This past winter's El Nino never panned out here. As I've mentioned before, we've had very little rain since January. We did have 2 hailstorms when I was gone, and my neighbor Mark who was watching my house had to dump the hailstones out of the back gutters as they were causing it to sag. but all of that precipitation at one time didn't do much to alleviate the drought. What we need is a good SOAKING rain, and the forecast until the end of June calls for temps near 100 on all of those days. The monsoons are supposed to start in July; we'll see. The birds here have been panting and avoiding the heat of the afternoon, and even some of the critters that usually visit the water feature at night are coming in the early morning after sunrise. So imagine my surprise when 2 Gray Foxes show up at around 7am, luckily when I'm on the back porch with my 500mm lens. While one heads for the shade of the RV canopy, the other one gets some water --
Then goes to the shade provided by the canopy and looks pretty darned content --
I'm constantly amazed at how all of the animals that visit my property seem to be relaxed and not jumpy or feeling threatened. To encourage that, I try to move slowly if I'm standing or sitting in the back chair. And though it's taking awhile, even the Mule and White-tailed deer are getting used to the rubber water dish that replaced the water feature in the ground. I notice that some of the deer are still tentative about the dish, looking at it from a distant and seeming to WANT to go to it, and they eventually do, are rooted to the ground and reach way over to drink. In this heat, they probably realize they don't have much choice.
When I was driving back home on Friday and crossed over to the east side of the Chiricahuas on Interstate 10, I took a photo of Dos Cabezas (Spanish for "Two Heads"), seen as 2 "knobs" on the mountains from some angles, and after viewing it on my MacBook Pro once I got back to Faranuf, I saw there had been 3 Turkey Vultures near them, soaring on the thermals- --
Another landmark that's been named for its fanciful resemblance is Cochise Head. Cochise was one of the most famous of the Chiricahua Apaches, and his Apache name translates as "his nose", which by all accounts for aquiline, even a "Roman nose". So there is a ridge in the Chiricahua National Monument that people say bears a resemblance to his profile. But it of course is horizontal, so I saved you the chore of twisting your neck to see it by doing a vertical perspective --
The resemblance is better appreciated at other angles, but you can see his forehead -- and "noble" nose.
The skies have been cloudless for the most part during this heat wave, but there has been some build during the heat of the afternoon, leading to some memorable sunsets. Here's one from the other evening --
And the 20th was of course the summer solstice -- the longest day of the year. And a full moon coincided with the solstice for the first time in 70 years. The special moon on summer solstice night has been called "honey", probably due to its amber color at moonrise, and a "strawberry moon", not because of its color, but due to an Algonquin Indian tradition that it means it's time to harvest the strawberries. Heck, I didn't know that, so I was waiting for it to look like a lunar strawberry -- which it, of course, never did. A friend of mine set me straight on the Algonquin angle. So here's the "strawberry", or "honey", moon just as it rises over the Peloncillo Mountains to the east of me --
And as it set this morning, over Cave Creek Canyon --
Today, the 21st, was another grocery run to Douglas, 55 miles to the south. I don't mind the long drive because the scenery is spectacular -- at least to me --, there is no traffic, and you can see some pretty neat wildlife. And since there aren't many cars, you can pull over, stop, and take photographs of the animals and birds with nary a worry about someone rear-ending you. (Just remember not to stop in the MIDDLE of the road.) On this particular outing, I noticed seeing more animals than usual, and that may have to do with them looking for water during this long dry period. There was this Pronghorn family off in the distance; here's one of the adults --
And the other adult and 2 kiddies --
This was the first time I'd seen Pronghorn on the east side of the Chiricahuas, though I hear they have been seen further west. And when coming back from Douglas, there was a small herd of wild horses --
And a proud, intense juvenile Red-tail --
And just in case my backyard birds think I've forgotten about them, here's a head shot of Mr. Northern Cardinal, taken with the 500mm "Big Boy" lens --
The hot days relentlessly continue here in SE Arizona, with no monsoonal flow forecast for the next 10 days..
No comments:
Post a Comment