Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Environment

Curve Billed Thrasher Nest and Eggs

Thrasher Nest 
Thrasher Cholla

For the third year in a row (that we know of), the curve billed thrashers have built a nest in the cholla cactus in front of our house. We discovered three eggs in the nest today.

The nest is in the inhospitable-looking cholla cactus seen at the lower right. One of the thrashers is seen in the lower left photo perched on a cholla. Click on any of the images to enlarge.

We were worried that the wall and RV drive construction projects would have discouraged the nest-builders, but, obviously, it didn’t bother them. The nest is typical of those we have seen in the past and you can see our used dental floss that we scatter outside in the winter and spring months woven in with the fibers and twigs.

If we have the chance, we may post some pictures of the thrasher chicks when they hatch, but we don’t want to disturb the birds as they nurture their young. In the past, they have laid eggs in the nest twice, so we may not get the opportunity until the second brood.

15 Mar 2015 by Arizona Critters Environment Photography

There’s a Fungus Among Us

Fungus Cleaned Up

Well, there is still a fungus among us, but it’s just not as visible. This is the before and after photos of the base of the compost bin taken today when Damsel and I set out to eliminate the toadstools flourishing around the bin. Click on either image to enlarge.

We’ve been composting here in Arizona virtually since we moved here. We had a long time tradition of composting when we lived in California, and brought that with us here. We’re not enviro-freaks, but just interested in recycling what we can to our advantage.

When we noticed the toadstools we thought that it would be wise to eliminate them, given the habit of one of the two dogs to randomly pick up something off of the ground and eat it. We worried that this might be a toxic form of the mushroom genus.

I found several references on-line to fungus in the compost and they all indicated that this was a normal occurrence if the compost is not turned regularly. The references all said that toadstools would not hurt the compost.

So, we raked the red gravel rocks away from the bin, scraped the toadstool flesh off of the ground and tossed it into the bin. We used a couple of gardening tools to toss the contents of the bin to turn it over after taking some of the castings to use as soil for Damsel’s spring garden projects.

As I scooped out some of the rich compost soil, I could see that the worms are alive and well and will continue to do their natural thing as we recycle kitchen scraps, napkins, facial tissue, paper towels, flower petals and so forth. We find that the composting results in Arizona are, overall, better than we had in California.

14 Mar 2015 by Arizona Environment Home & Garden

Cactus Rescue

Cactus Rescue

The house being built to the east of us had a back hoe come and dig trenches on the hillside down the road from us for underground utilities. In the process, the numbnuts operating the machinery managed to trash much of the natural vegetation growing beside the road.

Most of the compromised plant life wouldn’t matter since it was scrub creosote and other brush that will be back with a vengeance. However, there was a hedgehog cactus cluster almost completely covered with the earth piled alongside the trench.

Damsel and I went down the road with the wheelbarrow and dug several lobes of the buried cactus out. Some of it was destroyed to the point of not being able to recover, but we rescued about six viable lobes, three of which we put in our rock and cactus garden seen in the image above. We put the other three lobes in pots pending finding another place for them.

Several of the lobes have flower pods growing on them. We’re hoping that the flowers still bloom despite the incident. Damsel will post a lot of flower pix this spring, so we’ll make a special note when a flower is from one of the rescued hedgehogs. Click on the image to enlarge.

13 Mar 2015 by Arizona Environment Home & Garden

Lurking in the Rosemary

Lurking in the Rosemary

After all those years of enjoying the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote Looney Tunes cartoons from Warner Brothers, it’s hard to think of the poor roadrunner as predator rather than prey (roadrunners are both, actually). You expect it to go ‘meep meep,” when actually the roadrunner has a slow and descending dove-like “coo”. It also makes a rapid, vocalized clattering sound with its beak.

Having watched our roadrunners (ours because living on or near our lot) for the past several years, it is clear that they are predators. They lurk near the finch feeders to try and catch an unwary goldfinch eating thistle seeds. We have not actually witnessed them catching a bird but we have seen them lie very still then leap and miss. We have seen them carrying prey in their beaks, probably small reptiles, as they scurry off to consume their catch.

I photographed this bird lurking in the rosemary ground cover near the feeders behind the RV drive in the late afternoon. Click on the image to enlarge.

10 Mar 2015 by Arizona Critters Environment Photography

Spring Poppy

Spring Poppy

The Town of Wickenburg posted on their social media page about all the spring wildflowers that are popping up after the recent rainfall. On our weekly trip to the supermarket today, we could see lots of flowers along the roadway as we drove. There were desert marigolds, orange mallow and lots of poppies. I got out of the truck just up the road from our house and took this photo of a poppy. Very pretty! Click on the image to enlarge.

05 Mar 2015 by Arizona Environment Flowers Photography

After the Rain

Thrasher Beavertail BudHedgehog BudsLots of Buds

I climbed up on the hill out back to replace the bird seed bell and block that would usually be up there; since the rain mostly abated today, I was able to go up and do the replacement. After I finished, the first customer impatiently waited on a cholla cactus about 20 feet away from where I was. I took this photo of the curve billed thrasher using the Canon SL1 and 300mm telephoto lens.

A little later, I went out front where Damsel has a few cacti growing in the landscape rock garden. It would seem that we’re going to have a lot of pink and purple flowers soon. Left to right in the lower panel above: beavertail cactus flower bud, several hedgehog flower buds and scores more beavertail buds on one very prolific plant. I took these photos also with the same camera, but with a shorter focal length for close-ups. Click on any image to enlarge.

03 Mar 2015 by Arizona Environment Home & Garden Photography

Seeing Spots

400 Years of Sunspot Numbers

Over eight years ago, we posted a chart similar to the above in a write-up about Correlating Sunspots to Global Climate. The conclusions from that post still hold true today given the lack of ocean levels rising and icecaps melting that the Greenbats would have had you believe. At this point in time, we’re way past the supposed deadline of doom that the Greenbats, UN loonies and Algorians foresaw back then.

I was reading the March 2015 issue of QST Magazine, the publication of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), when I saw the graphic above. The associated discussion with the sunspot graphic spoke about predicting sunspots for the next solar cycles. The author mentioned that the current cycle may lead to another period of minimum activity as the sun has previously exhibited.

Ham radio operators have known for a century that radio propagation is greatly affected by sunspot activity. The more spots, the merrier for long-distance communication on certain frequencies. Solar flux causes the atmosphere to ionize, thus refracting radio waves over the horizon and even around the entire planet.

If, as the writer of the QST article fears, another sunspot minimum is in the works, then ham operators that depend on ionospheric propagation for their hobby will be out of luck. The rest of the world, in that event, should prepare for the bitter cold that a new minimum will likely bring.

Click on the image to enlarge.

23 Feb 2015 by Environment Global Warming Science

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