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.

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.