The Coming Year

I finished my last blog bemoaning the fact that the special birds, the ones we had fed and tamed all winter, now that spring has arrived have deserted us without a backward glance. A fiery purple-faced Costa's Hummingbird that had been coming several times a day to our feeder, was the last to go.

 

Well, on reflection I decided I was going too far. I had forgotten one of the most dramatic, most faithful birds, an all-year bird, the tamest (it will sit in our laps while it swallows meal worms we give it), and, at the end of the season it will bring its young-of-the-year to show them how to collect the free-meal worms; the bird that is most enjoyable for visitors to watch from closeup as it races around under our feet: Our Road Runner. I will indeed be back talking about it because this year it was a pair and they showed us their whole courtship and now have built their nest in a knot of mistletoe over our front door. We will want to follow all the developments.

And as it happens, the first new creature of the year running towards us to take meal worms from our fingers is not a bird but a reptile: a beautiful Spiny Lizard.

I'm quite sure it was one returning from last year, as it already knew where to go to get the meal worms. And the first of our Gila Monsters has come out of hibernation, perhaps as we were looking at it, and we watched it taking a monstrous drink, perhaps its first drink of the year. So far we haven't learned how to feed them, but judging by last year they will hang around anyway. We hear that at this time of year, counting on the fat stored in their tail, they are less interested in food, and more interested in finding a mate.

And of course who knows what totally unexpected birds or reptiles will show up. I should know that. That's the real fun.