Cooper's Hawks and their Prey

I am obviously partial to predators. They have the charisma, the speed, the strength, the intelligence. We like to see all the animals here, but we love the carnivores, the bobcat and the coyotes, and the hawks (which I haven't mentioned yet). There is a wonderful, visible kind of balance here, and that is, for every predator a multiple of prey animals, which to me is a sign that this is a healthy and complete ecosystem. I have introduced to you most of the meat-eaters here, now let me say something about their prey.

Gambel's Quail probably weigh a couple of pounds and would make a sumptuous feast for one of us to eat. As I was writing that, I paused to look out my window and counted fourteen or fifteen walking by.   It was morning and they were emerging from their hiding places where they had roosted overnight on the bushier right side of our property. As I looked down on them, they were walking mostly to the left,  radiating outward to the areas where they would be foraging this day,

 Later the same day I was still thinking how impossible it would be to try to guess how many were in the yard. It was now early evening and I was sitting on the porch watching the twilight creep in, and from the brush  to the left of me quail began emerging from their day of foraging, speeding up when they walked over open ground with no cover. They came sometimes in pairs, or sometimes with however many survived, now fully grown, of their spring coveys. They were heading for the sheltered places where they would spend the night, which would be on my right. They were beginning to accumulate in numbers as they strode by me, and now I was seeing bigger clusters, twenty or more, and then it was  dark. 

These are the favorite prey of most of the Cooper's Hawks here, and Cooper's are certainly major predators (Tucson the city itself is overrun with Cooper's). One quail is probably a complete meal, which makes them a convenient size. The same can be said for White-winged or Mourning Doves, which the hawks also catch occasionally, but I suspect doves are faster flyers harder to catch than Quail. We see Cooper's Hawks almost daily in our yard, often engaged in wild chases. If they are successful, after mantling their prey (sort of wrapping their prey inside their wings) for a few minutes they carry it up to a long, twisted  mesquite limb in the middle of the yard that is parallel to the ground and up seven or  eight feet off the ground. There they stay for quite a while carefully plucking the bird, creating a small snow shower. Then they carry it off to a more secluded place to eat it. Or, less often (maybe it's when they are really hungry) they just pluck it on the ground where they caught it.

 

A typical conversation around here:

"Hey, there's a hawk out there."

"Up in the plucking tree?"

"Yes, and be careful how you pronounce it." 

 

 

 Bobcats

Along the north edge of Tucson run tall mountains which give the skyline its wild look. The first row of foothills are moderate enough that they can still be built on, and the houses are on steep streets connected by winding  roads and are considered desirable with their desert vegetation and wildlife on the very steepest lots. I mean why wouldn't you want to immerse yourself in the exotic desert and still have the  convenience of a city right at hand? Farther up where it is too steep for houses, natural corridors occur for the wildlife to come down from the heights.

 People are tolerant of, indeed proud of their wildlife, and the stars are the bobcats, which must be in astonishing numbers. You can't meet someone in such a neighborhood who won't brag he met a bobcat out walking or had one sleeping under a bush in his yard (no matter how small the yard), or has had them bring their kittens in to his yard where they can play safely.  

I suspect the cats go out of their way to find a person to live with. What the people and the cats there both seem to like are small yards with very tall hedges around them to give them a bit of privacy.

What you get from bobcats in return is beauty and grace and absolutely no trouble at all. Javelinas tear up and break everything, and they can kill a dog or boss you in your own garden. And we keep reading about people getting bitten by coyotes. Pack rats can nest in your car and ruin the wiring behind the dashboard, round-tailed ground squirrels will eat every flower you grow. I won't even mention Western Diamondbacks or bark scorpions. But from a bobcat only an offhand look before it gets interested in something else.

And think of it, they are the wildest looking of the common larger animals, with their surprisingly spotted skins, their burly legs, their large feet, the ease with which they go  up a tree, or leap a fence. We ourselves live at the farthest north edge of Tucson on small foothills which quickly climb Mt. Lemmon. We seldom go more than a week without seeing a bobcat, and they almost always leave a sharp image behind. Here are some of those images.

 

 This cat is as spotted as any cheetah.

 We were out on our porch  having dinner with friends when this cat walked in the gate, casually walked the length of the porch, and walked  out the other end.

 

 Here a momma cat walked in the back gate with her two kittens. We thought they were pretty cute.

 

 

We keep a dish of water outside our front-room window for any creature who wants a drink. I pulled the curtain open one boiling hot day and a bobcat was stretched out around the dish. It glanced at us once then went on staring outward. Note the white patches on the back of its ears. When it is teaching its young to hunt, its prey will not be alerted by its ears from the front, but the kitten following behind the mother will be able to keep track of her movements through the grass by following the bright lights on the back of its ears.

