For the past couple of days, some of our native cacti have had flowers open up. The one on the left is a flower on one of our beavertail cacti and the one on the right is on a hedgehog cactus. Both species are native and were growing here when we moved in over ten years ago (that long?).
Below are a couple of male House Finches who are engaged in their spring rituals of trying to attract the attention of female Finches with their spring songs and aerial dances. These are so nice to watch in addition to Cardinals, Doves, Thrashers, Woodpeckers and Phainopeplas doing their things as well.
There are many other species of birds and mammals running about this patch of desert in the springtime. It’s like having our own private zoo.
Click on any of the images to enlarge.
We’re back to cold/grey/rainy/snowy for the next weeks or so. Barely hit 40* today, and we had some flurries from the front(s) coming through.
The robins are back, and we saw a momma with her babies the other day. Lots of squirrels running around with their young uns, too. We saw some kind of dove yesterday. I spent a couple of hours trying to find pix of it, but no luck. It was mostly brownish grey, but had a big heart-shaped black patch right under it’s head on it’s breast, kind of lick an American Flicker, but it was definitely some kind of ground dove or mourning dove. I’ve just never seen one with a patch on it like that.
DrJim Great to hear from you, hope all is well. Our Winter was pretty mild this year, but, we are still more then glad Spring is here. All the birds and animals are great to see. We get a lot of birds we don’t recognize, because they are just flying through to somewhere else warmer. Maybe that Dove was a Canadian Dove and just stopped for a second. We get a lot of birds going to Mexico or farther, don’t recognize what they are either. Hope you and the Fam are doing great. Stay Healthy and Safe.