October 30 -- First Snow Of The Season, Cloud Iridescence, and A Request for A Photo...

Though I didn't "do" much as the weather was iffy, a lot happened...It got cold during the night; it was about 62 inside Faranuf as I hadn't turned on the heat pump, and the weather change occurred nearly overnight. It was in the middle 40's around 6am down here at 4700 feet, so just around sunrise I took a look up canyon to the high Chiricahuas, around 8000 feet. And I saw --

Just a light dusting -- but snow nevertheless. And it didn't last very long, a few hours at most as the storm system was already breaking up -- so I was lucky to get this photo. But once again, I got this view from my back deck, using my 100-400 lens with a teleconverter; an amazing view, especially for me as I've never lived in an area where snow could fall on my house -- or 15 miles away. As I'd mentioned, the storm was breaking up -- 

And I wanted to get one more photo of the snow-dusted high Chiricahuas, this time using the 500mm lens, so -- 

Phenomenal. I'm just lucky I bought these lenses before I came here, and have had them for around 6 years now. I could never have afforded them today as they're now "Mark II" models and cost thousands of dollars more than what I paid for the "Mark I"s. 

As the sun rose and broke through the cloud layer, I looked over to Portal Peak, which I've taken photos of previously; sunlight was hitting a cloud above it, and low clouds were swirling around the peaks --  

As the sun rose higher in the sky, the clouds lifted, and Cave Creek Canyon's rock formations were bathed in light ---

A little later, I went out on the front deck to check out the cloud formations during the breakup of the storm (which really wimped out in our area, meteorological prognosticators notwithstanding). I noticed something in the sky; it seemed to come more into focus depending on where I was standing. so I took a photo of it -- 

When I posted the photo, some called it a "Sun Dog" -- but it's not. Sun Dogs are near the sun, usually on either side of it, and this was quite a ways away. I checked online -- what would be do without its immediate access to information? -- and discovered it's called "cloud iridescence". When clouds are thin and have similar size water droplets, diffraction from the sun can make them shine with colors like a corona -- and in fact, the colors ARE corona fragments. "Cloud iridescence" is usually seen when a cloud is forming and the water droplets at the beginning are all the same size. So the next time you see this, remember that it's not a Sun Dog, but rather "cloud iridescence". Cumulonimbus clouds, solar pillars, not cloud iridescence -- amazing weather here on the east side of the Chiricahuas; it's certainly never boring.. 

OK,  on to the story of my "photo request". A few days ago I received an e-mail from a friend who used to work for BirdNote, a radio and online program dealing with -- you guessed it -- birds. I've given BirdNote some of my photos to use, so was not too surprised when someone there said there was a person who wanted to get in contact with me, and could I please give them my e-mail to forward to this person. Nothing unusual in that...So a few days later I get an e-mail saying he saw a photo of mine -- a Cactus Wren -- used on BirdNote and wanted to do a painting of it. He included samples of his work, comparing them to the original photos -- and he was GOOD. He even mentioned that he'd done a painting from a photo in National Geographic. He ended the e-mail with "Sincerely, Bobby Goldsboro." A small voice went off in my head, saying "Hmmmm..." (I fortunately don't get those small voices very often.) I checked his name on Wikipedia -- and he was BOBBY GOLDSBORO, the singer/songwriter of hits from the 60s and 70s. I further read that he was now known for his paintings -- and he was asking l'il old me to do one of mine!  I sent him an e-mail back, asking him which Cactus Wren photo he'd like to paint, and it was this one --- 

I have to admit it's one of my favorites, too. I said that I'd find the original so he could have a hi-resolution copy to paint by -- but unfortunately I didn't have the original anymore, only this one from the Web. As of this morning of October 31, I'm still waiting to hear back from him...

Dinner was at my friends Mark and Lori's place, Casa Conrad. White bean chili -- de-LISH!  Then watching videos of their birding adventures in Trinidad.. and another adventure-filled, full of surprises day was done. 