Pumpkin Composting

Mexican Long Tongued Bats, October 7th, 2019

Day and Night

 Day and Night

Night (one).

[We have something special with this blog, and three video blogs that go with it thanks to the tech savvy of my son (but which we being tech-unsavvy managed to publish in the wrong order!),.  I could never have done it. In the next three blogs we will be dealing with mainly nocturnal creatures, and for that purpose we have set up a motion-triggered camera sensitive to extremely low light. These are all movies so you can get a sense of how these animals move.]

Coyotes have been active lately. The last few days virtually every day a family party (the same family every time?) has trotted through our yard, and they cover the distance so swiftly they are already gone before I find what I did with my camera. This is in daytime, of course. They are also out at night, and maybe spend much more time in the yard. When we get a glimpse of them when the light is failing, they are not running together. They are widely separated from each other, often not  in sight of each other; I imagine (though I have never seen it) this is their strategy, coming on several paths, trying to  get a rabbit to run at a sharp angle from a close coyote and end up running right into one of the others.

 Night (two)

Also active right now (though we've only glimpsed them) are the Mexican Long-tongued Bats. These are nectar-drinking bats that would normally use their long tongues to drink the nectar out of flowers, but once they come up from Mexico into Arizona (with all its animal lovers) they immediately switch over to hummingbird feeders. We have half a dozen feeders up that we diligently fill every morning, and the next morning they are flat empty with a sort zoo-like smell smeared all over them. 

If we set up a strong flashlight on the windowsill in our bedroom that points at one of those round see-through plastic hummingbird feeders, when the bats are at their peak, it looks like Pearl Harbor with the Japanese Zeros circling at top speed. The bats are circling with every moment one or two one of them pausing with its mouth at one of the multiple feeding openings, and if we are watching through our binoculars we can see the long whip-like tongue shooting around inside the bowl. The odd-thing is, they stop for only a fraction of a second, before flying on.

I just happened to be reading a nature magazine which brought up this very thing. It turns out that these bats, because of the design of their wings, are unable to hover in the air. To stay aloft they must constantly be moving forward. If they stop moving more than that fraction of a second, they will promptly fall out of the sky.

 Night (three)

The most notorious of the larger common animals are the Javelinas. They are like primitive pigs, something that should be painted on cave walls. They run around, usually at nights, in packs of a dozen or more. They are quarrelsome, bad tempered, potentially dangerous with their impressive tusks. Their favorite trick is to use their great strength to push over garbage cans, then pull out the contents and spread it all over the street. The reason they are so pig-like is that an early ancestor split in two, and those in the Old World evolved into the pigs that people have  since domesticated and carried all over the world, and those in the New World tropics have evolved into several species of Peccaries. The ones we have that have extended into the southwestern states are Collared Peccaries, named for a white band around their neck. Note, this was filmed during a rain shower.

When we first moved in here Cheryl's family came over from England to visit us for a couple of weeks, and almost every night the Javelinas (they go by their Spanish name here, the word for javelin, presumably referring to their tusks) came to visit us and mop up any birdseed, or newly planted plants, or anything remotely edible they could find, often taking a nap in the middle of the night, and waiting for morning to finish up, and they are so comical that they were perfect to entertain our guests.

But once our guests went home we decided that the Javelinas were doing just too much damage, digging up every new bush we had bought at the nursery and planted the previous day, or eating in one night the ten-dollar quail block we thought would be feeding birds for a week. So we had someone come in to put a guaranteed Javelina-proof fence around our garden.

 

Three Coyotes 2019/11/28

 Day and Night

1. Day

Our daughter-in-law Heather (along with our four-year-old grandson Gareth) came by yesterday (Wednesday) and said she was going to to be leading an upcoming botanical tour on the top of the mountain and wanted to go up there today to check on some identifications, and why didn't we all go up together and take a picnic. It sounded good to us.

We drove up and found out the last thousand or so feet (of elevation) was still off limits after the fire, which meant we couldn't go any farther than the tiny community of Summerhaven. It's a collection of mainly summer houses where people go to escape the summer in Tucson. In one of the area's recurrent fires about fifteen years ago, it virtually all burned to the ground. Now it was completely rebuilt, and I imagine the people had some tense moments during this latest fire, which was threatening. But the firefighters worked heroically and managed to save all the houses. There is a hill that overlooks the community and offers a charming view of the vacation cabins squeezed into various crannies among tall trees. The hill top, called Inspiration Point, is a favorite place for Cheryl and me. We often come there to have a cup of coffee and enjoy the diverse birds, seemingly always migrating one way or other at this 8000-foot elevation.  

