Month: April 2024

Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants Herps

On the Road Again

I left Ajo last Monday and drove to the Empire Ranch, also known as Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. It has been several years since I’ve stopped there. I spent 3 days birding in the Empire Gulch, Box Canyon, Madera Canyon, and the Patagonia area. I picked up a lot of birds that I haven’t seen for years, but the photography wasn’t very good. Some of the best birds were Thick-billed Kingbird, Berylline Hummingbird, Violet-crowned Hummingbird, many Gray Hawks, several Zone-tailed Hawks, and an Arizona Woodpecker, among many other species. Here are a few eBird checklists: Box Canyon, Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, Madera Kubo Lodge, Patagonia Blue Haven Rd., Pattons, and Empire Gulch. I’m trying to live up to my New Year’s Resolution, to pick up as many species as I can this year. So far, I’m at 191 species, compared to 145 at this time last year. Now, I’m at Granite Gap. I plan to continue birding in as many places as I can get to for the next few days, then focus on astrophotography.

Just before leaving Ajo, I got this photo of a pair of Western Screech-Owls, one with a Western Banded Gecko.
And here’s another Elf Owl, from Ajo.
A Sidewinder I found by my camper one night after returning from owling, still in Ajo.
A male Wilson’s Warbler in Empire Gulch.
A Chihuahuan Meadowlark at Empire Ranch. Formerly considered a race of the Eastern Meadowlark, now it is a full species.

Cliff Fendlerbush, Fendlera rupicola. Whole hillsides displayed this shrub in flower in Box Canyon.
I had just drove though the gate into Granite Gap when this Gila Monster crossed the road in front of me. My first one this spring.
Categories
Herps

Return of the Long-tailed Brush Lizards

Readers may remember my first encounter with a Long-tailed Brush Lizard, about this time last spring. The story is at this LINK. I have been sort of looking around for more the last week or so but could not find any. Yesterday, I decided to take a better look around. After an hour of searching creosote bushes in vain, I switched to looking at some of the larger trees along the washes. Finally, after over two hours of searching I found one in a Cat’s Claw Acacia. It was immobile and perfectly blended into the bark. After taking a bunch of so-so photos (the lizard was almost inaccessible due the thorns), I tried again this morning. With a search image and a better idea of where to look, I started finding more, ending up with four.

My favorite, a displaying male. There was a female nearby. Too bad that one stick got in front of it.
The female, mouth open. To get the entire tail in the image results in this. I rotated it to horizontal.
A cropped view of the open mouth.
I took over 100 images this morning! To avoid the effects of the harsh sunlight, I used flash and stopped down to f19.
Another shot of the male.
A good view of the dorsal scales, there are six rows of enlarged scales running down the center of the back, diagnostic of Long-tailed Brush Lizard.

Last one, for now. It is very difficult to get a catchlight in the eye of lizards in general. Flash helps but they have to turn their head just right to get it. A catch light brings the eye to life.
Categories
Insects

Blister Beetles

Spring in the Sonoran Desert is a good time for the emergence of blister beetles. In past years, I’ve seen swarms of the species Lytta magister, Master Blister Beetle. These are large colorful blister beetles that can be very abundant locally. Yesterday at Highway Tank, I saw for the first time the Iron Cross Blister Beetle, Tegrodera aloga. Also a large species, they are very colorful and a good example of aposematism, or advertising to potential predators that an organism is not worth eating. Aposematic signals are beneficial for both predator and prey, since both avoid potential harm.

The Iron Cross Blister Beetle. These beetles secret cantharidin, a potent toxin that causes severe blistering. The toxin can be lethal if ingested. It is a problem for farmers in some areas. The beetles get into hay and when eaten by horses, the toxin can kill them. On the beneficial side, cantharidin is used in the medical field as a topical medication in the removal of warts, removal of tattoos, and has been researched for certain cancer treatments.
From what I’ve gathered reading about these beetles, they are usually found locally but abundantly, and only for a short time. That is what I saw at Highway Tank. There were hundreds of them but only in a small area.
This is the other species that is more commonly seen: Lytta magister, Master Blister Beetle. Apparently, this species is also toxic. I cannot find any information on whether one or the other is the more toxic. Also a good example of aposematism, but not as pronounced, so maybe this species is not as toxic as the Iron Cross Blister Beetle.

Categories
Birding Herps

More Elf Owls and a Mohave Rattlesnake

Last night, Vikki and Mark went out looking for owls with me. It sure helps to have someone along who can hear! They can hear Elf Owls far beyond my range of hearing. We ended up hearing four and seeing three. I got perhaps one of my best photos ever of an Elf Owl. Sometimes I think maybe my favorite is simply the most recent, it is hard to pick. At any rate, I’m already thinking about next years photo show here in Ajo!

Here’s the best one I got. These little owls aren’t really that difficult to photograph if one uses a good flash on manual exposure. They usually sit still long enough to get focus and shoot. They are only about 6 inches long. We located one pair that appear to be using a cavity in a Saguaro.

