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.
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.
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.
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!
Last night I went back to Valentine Well again, to try for some bats. Vikki Jackson and Mark Johnson came out too and Vikki had her bat detector. We learned a few things. One, there are apparently several bat species in the area that are not coming to the water, or at least not while I’m set up with photography. Most of what I photograph is Yuma Myotis and Pallid Bat. And that is exactly what happened again, last night. Also, it seems that the bats don’t echolocate when coming to water, the bat detector did not pick them up while they were obviously getting a drink and setting off the camera/flash. I only got a couple of good shots and both were of Pallid Bat.
Incoming Pallid Bat. I surely don’t need more photos of Pallid Bats, but it is still fun to capture images like this. Another nice capture of Pallid Bat. This was the star of the show last night! Just before Vikki and Mark left, we could hear a Western Screech-Owl, but did not see it. Shortly after they left, I heard it again and this time is was closer. I finally found it in the beam of the flashlight and could see something wriggling from its beak! I managed to get two shots before it flew off. At first I was thinking it had a small snake (small desert owls are known to put a threadsnake in their nest to control nest parasites), but as it turned out it was a large centipede. I have lots of photos of Western Screech-Owls but none are as interesting as this one! Later that night I found this one too. Judging from the markings, this is a different owl, probably the mate.
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 evening a Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch from Vandenberg SFB, shortly after sunset. The timing was perfect for a big show if the launch actually happened. And it did! Mike Venard came out to watch the show with me and we were both quite impressed. One really has to see it to appreciate the spectacular view, but I took photos, of course, and so here some of them are. They don’t really do justice to what we saw though.
Here’s liftoff, at about 7:30 PM. The planet Mercury can be seen in the center of the image, on the left side is the radar station on Child’s Mountain. Taken with a 35mm Sigma lens. The rocket is about 600 miles west heading south over the Pacific Ocean.The rocket rapidly speeds south leaving behind a wake of exhaust gases (mostly water that has frozen into ice crystals) that are lit up by the sun below the horizon. Perfect timing. The rocket has passed over Child’s Mountain and is heading south at probably around 5 miles per second. The booster can be seen falling away into the Pacific Ocean. By now, the whole western sky is filled with this. The booster is streaking away toward the Pacific Ocean. After the rocket was gone, these clouds remained for quite a while, basically man-made noctilucent clouds, very bright and colorful. I quickly changed lenses to a 135mm for this shot, a close up of the exhaust cloud. What a show! This is the third time I’ve seen this happen, but this was the best one I’ve seen. I posted some photos on Spaceweather.com and see this morning that one is featured in on the main web page, it can be seen at this LINK.
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.