Today we drove straight down into the town, which follows a stream falling steeply down a ravine with many large trees on either side. Down at the bottom was a large picnic area and we picked a table. And the wildlife around us came to life and began moving toward us knowing there would be tidbits among our stuff. 

There are two very attractive high-elevation animals that we often get a look at running timidly away from us. For a long time I had desired to photograph them, but up to that moment I had only got poor pictures of them. On this day I had happened to sit down with my back to them. Now everyone at the table was shouting at me that they were all around me, and that one of them was was about to jump on my shoulder, and some other one was posing most beautifully. Well, I finally got myself wriggled around on the awkward cement table and there they were, and I took pictures at my leisure, until I got tired of photographing them and wriggled around to have my lunch. I had never gotten jaded by a new subject so quickly.

No, they were beautiful. Abert's Squirrel with its long ears and enormous graceful tail, and the tiny Cliff Chipmunk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague (continued)

I should explain my theme. At the beginning of the year we were told we were in the grip of a pandemic. At that point we put ourselves into lock-down. We paid someone to do our grocery shopping and deliver it; we do all our other shopping on line. We only went into town for doctor visits or to see our son and family. We stayed home or went up the mountain to our favorite places (if no one else was there). In other words we saw our family and we saw each other, period, and that just suited us. We are not particularly sociable, we don't care much for restaurants or that sort of thing. 

And then lightning started the Big-Horn Fire, and that was a cruel blow. Night after night we could look up into the mountains and they were in flames. All roads into the mountains were closed. It seemed to go on forever (actually, seven weeks). When at last it was put out, then more months went by with the roads still closed while they cleaned up the mess. 

Then, gradually, it was over, and we could go where we wanted. On those 110 degree days down here once more in less than an hour we could drive up to 8000 feet and 80 degree temperatures (it makes me have faith the plague will someday get over with too).

What I am trying to say is, some people are going stir crazy watching daytime TV. We are, in our little patch of land, right where we want to be, with who we want to be with, doing just what we would be doing anyway.  We recommend it.

Now let me go on describing it for you, and see if I can convince you. 

Here's a picture (taken from our house) of the fire from its closest approach.

Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague (continued)

 

I've started late, so I'm playing catch-up. But new things happen every day. Maybe I can do a little of each  at the same time.

 

What I am mainly doing now is trying to give the reader the background, and especially the cast of characters. I've said a word or two  about the bobcats, who are our favorites, and I will come back to them, probably several times. But this morning when I got up and looked out the window to have my first chance to see what seems to be going on in the back yard, as always the Gambel's Quail were also just getting up, appearing magically out of their nighttime hiding places. We have dozens and some of them go over to the quail block we have set up for them and get their first snack of the day, while the rest earnestly set off in couples or followed by lines of youngsters to head for whatever place they will be foraging. A lesser number of Desert Cottontails will also be setting out. If it is the right season they will go off in mad chases, then abruptly face off tensely, and one will charge the other, which will leap straight up in the air so that the charger will run underneath it, all in the name of love. There is actually is a technical name for it. They are "cavorting."

 

But this morning one of our "big" animals appeared, a family party of coyotes, two smallish ones, probably female and yearling, and then a large burly male. They usually come in twos or threes and we like to see their light springy steps, and in winter their heavy tails hanging straight down like wolves, not turning up like dogs. The quail can easily fly into a tree, and ignore the coyotes. The rabbits have vanished from sight, so the coyotes continued on into our next neighbor's land.

Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague, continued

 Let me say more about our house, which is so perfect for us.

It is located a few miles north of the city limits of Tucson on a cul-de-sac off the Catalina Highway. After about a mile the scattered houses of that highway end, and the road begins climbing steeply, winding its way through stupendous landscapes up to the 9000-foot peak of Mt. Lemmon. 