Where was I last year on October 30? Why, doing a great hike up at eastern Sierra's Convict Lake -- 

October 29 -- The Return Of The Coues Deer Family

There was a storm due to come in (but it wimped out) so the sunrise was blah. But there was a near-full moon, momentarily obscured by passing wisps of clouds, so I got out my 500 f/4 lens, braced it against a back deck railing, aim the lens up, and --

It was still a bit dark, so without the sun it was hard to capture the passing clouds. I got an early phone call; my friend Helen was on the road to Tucson for a 2-day class, and was calling to let me know there was lightning off to the northwest, and that it might be coming Portal way. She knew I was "into" lightning photography, so I got my camera and tripod ready -- and nothing. Nothing all day. Which was ok, as capturing lightning during the day is a challenge, as it is of course brighter than during the night, so if you keep the shutter open you'll end up with massive overexposure. What you really need is a lightning "trigger" that opens up the shutter when it detects a lightning strike -- which I don't have, but come to think of it, I just might check online... 

At around 8am I glanced out the back sliding glass door -- and saw the Coues deer family; they were drinking at the water feature which, if you remember, is the original one that I'd planned to dismantle, but the deer shied away from using anything that looked different, so I restored the original. And now they're back. If I opened the sliding glass door they're hear it and go back into the brush -- which they did the day before -- so I shot through the glass. (And I'd pushed the screen door open at sunrise, which I do every day so I don't have to shoot through that, too.) They saw my motion, but didn't seem to be particularly disturbed, so I got some good photos. And the glass was fairly clean, too. 

As you can see, there is Mom and 3 fawns. After posting the photos on Facebook I found out that does usually only have 2 fawns at a time, usually twins (or looking alike), and I believe that's the two in the middle. The one off to the left is in all likelihood an "adoptee" whose real mother may have somehow been killed, and started tagging along with the family. Does may reject the orphan, or, as seems the case here, accept it, or at least not push it away. But the little tyke does seem to be somewhat apart, and looks bewildered and a bit lost when the 2 fawns and Mom head back into the brush, especially if they've been startled and take off like a shot. So because of his "outsider"status he's my favorite of the family -- and how can you resist a face like this -- 

Though I sometimes cringe when I hear the word, it's appropriate here -- CUTE!  And I just hope he makes it.. Here's my favorite photo of the Family, with one of the fawn twins peering out beneath Mom -- 

A lot of my FB "friends" are worried they might get shot by hunters. Helen said hunters have to stay at least 1/4 of a mile from an inhabited building, and have permits only to hunt on, say, BLM or Forest Service land. As this is my private property, so long as they stay on it, and don't go wandering off, they're safe. Or at least safe from humans; mountain lion has been seen nearby, and hikers I'd encountered up the South Fork road said they'd come across a fresh "fawn" kill on the trail to Silver Peak, which I'd done 2 days before. And since they sensed the mountain lion was still around -- and so was the bewildered mom -- they scurried back down the trail lickety-split. As the old adage says, Nature Red In Tooth And Claw... 

Though the reports indicated rain,, the morning was clear with just a few clouds, and though the rain didn't hit the ground, it was raining up in the sky -- 

Virga -- rain that evaporates before hitting the ground. And, as some clouds can look like animals or people, these look like jellyfish -- at least to me. Floating jellyfish or not, they're a beautiful sight. 

The rest of the day was -- unexciting. I was waiting for the rain which never came, but it was windy and "threatening" rain, which never delivered except for a brief period. During a sunny spell I went out to do some weeding, digging out the beginnings of Russian thistle (think tumbleweeds) in near the well house. Speaking of which, the outside is made of wood strips which is places are starting to curl up or crack from the constant sun, and the nails are getting pulled up, so I hammered the nails back in, and hoped the well house structure would last another year or two. With the existing well, pump and soft water system -- along with the electrical system -- it would be a pain to replace it, so I just may replace the boards when they start to rot. Besides, you never know what creepy-crawlies may be in those walls, and I'd rather not disturb them just so long as I don't see them...

No sunset, no rain -- and another day is done. 

UPDATE: I always try to give out accurate information in my posts. I'd mentioned that I believed one of the fawns was an "adoptee" as does usually only have 2 at a time. A friend of mine corrected me, saying that does do not "adopt" an orphan and that the doe has only 2 teats, meaning that if there are 3 fawns one becomes the "runt" of the litter and is smaller than the others, and also might be somewhat "rejected" by the rest of the family. So naturally, in the interests of accuracy, I checked online to see what the "truth" was. (How we ever survived with just a library to get info I do not know.) So I read in many online forums that does in fact have 4 teats, not 2, and can have from 1 up to 3 fawns at a time. So with that number of teats there is, theoretically at least, no reason for there to be a "runt" of the litter, as there are, er, "plenty of teats to go around". AND there are been documented, and videotaped, instances where does have taken in orphaned fawns. So who knows what "my" Coues deer family's story is -- but what I have related may be one possibility.