A Mohave Rattlesnake I saw on the road near my camper this morning. First Mohave I’ve seen this spring.
Although very similar to a Western Diamondback, Mohaves are generally more greenish yellow in color. The supraoculars (the large uplifted scale over each eye) are separated by two scales, diagnostic of Mohave Rattlesnakes. This species has large venom yields and very potent neurotoxins, making it one of the more dangerous rattlesnakes.
Categories
Astrophotography Birding Flowers and Plants Insects

Mid April Update

I am still in Ajo. As long as it doesn’t get too hot, I’m not inclined to leave. I had a few good nights for astro but now the moon is getting bright again. Although the new dual band filter allows me to image nebulas in moonlight, it does not work for galaxies. Light pollution and moonlight are galaxies killers! Dark skies are needed. Birding has remained slow. I do have a few photos to show though.

This is a new one for me, a hybrid Blue-winged Teal X Cinnamon Teal. One can see a partial facial crescent, the white flank mark and spotting of a Blue-winged Teal on the hybrid. The top of the head is greenish on both birds shown here. I never noticed that on a male Cinnamon Teal before but it is there. Not the best of photos, the Ajo sewage ponds are a terrible place for photography. The birds are too far away and shooting is through a chain link fence, not a good combination.
I haven’t seen an Elf Owl for several years now, only because I haven’t looked. Last night I decided to go owling and found this Elf Owl. These owls are migratory, I’ve seen them as early as late March, they will get easier to find as the weather warms.
A crane fly on a fiddleneck plant. Nothing too special about either one, I just like the photo.
M94, sometimes called the Croc’s Eye Galaxy. I tried this years ago before I was guiding, the results were not very good. I also remember seeing that faint nebulosity surrounding the inner galaxy and thinking it must be some kind of processing artifact that I needed to get rid of. It is not, that is real. Rather than repeat everything known about this galaxy, you can read all about it HERE.
This is M109, a galaxy not far from M94, in Ursa Major. The most distant identifiable object in the image is the luminous galaxy SDSS J115722.65+531644.3, annotated in white. Its redshift indicates a distance of nearly 3.5 billion light years.
Known as the Umbrella Galaxy, NGC 4651 is in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. The name is due to the umbrella-shaped structure that extends from its disk. It is composed of stellar streams, the remnants of a much smaller galaxy that has been torn apart by NGC 4651’s tidal forces. I really had to push the processing to make that show up!
Categories
Astrophotography Birding Flowers and Plants Herps Photography

April in the Sonoran Desert

It has been a very cool spring. I actually had frost on the truck this morning! Normally by now we would be seeing highs in the low 90’s. It looks like that will be coming next week. The Ajo area got another inch of rain too. Birding is starting to pick up, just in the last few days, Franklin’s Gulls, Vaux’s Swift, Swainson’s Hawk, and lots of White-faced Ibis have been showing up. I have a lot of new photos to post.

This is NGC 4216, the Silver Streak Galaxy. I have imaged this before (in 2021, see inset), but I wanted to do it again because of a type Ia supernova that recently occurred. It was actually reported back in January but it is still bright enough to show up. All of the nuclear firepower on Earth would seem like a firecracker compared to this Ia supernova, the explosion of a white dwarf. The supernova is marked with two red lines.
This is NGC 4450, a galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, about 50 million light years out there. It is small from our vantage point in the universe, but it is about 70,000 light years in diameter.
Here is Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks (2024), again. It is getting low in the west but still high enough to photograph. It is easy to see with binoculars. I used a 200mm lens this time, hoping to get more of the long tail. It didn’t turn out as well as I hoped, probably due to being only about 10 degrees above the horizon and some stiff wind I had to deal with.
There was another rocket launch from Vandenberg SFB last week. For this one I used longer focal length (135mm). It worked out very well with the sunset. Right click and open in a new window for a larger view. Mercury is seen just above the exhaust in the center, and the booster can be seen falling away from the rocket in the upper left.
In this image the booster is seen in the exhaust plume. Nearer to the rocket are two bright objects that are the jettisoned halves of the protective payload shroud (nose cone), according my message from Launch Alert. It is amazing what can be seen from 500-600 miles away. There is another launch scheduled for tonight.
This morning Vikki and I were birding around Highway Tank when we found this Coachwhip. It climbed up into a bush and I got this photo. First one of the spring for both of us!
Last week, while watching some gulls at Lake Ajo, I noticed they suddenly went on alert, so I looked up and saw this Peregrine Falcon flying around the ponds.
A Lucy’s Warbler at Highway Tank.
Also from last week, a Lark Bunting at Highway Tank (there were two of them). First ones I’ve seen all winter and first of spring!
This spring there is a lot of this in flower, Eriastrum diffusum, Spreading Woolstar.
Dainty Desert Hideseed, Eucrypta micrantha. I could add many more plant photos but this will do for now!