This morning I was in The Thicket looking for owls. I found the two Long-eared Owls that I’ve been seeing. Then I saw something I’ve never seen before, a Gray Fox in a tree. I’ve read many times about Gray Fox climbing trees but this is my first experience at seeing it. I went back later in the day hoping it would still be there and in better light, but it was gone.
I know it is only January but here in the Sonoran Desert, there are hints of spring already. Yesterday, I stopped at the ponds in the late afternoon and just after sunset I saw a Lesser Nighthawk foraging over the water. There are more flycatchers of every species now. Where there was one Black Phoebe, now there are two or three. I’m seeing more Ash-throated Flycatchers everywhere I go. The moon has been bright and the nights fairly cloudy but soon I will be able to do astro again, hopefully in the next few days.
Hard to believe it is already January and it sure feels like it. By Sonoran Desert standards, it has been cold. Temperature dropped well into the 20’s two nights in a row. To make matters worse for me, this is the period when I should be doing astrophotography, but it has been cloudy every night until just a few nights ago. Now I only have a couple more nights before the moon starts getting too bright. I hope next month is better! The Ajo Christmas Bird Count was yesterday and joined in on that. Otherwise, not much has been going on.
It has finally turned more winter-like. After the last rain, there is enough moisture for dew and now it is cold enough for frost, so I have a frosty windshield most mornings. The cold further north has moved birds this way. A nice flock of Horned Larks showed up at the golf course along with a Mountain Bluebird. More ducks at the ponds and an occasional Ring-billed Gull, but nothing very exciting, except for a Canada Goose that appeared one day. Some birders from Tucson were going to drive out for that but it was gone the next morning.
A Ruddy Ground Dove had been reported at the Ajo plaza about a week ago, but yesterday was the first time I saw it. This is the second Ruddy Ground Dove I’ve ever seen and the only female. This morning I went back and got some pretty good photos of it. I’ve been doing quite a bit of astrophotography with the 500 f4. I quit working on the really faint ones for a while and back to some bright and easy ones. I am looking forward to the galaxy season coming up when I can go back to using the C8.
For the past week I have been putting a lot of time into dark nebulas. There are hundreds of them listed in Stellarium but almost no photos anywhere online to see what they look like. I tried for a few of the better- known dark nebulas, these are the ones with some bright stars lighting up the clouds. They are difficult targets; the dust is dim and it is hard to get enough exposure. With the C8 (at f6.3) it is nearly impossible but with the 500 mm lens at f4 I can get one nebula done in a couple of nights if all goes well. Framing is hard too, I can’t see the clouds in the images, all I can see is areas with no stars, obscured by the dust. Anyway, I will post some of the results below. As always, right click on an image and open in a new tab for a larger view.
I stopped by the plaza a couple of days ago and was watching some robins on the grass when I realized one of them was a Rufous-backed Robin. Since then, I’ve been able to get some pretty good photos. Greg Gilson found a Williamson’s Sapsucker at the golf course but by the time I got there, we could not locate it again. If I could get it, that would be all of the North American sapsuckers for me in one location, the Ajo golf course. I looked this morning for a couple of hours and still couldn’t find it, so I suppose it has left.
Last night the forecast for “seeing” ranged from excellent to good. Excellent seeing is very rare so I decided to try some planetary photography. Jupiter is about the only planet in a good place right now, Saturn is getting lower in the west and Venus isn’t a very photogenic planet. So, Jupiter it was. I am very pleased with how it turned out.
A few days ago I went out to Hot Shot Well to check it out. I had heard about Barn Owls potentially using the site quite a few years ago. I think it was about four years ago when I first visited the old well, which is actually a really big hole that someone dug many years ago. It is maybe 25 ft. across and more than 50 ft. deep. On my first visit, there was evidence of owls using it but there were no owls. The following year I returned and found that a colony of bees had moved in and I got chased off by them. There were aggressive. Every year since, I have carefully checked it and the bees have been there but no owls. On my visit this year, it appeared that the bees were gone and lo and behold, there were two Barn Owls at the bottom. I contacted Joe and Mary Staab, in Mesquite, Nevada as I knew Joe really wanted a Barn Owl. They came down here on Tuesday and we all hiked out there, the owls were still there. Unfortunately, this time we saw bees too but they didn’t bother us.
As I posted previously, there are enormous numbers of butterflies around the area, mostly where there is Chuckwalla Delight in flower. I have been searching for a new species for me, but mostly the same ones, especially Sonoran Metalmarks. There are literally thousands of them. I have been doing some astrophotography too. It has warmed up here quite bit, record high temps again, but that is only about 90 degrees so it is tolerable.