October 28 -- A WOW Sunrise And Sunset, And A Costume For The Halloween Party

It was another day of meteorological  "bookends", starting with a predawn color spectacle --

Zoomed in, a few minutes later -- 

The color then disappeared -- and came back about 20 minutes later -- a rare "2-fer" -- 

And finally, just before the official sunrise -- 

Amazing -- once again (well, twice again). Even the post-sunrise clouds have their own, high-atmosphere beauty -- 

One of the perennial occupations in a rural area is weeding. "Industrial strength" weeding requires the weed whacker; today it was just the Fiskar's weed puller. It's a neat device where you place it over the weed to be pulled, push it into the ground with a lever where prongs underneath go around the weed, then you hold the lever down with your foot as you lift the weed up and out, usually with the root attached. I have these short yellow flowers growing near my outside heating unit; they're of a type that are called DYC plants, short for Damned Yellow Composites as they're a combination of flora (I looked it up on Wikipedia, where there's an actual entry for it). There are larg rocks near the weeds, in a "decorative" line around the heat pump, which weighs about 2 tons. Those rocks, with the DYCs for cover, are a good place for rattlesnakes to hang out in. So I was pulling up the weeds VERY carefully, and thank goodness the area was snake-free, and another section around Farauf was exposed to lessen the chance of a rattlesnake ensconcing itself next to the house. And the DYCs, pretty flowers, were outta there. Keeping the weeds under control is a constant battle here, and a good  way to start a conversation ("Gonna do any weed-whacking with the Stihl today?" ) I'm lucky as I only  have the small area around Faranuf to keep under control (the other 3 acres are pretty much lost to the mesquite);  I know friends who have acres of invasive grass and other things that constantly need to be pulled, if only to lessen the possibility for "snake magnets". But it seems like the damned things come back up, and you begin all over again. Once I move the trailer onto my land and (hopefully) under a canopy, the open section underneath will be good place for snakes to escape the sun -- and pack mice to nibble on the undercarriage material. But I'll cross that particular bridge when I get to it...

After that, it was time to give blood. The donation center is set up at Portal Rescue, which is a volunteer organization made up of residents that are first responders to medical emergencies in the area, search and rescue, and fire suppression as calling, say, an actual fire station would mean a wait where the place on fire would burn down before they'd arrive. The Red Cross workers drawing the blood come from Tucson, nearly 200 miles to the west. I -- of course -- see residents I recognize, and as they're leaving Bud and Debb, two of them, point out 3 Orbweaver spiders outside near the building entrance. Though they're harmless and won't bite unless you pick them up (why you'd want to do that I don't know) I tell one of the young blood-drawers there that they'll jump at you and attach themselves to your face a la Alien. She looked alarmed, so I said I was just kidding. I answer all their questions (amazing how well screened blood donors are these days), give an armful of blood, then while waiting to recuperate enough to leave, enter into a conversation with a fellow who'd moved to the Rodeo area from a rural town in Northern California -- the fabled "state" of Jefferson, to be precise. Seems like everyone here originally comes from someplace else, and has a story...Next up is to go over to my friends Mark and Lori's house to check out possible costumes for the Halloween party being held at the Southwestern Research Station on Saturday evening. We decide on a Jason hockey mask, yellow wig, jeans with my hiking boots, and my snake guards. I'll look like either a weird rendition of the mass murderer Jason from the movies -- or a demented hockey goalie. It will be the first time I've EVER been to a Halloween party, and in a costume. But you do stuff out here that you'd think twice of doing in the big city -- or at least I would. 

It's clouded up somewhat, so you get a feeling that there's going to be a good sunset. It starts out very promising -- 

then gets better -- 

gaining color -- 

It was definitely another WOW sunset, and another weather bookend to just another day in paradise filled with both chores and planning for social occasions...