We have an open porch along the back of our house (facing away from, or "downhill" from, the mountain) and when we sit on the chairs along the porch we are overlooking our two acres of land which falls away and down a gently dropping terrain. The vegetation of cholla and palo verde and mesquite is simply what remains of the original Sonoran vegetation, which is the case for most of the other houses along the street with their own expansive backyards. When we first moved in we were slightly disappointed that our land included a lot of open bare earth, whereas other yards were solid impenetrable cacti and low trees. But now I recognize the advantage of our more open yard. There is little in the way of fences, so one person's yard runs into the next without obstruction, and we can see larger wildlife effortlessly enter one end of our yard, and watch it travel on through. Let me describe some of this "larger" wildlife.This is a desert, so animals are always grateful for water. Since we want to attract wildlife, we leave pans of water everywhere around the house. For instance there is a pan and a bird bath just outside the front-room window. We remember the shock one day when we looked out that window and saw two mule deer, appearing as tall as horses, looking back at us from just a few feet away. They were bucks, quite handsome with their antlers still in velvet. Our cat looked out the window at them, very grateful for once to be an indoor cat. 

 Every year now at some point two male Mule Deer have shown up with their antlers in velvet, and usually they hang around for several days to judge by the scat piled up in a distant corner of the yard. We don't know whether it is the same two, or just a coincidence. When one of us spots them approaching we shout "Make sure there's water in the bird bath!"

Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague

[Several years ago I stopped writing the blog I had titled "Sweating the Small Stuff." I am now re-opening that blog, but with a new chapter which I am calling "Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague."]

 

 

Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague

A few years ago I started writing a Nature blog, and kept it going for a few years. Then, as one does, I let it slip away. At that time we were living in Arkansas. I had been teaching English at Arkansas State University for some twenty years and was now retired. Indeed, by now I had been retired for twenty years. We liked it there, but it had occurred to me that we could now live anywhere we chose. Mountains? Deserts? Costa Rica? Anywhere that had the most wildlife, because that was both of our lifelong hobbies. We had come to Arkansas as bird watchers but slowly were being won away to the study of insects. Let me make a confession: If you go very far with birdwatching, then you have to get into photography. I got an SLR camera and a 400mm lens, but soon I came to realize that every bird in the world had already been photographed numerous times, and photographed with a skill I could never match, every vane in the feathers standing out.

Well, a friend got me into photographing butterflies, and there was my breakthrough. I got a macro lens, which allowed me to take pictures inches away. This was before everybody was doing this, and suddenly you could takes pictures of the jaws of tiger beetles, the fangs of jumping spiders,  and enlarge them so they filled the screen, denizens from Mars, and you could go on taking pictures for the rest of your life and go on finding new subjects. With a little care you could take pictures as fresh and new and publishable as the next person. Instead of my bulky SLR, Cheryl got something that  looked like a cigarette box and took it out of her pocket, and focused from an inch away. You could photograph the scales on the wings of a butterfly. After the butterflies there were dragonflies, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers; bumble bees, and on and on.

After several years of this, we began to see we had been accumulating a variety of insect images, mainly (because behavior was our  interest) filmed at the moment they were expressing the behavior that allowed them to survive, to find their food, to avoid being themselves food, to find their mates, and I saw that it might make a book. So we put together the best of our images (it came out to be almost exactly 50 % mine and 50 % Cheryl's) arranged the species so that they demonstrated their ploys: mimicry,  camouflage,  aposematic ("warning") coloring, and all the others, writing a little paragraph about each one because they are so fascinating, and we put together a little book (100 Insects of Arkansas and the Midsouth (etaliapress, 2018, Little Rock AR]) that became locally popular.

 Those of you who remember my blog will remember that though we lived in Arkansas and took most of our pictures there, Gawain (our son) and Heather had moved from the Bay Area to Tucson. We found that we were visiting them two or three times a year, and more and more blogs were based on what we saw in Tucson. Cheryl began searching in Zillow and saw a house which looked just like what we were after. She told Gawain and Heather, they checked it out and said it was perfect, and we had better come quick, someone else was bidding on it. We left Arkansas the next day.

The truth is, with our book done, we  had done our work in Arkansas. We didn't want to just repeat it. We wanted to start something new, and here is our first step: to reopen our blog, but this time in Arizona.

The trouble is,  a couple more years have now gone by, and I haven't been able to think of the first word yet. 

Normally what you would do is tell about your first discovery at the new place, and then the next, so that your adventures would  come to the reader at the same time they came to you. But the longer you go without sending a report, the farther behind you get. I feel like I keep dropping the new gem off the taffrail of a ship, and it is quickly drifting out of sight.

Well, so let me just start.

The other day, for instance,  I got up in the morning and looked out the window, and saw a bobcat standing outside our back gate

"Cheryl, there's a bobcat trying to get into the back gate."

"Two bobcats," she corrected."

By the time I got back with my camera, it was three, a momma on the ground, and her two kittens cavorting on the gate.

 

It's always a banner day when these graceful cats come by, but three at once goes beyond everything.

[There it is: I've started my blog].