After all the miles of hiking around Granite Gap area, looking for lizards (and especially lifer herps!) I have never found a Texas Horned Lizard. This morning, I went to Lordsburg for groceries and gas and on the return trip took the road to Animas from I-10. About ten miles down the road, there was an odd looking lizard on the road, so I turned around and slowly approached it. It was a Texas Horned Lizard! Fortunately, State Highway 338 has very little traffic and I was able to take photos from the truck. I wanted to take more photos in a natural setting but when I parked the truck on the side of the road and started walking toward it, the lizard scooted off into some thick brush and I lost it.
And here it is. The light stripe down the center of the back is diagnostic, as is the arrangement of the occipital horns. There are also two rows of abdominal fringe scales. Another angle. Over its range, Texas Horned Lizards are not doing well. The species has disappeared from nearly half of its original range. Also along that road, I found several of these plants, Davis Mountains Mock Vervain, Glandularia pubera. Since the Davis Mountains are in Texas, it seems to fit with a Texas Horned Lizard. I can find no interesting facts about this plant.
I’m still here, the weather is great and I’m having a good time. I’ve made a few trips to Cave Creek and one trip up to Rustler Park. At Rustler Park, nearly 10,000 ft. elevation, there is still snow in the gullies. I’ve been picking up birds that I haven’t seen for years, only because I haven’t looked for them. I’m at 220 species now, compared to 151 at this time last year.
Grace’s Warbler. These are fairly common in the pines but difficult to get a photo of. I found a nice flock of Mexican Chickadees. In the same area, I got two Olive Warblers, but the photos are not worth showing. On the road down from Rustler Park, I got two Montezuma Quail. Here’s one of them. I have now seen three Gila Monsters in the Granite Gap area. Here’s the third one, just this morning. I put out the black light one night while doing astro. I got some interesting insects. This one is Lineostriastiria hachita, an owlet moth that is rarely reported and almost nothing is known about it. Records are from southeast Arizona, southern New Mexico, west Texas and down into Mexico.Theodore Carpenterworm Moth, Givira theodori. Larvae of this interesting looking moth are wood borers. It has a distribution similar to Lineostriastiria hachita. Catclaw Mimosa, very common around Granite Gap and now in flower. This shrub has recurved spines that catch on clothing when walking through it. Fendler’s Hedgehog Cactus, Echinocereus fendleri ssp. fendleri. There are quite a few in flower now. Caldwell 45, also catalogued as NGC5248. Sixty million light years out there, in the direction of the constellation Bootes.NGC 4414, 62 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It is a flocculent spiral galaxy, without the well-defined spiral arms of a grand design spiral galaxy. I should have spent more time on this one but this is what I have. There are lots of small background galaxies in this image.
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.
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!
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!
Temperatures are rising and is so is herp activity. I made a trip out to Valentine Well one night but bats weren’t very active, I only got one good shot. The weather forecast shows another warm day today and Saturday, followed by a rapid cool down.
Yesterday I saw three Western Diamondbacks. I also found two Goode’s Horned Lizards. Last night, Vikki Jackson and I checked out the pond at the golf course. There were lots of bats flying around, but the best find was breeding Great Plains Toads. One has to be there to appreciate how loud these toads are. The sound is deafening at close range. The only bat I’ve been able to photograph so far, at Valentine Well. I am not convinced that these bats are Yuma Myotis, but that seems to be the consensus at iNaturalist.It is mating season for Black-tailed Jackrabbits too, and they are often seen moving around in daytime now. Bluedicks, or Desert Hyacinth, are blooming profusely now. This plant is in the Asparagus family. Many species of wildlife and Native Americans use the root (known as a corm) for food. Desert Wishbone, a flower with a nice drop of nectar at the base of the anthers. In the Four-o’clock family, the flowers open at night and only last one day. The common name comes from appearance of the forked and white-bleached year old stems. Desert Lotus, or Desert Bird’s Foot Trefoil. The flowers are tiny, the plant forms low mats.
This morning I went on hike up Child’s Mountain. It has been pretty chilly the last few days and it still was this morning, until the sun finally came out. My hiking trail is the road that leads to the summit. It is gated and open only to foot traffic. Off road, the terrain is very rocky and steep. The flowers are really coming along, Brittlebush is starting to bloom profusely. About a mile up, there is a flat and there I discovered a new plant for me, growing in abundance.