October 27 -- Spiny Lizards And Good Friends

It was a day of recuperation from the big hike up to Silver Peak the day before.  I was surprised my body didn't feel too "ache-y" -- but I took 2 Motrin just the same. I was going to have my friends Peg, Lori and Mark over for dinner, so I had to pick up the requisite Malbec (for me and Peg; Lori always has Chardonnay, and Mark is a long-time microbrew beer connoisseur ). The Portal Store may have a limited selection of items, but it does have Malbec, so I stopped by to get a bottle. After that I went to the post office to get an Amazon package and say hello to "postmistress" Joan. I asked her how the Irish Spring bars were working; I've given her 2 to put in the post office to keep the mice out. She said she'd seen neither mice nor droppings since she put the bars out. I went  back to Faranuf and since a friend on Facebook asked how the desert willow I'd planted over a month ago was doing, I took a photo to show it was doing quite well --

It may still LOOK scrawny, but there are new branches near the bottom, and with the oncoming cold season it doesn't have many leaves. Oh, and that's Silver Peak in the background, the highest point of which we hiked up the day before...Speaking of which, I didn't mention in the previous day's post about the lizards we saw while up on the top of Silver Peak. We weren't totally sure what species they were -- and there are QUITE a few here in the Chiricahuas -- but I later found out from a expert in the area that they were Yarrow's Spiny Lizards, a specialty of the sky islands of SE Arizona. They live at elevations between 4,300 to over 10,000 feet, and we saw them at 7300 feet --

There were two, with this one much larger than the other -- 

This one had slightly different coloring than the other, too. Male and female? It was...curious about us, too. My friend Dodie "walked" up to it with 2 fingers, and actually touched its front leg -- and it didn't flinch -- 

Here's a closeup of the larger Yarrow's -- 

Beautiful, isn't it? And you can see why it's called a Spiny Lizard. The intricacy of its "design" is amazing. Just in Chiricahua National Monument, north of Portal, there are over 46 species of reptiles, so there must be at least that number, and probably more, in the whole of the Chiricahuas. I hope to photograph many of them while I live here...

Back to the 27th... I thought it would be neat to photograph the top of Silver Peak, where we'd seen these lizards, from Faranuf. I'd say there's at least 10 air miles distance between the two. So I took out the 500 f/4 lens with the 1.4x TC attached (700mm total) and took a photo; the actual spot where we were is hidden out of view on the north side -- 

Lori and Mark came over around 5:45pm, and while Mark prepared their dinner (their stove had stopped working, so I said they could use mine until the repair people came here on Thursday -- they had to wait for nearly a month for them to come out here; one of the "inconveniences" of living at The Beyond) Lori and I had wine out on the back deck and watched the sunset, which was pretty darn colorful over False Portal Peak --

Peg came over later. She's the person who really started the ball rolling that ended up in my moving here. About 3 years ago, when I was still living in San Pedro, she e-mailed me, asking if she could use a photo I took in the Chiricahuas of a Red-faced Warbler for her travel brochure. I said "Of course!" and a long-distane friendship started. When I came to Portal last year and seriously looked at houses for the first time, she had a "meet and greet" potluck at her house, at which I was introduced to a lot of residents here. And once I bought Faranuf, we became neighbors -- I now live across the street from her. She runs her own nature travel tour agency, and I've supplied her with more photos for her brochures. So she's a very special person to me. So she came over to Faranuf, I made stir-fried for her and me, and the 4 of us had great conversation and food, and afterwards we saw a DVD that Lori and Mark had put together about one of their Africa trips, with Lori providing the running narration. As we left, the full moon was lighting up the landscape. I know I may sound like a broken record, but it's great living here... 

October 26 -- A 9-mile Round-Trip Hike To Silver Peak

But first -- well, what did you expect?

I couldn't let a gorgeous sunrise like that pass on by... It was finally THE day for the hike up Silver Peak. You remember that one, right? I've photographed it enough times ---

