I finished up the astro season for March with only two more good nights. I sure hope April works better for that. Desert flowers continue to be great. Today, I found a species that I’ve been looking for since I first read about it in my Sonoran Desert Wildflowers book. It has been a target species for several years and I finally found it. Now I need to select a new target.
Today I joined up with a group of botanists for a visit to the Sikort Chuapo Mountains. This area is east of Ajo, past the Burro Gap. There are few roads and much of the area is raw wilderness. We drove in on one of the few roads that access that area. Paul and Linda had camped there a few days ago, finding the area loaded with wildflowers. I took a lot of photos, some of the scenery and some of various flowers that I still haven’t identified. Those will have to be posted later, but for now, here is some scenery.
I finally got in a few nights of astrophotography. It is not looking good for more, so I thought I would go ahead and post these. I really like doing galaxies, they are so mysterious and distant, but enormous beyond our imagination. I am sure that somewhere in every galaxy there is intelligent life, but the distances are so great we will never know.
The spring bloom is living up to its name. I’m seeing flowers that I haven’t seen for years due to the drought. This spring, the soil is moist and the vegetation lush. Astrophotography isn’t going as well; cloudy nights have really limited that activity. It looks like I might get one or two good nights before the clouds roll back in.
It is starting, the spring bloom. The diversity is still low, but more and more plants are starting to flower. I expect this will be one of the best spring flower seasons I’ve ever experienced in the Sonoran Desert. I thought I would post a few photos from today.
It has been a long stretch of cool to cold, wet and windy weather. Just a couple of days ago, the area got an inch of rain and some snow on the mountains. However, I think we have finally turned the corner on winter and spring is going to take over. This has certainly been the coldest winter I’ve spent in the Sonoran Desert. I entered eleven photos in the Cabeza Prieta Natural History Association Sonoran Desert Photo Show. I found a good place to get photos printed right here in Ajo so I picked out some of my favorite Sonoran Desert photos. All the entries will be on display for the month of March.
It has not been very good weather for doing astrophotography, or anything else for that matter. Cloudy, windy, cold, and even wet most of the time. I have only managed a few nights of good astro weather. Birding hasn’t fared much better, but I am able to pick up 25-30 species on a good day. I have now seen at least five different Long-eared Owls in the area. They do not cooperate for good photos.
I went owling a few nights ago. I didn’t expect to get much but I did get what I expected, Western Screech-Owls and Great Horned Owls. I only heard the Great Horned Owls but I played some screech-owl calls and had a pair come in close. The weather has been just about perfect lately. Of course now it is the full moon time and I haven’t been doing any astro. Back when it was still dark enough, I imaged comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) again, this time with the 500 f4, giving a much wider field of view.
The last few nights have been clear, cold and good for astrophotography. Just in time for the return of the moon. I’m done for now, having put everything away until the next full moon passes. I suppose I could get up in the early mornings and shoot but it is too cold to make that very enjoyable.
It has been a strange month, starting out cloudy a lot of the time, then rain, now cold. It is cold enough at night to take a lot of the fun out of being outside doing astro. I’m still doing it though. A couple more nights to go then the moon will take over for a while.
