We purchased this potted cactus recently with the intent to eventually put it in the cactus garden. In the meantime, its spring flowers have been opening, the most recent of which is pictured above. I am not sure of the name of this variety, but it sure has beautiful hot pink flowers. Click on the image to enlarge.
I don’t know the exact type of cactus this is, but I think it is probably in the cereus family. The little guy’s first four flowers opened up today and the configuration of the flowers reminded me of a couple of hoot owls staring.
There is another flower bud that will probably open up after the hoot owl effect goes away. Click on the image to enlarge.
Damsel and I did some yard chores this morning consisting of clean-up of a pile of cut-down bush branches we left for “later” a couple of weeks ago. We finished that and moved on to pruning some low-hanging foliage on the “Musical” mesquite tree out front. We also pruned some “suckers” from the citrus “orchard” (one orange, one lemon tree).
Later in the day, I was out by the orchard 😉 and spotted a young Curve Billed Thrasher that was caught in a net that Damsel has covering her little orange tree. The net was placed there precisely to keep critters out, but somehow, this little guy found his way in and tangled itself in the mesh.
I had my camera with me, but placed it on the ground to effect a release of the bird if I could, therefore no pix of the rescue, just the one above of a similar bird at our feeder I took earlier.
I reached under the net and got a grip on the bird; it didn’t like me doing so and squawked the whole time I gently held it while getting out my Sog knife to cut through some of the entangled netting. After a minute or so, I managed to free the bird which had minimal injury as far as I could tell. It flew a low trajectory to a nearby cholla where it perched.
I’m glad I found the little guy before one of the local predators did. Damsel and I discussed replacing the net with some wire screen mesh which is less likely to snare the critters.
This is the time of year that this little yellow palo verde tree on the road out front gets its tiny flowers (see inset). The bees love to browse these and you can hear them buzzing during the day when passing by the tree.
This little tree is one that was already growing here when we had the house built. There was a cat’s paw right next to the tree originally, but we had the landscapers remove it since it was encroaching and causing the little tree to lean over. Since that time, we have been pruning the tree to encourage it to fill out on the side where the other tree was.
This tree will probably continue to be in bloom until late May when the heat starts to come back to our desert. Click on the image to enlarge.
We get a lot of birds at the feeders out back. There is a pair of finch feeders plus fixtures where we usually have a bird block (shown) and bell (just below the block) for the critters to be fed and for us to watch them. Damsel gets most of the good pix, but once in a while, I score a good one, too.
I managed to catch a cactus wren working on the seed block just as a male cardinal lit on the top of the feeder cage. I took this image with my Canon EOS Rebel SL1 and the 75-300mm lens set to 180mm, ISO 100, 1/512sec and F7.1. Click on the image to enlarge.
This is a slideshow of six types of flowers we are currently seeing on and around our place here in Wickenburg. The first image is that of a cholla flower close-up followed by flower-topped ocotillo canes, a yellow prickly pear flower, palo verde flowers, a hot pink cactus flower cluster and a Mexican Bird of Paradise flower pod. Click on the image to advance to the next image.
More flowers are coming. We have already seen the first of the saguaro cactus flowers up the road and expect our big saguaro to come into bloom this summer. We really love the spring and summer flowers here in the desert.
Spring is again upon us and it is now in full effect. Most of the cacti on and around the property have already, are currently or will be, making their appearances shortly.
This pair of cholla flowers opened today just behind one of the retention walls that we had built here last year. At that time, we asked the contractors to be as minimally invasive as they could be to the flora and fauna near the work areas. They did a great job!
Our desert springtime is the best time of the year (even though we love the summers, heat and all) with the flowers on the trees, cacti and our landscape shrubbery. More pictures to come! Click on the image to enlarge.