 And our destination was the highest point of that massif, just left of center. The trail goes from 4700 to 7035 feet (thanks for my friend Winston Lewis, proprietor of the George Walker House in the tiny community (12 full-time souls) of Paradise for that info) in 4 and 1/2 miles. And it's in the sun with practically no shade for the first mile. We actually hiked it at about the right time of year -- the sun is lower in the sky so the north side of the tail is in shade, and the weather is much cooler. It can become an oven in summer, not to mention the bugs...The 3 of us, Peter, Dodie and I, met at the trailhead around 7:30. The trail goes through open land, mostly grasses and oak trees with a few yuccas and other desert plants scattered here and there, for the first mile, then cuts up the base of the mountain and curves around to the north side. Along this part of the route, we flushed out Montezuma Quail -- it must have been around 10. (Montezuma Quail is a Target -- and nemesis -- bird for many birders, but we've had a pretty good number of them this year.)  At this stage the trail is a bit narrow and rocky, and this is the first long hike I've done in about a year, so I brought my new trekking poles (well, I bought them a year ago in Bishop, but haven't used them up until now) but had some trouble with them as the latches that held the telescoping parts for the length size kept coming undone -- so they got shorter than I needed at the most inopportune times. If I had known the condition of the trail I probably would not have brought them along, but I wanted to save my knees going back down. (It turned out I tied them to the back of my day pack as they caused more trouble than help.) We saw a lot of "scat" along the trail, mostly that of Gray Fox, but Peter ID'd some of it as belonging to a Black Bear -- and we actually saw the bear prints, going straight up to the next level of the trail. At this point, along the north side, the trail started a series of switchbacks, and we considered ourselves lucky that we were in shade. There was a nice variety of trees -- Oak (possibly Gambel's), Douglas Fir, and Apache Pine among the larger ones. There were wet, somewhat slimy patches, too; Dodie said she'd hiked the trail in spring, when there was still snow on the ground. The views were good from the beginning -- but they just kept getting better as we ascended. As you can imagine from the photo above of Silver Peak, the trail was relentless having to go that many miles with such an altitude gain. It took us about 4 hours to get to the top -- and for the most part we were taking our time talking and occasinally looking out at the views. (During our talks while climbing, Dodie and I agreed that "No Country For Old Men" was a great movie, and Peter and I discovered a shared interest in science fiction books. Sure helped make the time go by faster.) Finally, at around noon, I said I really needed a rest -- and Dodie said "We're there!" Near the top is a small building, further up us an outhouse -- and at the top were the foundations of a fire lookout that had burned down (or so the story goes) in the late 80s-early 90s; lightning, or a camp fire, are said to be the probable causes. The views, as you can imagine, were incredible. We had lunch, then I started taking photos, both expansive ones with my 17-55mm landscape lens, and zoom-in telephotos with the 100-400 and 1.4x TC. Here are a few --

This is the view looking north from the lookout to the famous landmark of Cochise Head, which is said to resemble the face of Cochise in profile (a horizontal profile, or course). It's in the Chiricahua National Monument, at least 20 air miles from Silver Peak. Here's a closeup of Chochise Head, using the 100-400 lens --

Cochise's "profile" runs from right to left; the tallest part is his nose. A better angle for viewing the profile is more to the left, but considering the effort it took to get to the top, this was good enough...In the landscape photo above you can barely make out some buildings in the lower center of the photo. This is a "community" of Paradise, 'round-year population of 12. One of the main attractions of Paradise is the George Walker House, built around the turn of the 20th century by one of the first homesteaders there. It's since become a famous hotel, run by my friends Winston and Jackie Lewis. Before the hike, Winston asked me to take a photo of Paradise, but I did one better, taking a photo of the George Walker House with my telephoto lens --

The actual George Walker House is the smaller green-roofed building on the left; the other is Winston's and Jackie's house. Not bad, consider the distance, eh? Views looking east to the distant mountains up to 100 miles away were spectacular --

And those are the final steps leading to the lookout, or rather the foundations to the lookout. The steps at certain points seemed as if they were made for giants; you really had to take a long step up.  This is the view looking east, with range upon range; Peter was IDing them for us. 

The above photo was taken slightly to the left of the previous one. The road you can barely make out in the lower left that is running more or less in a straight line is the dirt road from Portal to Paradise (distance about 5 and 1/2 miles). And the narrow patch line of brown in between the green, running just to the right of center, is the broad plain of Cave Creek, that eventually runs down to the San Simon River, which runs from south to north in the San Simon Valley -- and at this time of the year is usually dry. 

I'm glad I brought my 100-400 lens with me!    And let's not forget the views to the west of the Chiricahuas -- 

The line in the center is the "trans Chiricahuan" road that goes up and over to the other side of the mountains to the Chiricahua National Monument (and Cochise Head). The view looking in a southerly direction is of Cave Creek Canyon -- 

And way up northwest is Dos Cabezas (Two Heads), which is at the northern end of the Chiricahuas, at least 30 miles distant -- 

This was a stretch even for my telephoto lens...After being up at top for about an hour (and it was perfect weather up there, with very little wind; Dodie said it's always been windy the times she'd been up there) we headed back down. I slipped a few times off the trail, and that's when I really appreciated being with other people (I usually go solo). We finally got back to our cars around 5pm. Peter said he was going to his cabin and take a few Motrin; I was pretty wiped out. But when I got back to Faranuf I still had enough (barely) energy to get the sunset; first looking at False Portal Peak -- 

Then over to Silver Peak, our destination that day --

Tiring, yet totally worthwhile -- Silver Peak, and the trail to the top, is one of the top destinations in the Chiricahua Mountains.

