Either he lost them fighting with other males or evading some sort of predator (such as a road runner gopher snake or coachwhip snake).

This is a very pregnant female. She's loaded up with eggs, which she'll be laying any day now... leading to more and more iguanas in our yard. Yay!

Lastly, we have one of my favorites, an iguana I named Half-tail Willie. You can see that he lost his tail and has grown it back. In this photo you can also see his very long toes. You can also see the ridge of keeled scales down his back, an identifying mark for desert iguanas.