The new plant, Desert Onion, Allium macropetalum, a species of wild onion that is reported to be common and widespread in the southwest. However, according to records in iNaturalist, it is rarely reported in most of the Sonoran Desert. It is not even listed in my book Sonoran Desert Wildflowers. UPDATE: After some discussion in iNaturalist, it has been decided that this plant is Sperry’s Onion, Allium perdulce var. sperry. Rather than repeat what has already been said, if interested, read the information at this LINK .The flowers on various plants range from creamy white to a light pink, as this one shows. Here is a plant with nearly white flowers. I spent a long time looking at the variability among the plants. There were literally thousands of plants, quite amazing considering I have never seen it before. I don’t think the flowering stage will last very long though. Here’s another new plant for me, Spiny Goldenweed, Xanthisma spinulosum. Like the onion, it appears to be more common in other areas of the American southwest, outside the Sonoran Desert.Northern Mockingbirds are well known for this flight display. This is the time of year when they are very actively doing this. From a high, exposed perch, the males sing and then periodically fly up a few feet and display the white feathers in the wings and tail. I’ve tried to capture this with a camera before with little success, it is very difficult to maintain focus and the action is fast. Yesterday, I finally got a few photos that are worth showing. I would have liked a little more light on the eye, but this is the best I have so far.
Last night I finally got the 500 f4 pointed to Comet 12P/Pons Brooks. This is the comet that the media has somehow come up with the name of Devil Comet, due to its odd shape earlier this year. All the hype aside, it is a bright comet right now and can be seen with binoculars low in the west after sunset. 12P/Pons Brooks is a periodic comet with an orbital period of 71 years. I thought I was going to have a hard time with it since the moon was quite bright, but it turned out to be quite easy to process.
I think if the moon hadn’t been so bright I could have got more of the tail, but I’m pretty happy with this. This is the result of 27 twenty-second exposures stacked in Deep Sky Stacker comet mode. Emory’s Rock Daisy is quite common now, rocky slopes are loaded with it. I haven’t seen much Owl Clover this spring. It is one of my favorite desert flowers, and had to photograph this one. My first Desert Spiny Lizard of the spring, out getting warmed up in the morning sun.
I made a trip to Buckeye to stock up at Walmart and on the way there, I birded. There were lots of birds at the Gillespie Dam, hundreds of egrets and herons, two species of cormorants, and lots of pelicans. Astrophotography continues to be hard, with too many clouds. But I have managed to get some done. I also made a trip down to Alamo Canyon, long overdue.
This is Abell 31, also known as Sh2-290. It is a very faint planetary nebula in the constellation Cancer. It is so faint that I cannot see it in any of my images until I stack and process. As far as planetary nebulas go, it is fairly large in view. This is what I got after 8 hours of exposure with the Nebula Booster filter and the 500f4 lens. Comet 62P/Tsuchinshan is now passing through the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, so I tried it last night. At magnitude 10.5 it isn’t very bright. The comet is over 50 million miles distance. The galaxies are on the order of 50 million light years, some are nearly 90 million light years out there. On a walk in Alamo Canyon, I found lots of Miner’s Lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata.And also Redmaids, Calandrinia ciliata.Some of the pelicans and one Snowy Egret at Gillespie Dam. Snowy Egret swallowing a fish. Abert’s Towhee at Gillespie Dam. Some of the egrets I saw. At 100mm focal length, this is all could get in one frame. Also in Alamo Canyon, I saw several Empress Leilia nectaring on Gooding’s Vervain. For me, this is unusual for two reasons. I rarely if ever have seen this species of hackberry butterfly nectar on anything and in my experience, not many butterflies nectar at this species of plant. At the parking lot in Alamo Canyon, I watched this Northern Cardinal repeatedly attack its image in a sideview mirror on another car parked there. Then it flew up onto this Saguaro to sing loudly!
It has been a while since I posted anything, so here it goes. The weather here has been just perfect, not too hot, not too cold. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of clouds cutting into my astrophotography. All the rain has started another spring bloom that could rival last years. I have to keep reminding myself that it is only early March, once the weather turns warmer, the herps, plants, insects, birds, mammals will all be more prominent. I am really looking forward to it.
This is an Acuña cactus (Echinomastus erectocentrus acunensis), an endangered cactus that only occurs in five known populations in the United States, according to my book Field Guide to Cacti and other Succulents of Arizona. I recently was shown where one of those populations is, right here in Ajo. Today I checked it out again and found one in flower. There is a dozen or more cactus in this population, though I have not made an exact count. This is Silverpuff, Uropappus lindleyi. There are a lot of these in flower now in localized areas. I liked how this photo turned out. Pelotazo (Abutilon incanum) is flowering too. A true plant of the Sonoran Desert, it requires warm winters and summer rains. It is not found in the Mojave Desert region. A late afternoon scene from last week. I was watching for a rainbow to form after some showers passed by but instead got this. The setting sun lit up the mountain known locally as Noah’s Ark in the Sikort Chuapo Mountains, east of Ajo. I had the C8 out for a few nights and did a test run on M81, Bode’s Galaxy. This came out really nice. Below M81, just above the edge of the frame, is Holmberg IX, a faint dwarf irregular galaxy and a satellite galaxy of M81. A little above on the right side of M81 is a double star that is clearly seen split. It was 100 years ago, in 1924, when Edwin Hubble proved that many of the nebulas seen in space were much further away than previously thought, millions of light years away, and that these were actually other galaxies like our own Milky Way Galaxy. M81, once known as Bode’s Nebula, is one of the billions of galaxies we now know exist.