October 25 -- Another Backyard Morning View, And Another Unpaved Bike Ride

Prior to moving to Portal and Faranuf,  I lived in a port city of 80,000 -- San Pedro, otherwise known as the Port of Los Angeles. It was a place of container terminals, a dying town center -- the major department stores had moved out of town -- and a gang and crime presence that was slowly moving up the hill (personal incomes grew higher the further up the hill you lived). It was what you could call a "gritty" port town. Certainly the last thing you could realistically call it is rural. Perhaps back in the early part of the 20th century before it was "annexed" by Los Angeles to become its main port for commerce. Sure, there were areas, particularly on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which were being restored to their natural beauty, and had a lot of charm that approximated what it may have looked like a hundred years ago -- but the city, or suburban sprawl, was always around the corner. With Catalina Island 24 miles across the channel, it could be very pretty. But here, on the east side of the Chiricahuas, you look out the kitchen window in the wee hours of the night and see no lights of any kind -- houses, streetlights (those never existed, and neither did many streets) or towns, large or small. I don't like to say "nothing" is there -- because there is very much something. Land spreading far and wide (sorry, from "Green Acres") in its natural, or as near to natural as can be with rural ranching, state. And there is a wide variety of landscapes, as the Chiricahuas are the meeting place of 4 different habitats -- the Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts to the east and west, and the southern tip of the Rockies and Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains to the north and south. It's one of the main reasons why the Chiricahuas are so special and probably the best example of the classic "Sky Island". So you see, there's a lot of Something here...

The sky was cloudless for the most part, but there were pockets of low clouds hovering over the mountain peaks; here's the scene of Portal Peak with the sun hitting the lower rock formations --

And I can see this view from my side porch...Just before I went on my bike ride I looked out the back sliding glass door and saw one of the Coues deer heading tentatively towards the water feature, It was one of the males, and his velvet was still hanging off one of his antlers

I hopped on my hybrid bike "Diamondback" and headed north on Foothills Road. I had nice, smooth pavement for the first mile -- then bumpy, washboard-y dirt for the rest. And the road had deteriorated since I last rode it about 2 weeks ago. It was jarring, even with the front shock absorbers, and the washes which crossed over the low spots in the road were thick with dirt, which if you were timid stopped you in your tracks and cause you and your bike to topple over. I must admit it happened at least once to me -- and the first thing I did when I got back up was look around to see if anyone had seen me. Luckily I ended the ride with no "road rash", but it was a close call. I made it out as far as White Tail Canyon, about 8 miles one-way from Faranuf, and I passed a windmill down a rutted dirt "road" and decided to take a short detour to it. I ended up at a locked gate with a "Private Property" sign, but I still got the photo I'd come to take -- 

It's open land all the way to that range in the distance, perhaps a dirt road or two. For some, particularly those from the big city, it's too much open land. For me, it's part of paradise. I continued my bike ride as far as White Tail Canyon; a "primitive" road goes 5 miles to and through it, then dead-ends. People live there, including my friend Wynne Brown and Rick Taylor, a celebrated figure in the birding world and expert on the Elegant Trogon. The road splits 3 ways here, one going to White Tail, another continuing north to San Simon and Interstate 10, and the other to the small "community" of Paradise, which if you can believe it is smaller than Portal -- perhaps 20 residents at most, including my friends Winston and Jackie Lewis at the George Walker House. Here's the start of the road to White Tail Canyon --

I headed back as I was due to have lunch at the Portal Cafe with Lori and Mark, who had just returned from a birding trip to Guyana and Trinidad. Once I met them at the Cafe, they regaled me with the story of how they saw a Harpy Eagle, a large raptor that, while somewhat common in that area, is very difficult to actually see. Later, we have dinner over at Faranuf and once again enjoy good food, good conversation -- and good wine and beer. 

What did I see a year ago today? Why, the Aberdeen donkeys in the Owens Valley, of course -- 

October 24 -- Some Bugs, Lizards, And Other Crawly Things...

