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.
It has been a long time since I’ve posted anything, due mostly to not having much to post. It has been poor for astrophotography and not much for new birds. Of course, this time of year is very slow for herps and butterflies. So, I just go for hikes, read books, find what birds I can and try to get some good photos. This is turning out to be a fairly wet winter and the hope is that the spring bloom will be a good one. As always, right click and open in a new tab to see a larger image.
It has been very typical Sonoran Desert winter weather, daytime highs in the 60’s and lows in the 40’s. Perfect, in my opinion. On New Year’s Day the forecast is for rain. I’ve been on a search for Black-chinned Sparrows, which I usually can find in the mountains around the area, but so far, I haven’t found any. The Ajo Mountain Loop Road in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is the best place to find them, but it is closed for repair until mid-January. I’ve been having some nice hikes though.
I know that the folks back in South Dakota aren’t going to have much sympathy for me here. But it has been pretty cold for this area, and it has been a long-lasting cold snap as well. The end is near though as a warming trend is finally coming. Daytime highs in the low 50’s will soon be in the upper 60’s and 70’s. The Ajo CBC was held on Friday, and I had my usual unit. A Spotted Towhee was probably the best bird for me, and I got the other two species of Towhees as well, Green-tailed and Canyon, all within 100 yards of each other. Another good find was a Canyon Wren, and I got some nice photos of that. Astrophotography has been slow and cold. Quite a few cloudy nights and the nights that were clear had heavy dew that later froze on surfaces.
I’ve had two trail cams out at Highway Tank for a couple of weeks now. I am trying for the Mountain Lion that has left tracks there but so far, no luck with that. Here is a YouTube LINK to a video I captured that is described by the title to my post. I find it amazing that something like this would happen right in front of my camera. The cameras are still there so maybe I will have a lion to show soon. The weather has been very nice and I’m enjoying the warm days.
Happy Thanksgiving! I’ve been keeping busy. Birding, astrophotography, and hiking. Now I’m working on digging up 89 photos of butterflies for Gary Marrone’s 2nd Edition of The Butterflies of South Dakota. That will be a great book when it is published. Weather here has been cool but still pretty nice.
I’ve been wanting to do this since I got here, but my knee hasn’t. My left knee has been pretty sore since I left South Dakota but is slowly getting better. Today, I tested it out on Alamo Canyon, and it did fine. The park biologist, Danny Martin, told me he had seen some good butterflies there this summer, including Tropical Leafwings and Zilpa Longtails. The Zilpa Longtail would have been a lifer, but I couldn’t find any today. Probably getting too late in the season, but there were still some Tropical Leafwings, and I was very happy to get the best photos I have ever taken of that species. I saw some Tropical Leafwings years ago at Miller Canyon but had poor luck photographing them.
The full moon is coming back strong now but I had some good nights over the last few weeks. I’ve been thinking about what I can do to improve my astrophotography and I think my best bet is a dedicated astro camera. I’ve been using an old Canon 7D MII that was modified for H-alpha. The images are always pretty noisy though and hard to process. So, maybe in the near future there will be change.
It was December of 2017 when I saw my first nighttime rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. I had no idea what it was and was not prepared for photos. I managed to get a few that were handheld and poorly focused, which can be seen at this LINK. Since then, I’ve been waiting for another opportunity and last night I got it. I have subscribed to Launch Alert and I knew this one was coming. Vandenberg AFB is now Vandenberg Space Force Base, it is about 500 miles west, on the California coast. This rocket is a Space X Falcon 9 that was launching 53 Starlink satellites into orbit. The timing of the launch put the rocket and the exhaust in the light of the setting sun while I was far enough east where it was dark enough to see it. I was set up with the Canon 6D and 35mm Sigma lens on a tripod.
Last fall all the insect action was on Chuckwalla Delight flowers, this fall it is Desert Broom. Find a Desert Broom plant in flower and one is in business. Since I’ve been here, I have seen no kangaroo rats out at night, then last night I saw two near the camper. They seem to be inactive some nights and active on others. I’m still working on a couple of astrophotography targets, but they are not ready to show yet.