I got up at around 2am and made another batch of brownies for the Oktoberfest later that morning. (I of course would have been up at 2am anyway.) The brownies had to be labeled with the ingredients, and wrapped in a cling wrap. I originally didn't have cling wrap, only aluminum foil, but I got a box of cling wrap from a friend. Well, it was only natural that I ended up struggling to get the rolling system going, and that it came out in sections, not the whole roll. I think "Jumping Jehosephat!" was uttered quite a few times -- ok, so it was a little stronger than that. I finally managed to get a decent piece out that would cover the bowl with the brownies, and after paying a last visit to my friends' house to fill the feeders, etc -- they were due to return from the birding trip to Guyana later that day -- I headed over to the "village square:" where the tables for Oktoberfest were set up. I got there at 8am, and it was to the festivities were to start at 9 --

I dropped the brownies off at the dessert table -- 

then ran into a friend who mentioned his wife was volunteering at the Cave Creek Canyon Visitor Information Center that day. So I decided to pay her a visit as it was still before the opening of Oktoberfest. It was the first time I'd been in the visitor center, so Susan gave me a short tour. The former staffer had actually lived there, so there was a small kitchen but not really much more of living quarters than that. In the front public area was a large display of the Chiricahua range, with all the elevation contours marked by lines. But the most interesting part of it was -- it was all carved out of wood. Cave Creek Canyon was there, along with all the other valleys and points of interest. It was quite impressive and unique. (I hope to become a visitor center volunteer myself, so I'll take photos of the inside of the visitor center when I do). The center got even less visitors than usual, so Susan and I went outside to take a tour of the garden area. While keeping watch to see if anyone came by and stopped (there was only one German couple, and as I left an older husband and wife who asked "what's the fastest way to get to Roswell from here?") Susan pointed out bugs on the various flora in the garden. I have a macro system that I was keen to try out on the crawlies -- my 100-400 f/5.6 lens with the 1.4x teleconverter attached and a macro extender added. I wanted the ability to do macro work -- yet at a distance, as I didn't want to disturb my subject -- and not get too close as some of them are poisonous, say a spider. So, with some background info, here are photos of a few of the bugs we saw (most of the IDs came from Facebook pages devoted to spider and insect IDs) --

This is a Crab Spider (of the Misumenoides species). It's a sit-and-wait predator that captures pollinators such as bees that are coming to the flower. And as you can see, it has a pretty good camouflage. It has strong front legs to grab its prey. (After I'd left, Susan took a photo with her iPhone of the crab spider eating a horse fly, with maggots simultaneously exiting the paralyzed fly.) 

This one is a Green Lynx spider (Peucetia viridans). It's a female, a little less than a inch long, and it's sitting on an egg sac, which contains 25 to 600 bright orange eggs. The green lynx spider rarely bites humans, but when it does, its bite is venomous and painful , though not deadly. (Nice to know.) They're actually useful in agricultural pest management, for example in cotton fields. (Susan was startled by this one, as its camouflage is quite good.) 

Here is another Orbweaver, similar to the one I have in Faranuf's back yard. 

Now this is a bug you DEFINITELY want to keep out of your house -- a "kissing bug".  They search for blood during the night -- and like to munch on your face, as they're attracted to carbon monoxide coming from your breath. It transmits a deadly disease called Chagas, which has affected 300,000 Americans. The second phase of Chagas can be deadly. The existence of this bug is one of the reasons why I try to keep the inside of Faranuf scrupulously clean. I don't want my face eaten away at night...

This beauty is commonly known as a katydid, or bush cricket. There are more than 6400 species of katydids -- so don't ask me which species this is..They're also known as long-horned grasshoppers, to distinguish them from the true, short-horned grasshoppers. 

Closeup of a Clark's Spiny Lizard; I had one of these in my well house (and scared the heck out of me when it dropped onto the ground from a ceiling corner).

And finally -- a tarantula, of course. It's a male; it's much smaller than a female. I check online tarantula sites (yes, they have those) and I'm pretty positive it's a Porch Grey, also known as a "Cochise" tarantula. Of course, Cochise is the name of our county, too...Once again, tarantulas make good pets, and are docile in captivity. So, if you want to scare your friends...

The Chiricahuas have a wealth of insects, bugs and arachnids (joint-legged invertebrates with 8 legs)  -- centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, spiders, lizards, snakes, etc. It's one of the things that makes this area so special -- and also gives some the heebie-jeebies.