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October Night in Sabino Canyon

October 12, 2016, 1:18 pm
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Lower Sabino Canyon, so safe and easy to walk but usually too busy with visitors, changes character at night. A little more wilderness, a lot more mystery. Very few people. The air seems to vibrate with cricket and katydid sounds and some that are tantalizingly close and distinct like the solo of a percussion instrument in a jazz band, but unrecognizable - at least to my companion, reptile photographer Rene Clark, and me.  

Migrating (?) Canyon Wrens were tucked under the eaves of all bath room buildings

Crevice Spiders, Giant Crab Spiders, Flatties and Black Widows in abundance
 After dark, our observations began quite low key and prosaic with numerous visits to the little bath room buildings that dot the canyon. The wall of these Roosevelt-Civilian-Conservation-Corps-style buildings are made of natural stone and provide shade, niches and crevices for paper wasp nests, interesting spiders, Canyon Tree Frogs, and sleeping Canyon Wrens.

A camel cricket crossing the road
 Further up the canyon the creek was running, sounding fresh but smelling a little foul in places.  Clear enough though to see Sunburst Beetles diving and Whirligig Beetles dancing in the beam of our lights.


On shear rock walls we looked for Amplygids (Tailless Whip Scorpions) but found only a very nice tarantula.


Ghostly pale beauties, Datura flowers lured me into the riparian underbrush. But it was the lowly Ragweed that bore interesting insects: the fecal-shield protected larva and the Halloween-masked adult form of the big tortoise beetle Physonota arizonae


At night, the nose can become become more important than the eyes. I never realized the fresh, fruity smell of blooming Brickell Bush and until now, and I had only smelled Desert Lavender after I crushed the leaves. Yellow asteraceae along the water exuded a potent tagetes smell that instantly conjured up my mother's garden's marigold borders. Most of the active responders were nectaring moths.


The Desert Broom also had a faint, pleasant smell that I noticed for the first time. Surprisingly, this time it did not make me sneeze. A rather mixed community here, even a canyon frog that remenbered its phylogenetic roots among the tree frogs

We also found many paper wasps of at least 3 species. They nearly all turned out to be sleeping males that drowsily, but harmlessly crawled towards the cameras and onto our sleeves.

Other insects relied on the warning the olfactory sense can provide: disturbed Pinacate Beetles interrupted their wandering and to stick their hind end into the air and when that wasn't enough to deter my probing finger I got doused with a staining, stinking gush of hydroquinons.


After renewing that experience I did not even try to interrupt the hurried pass of a Chlaenius ground beetle because I like their stench even less. And there was always the resident skunk rustling in the brush near by ...

Smerinthus saliceti
 Rather save from that night prowler, big sphingid caterpillars were stripping leaves from the riparian trees. I usually leave caterpillar expertise to expert friends like Dave Wagner. But one big cat was chomping on Ash, the smaller hornworm devoured Willow leaves. Though similarity to Rustic Sphinx on honeysuckle was noted, it was clear that these hosts  would to entertain a different crowd. So knowing the family - Sphingidae, with horned 'worms', and the plant association made it easy to confirm my suggestion: the caterpillar on willow belonged to the eyed Sphinx Smerinthus saliceti and the larger one on ash was Sphinx chersis, the  Great Ash Sphinx.

Sphinx chersis, the  Great Ash Sphinx
Without noticing, we had covered nearly the entire length of the canyon. When we turned back, Great Horned Owls were hooting and a single firefly blinked in the canopy. We thought it might have been to late in the season for Poorwills that we usually hear at night.

Just then my camera died
 On the way back down we walked faster and did not plan on stopping a lot, when the Hooded Skunk marched into the road right in front of us.  Amazingly, on the light tarmac, his long flowing white mane made him next to invisible in the moon light, a ghostly appearance that had us transfixed, except that our hands were frantically searching the right button on our cameras. He came directly towards us, very close. Alas, my camera's battery failed right when he was in reach of our macro lenses and Rene also mumbled something very disappointed. And after being flashed at once, he had had it and strolled off. Most amazing? None of us thought about being sprayed at that moment.


The rest of the way was uneventful but good exercise. To tired to ponder why the mantis crossed the road. Home by midnight. A night well-spent.
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Machaerocera mexicana (Mexican Blue-wing Grasshopper) at Patagonia Lake

October 14, 2016, 12:27 pm
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Machaerocera mexicana  Saussure, 1859  (Mexican Blue-wing Grasshopper)
 Just a short note about a very vibrant grasshopper population that I found in this otherwise strangely grasshopper poor year 2016.  The species Machaerocera mexicana  Saussure, 1859  (Mexican Blue-wing Grasshopper) was originally described from northern Mexico and  has been recorded in Arizona roccasionally since it was found by UA students in 1972 at  a location 3.2 km southwest of Patagonia, Santa Cruz Co., Arizona. Sonoita. Since then, most records stemmed from las Cienegas (Pantano Wash) at the Empire state Ranch in Pima County.  On an excursion to northern Sonora, Mexico wit Tom van Devender, I saw a few along a creek at Rancho las Avispas. That location is just south west of Nogales.

Doris Evans and Lois Manowtz where the Trogon might have been
 Yesterday, with some birding friends, I went to Patagonia lake, strolling along the birding path to maybe see a Trogon. But it was very quiet, bird-wise.


Only at the flat, muddy end of the lake a Kingfisher and a Great Egret provided a little activity, and the Trogon flew by after my birding friends had already given up.


The further I followed the trail (maybe just a cattle path) away from the lake into the riparian forest of Willows, Cottonwoods and Walnut Trees, the more butterflies, dragonflies, wasps and grasshoppers I encountered.


Mounds of decaying debris left over from many floods provide rich soil for many leafy plants under the shady canopy of the gallery trees. Cattle had added nutrients and churned it over - were doing so as I watched.


I found tobacco plants as tall as myself and with huge leaves that could have wrapped cigars for giants. And from the knee-high level of tobacco and seep willow I scared up dozens of sizable grasshoppers with deep-blue underwings.

The hind wings that only flash during flight  (Photo Bob Beatson, Las Cienegas)
 Before they flew up, they went unnoticed despite their size - they were drab brown and sat very still.  There were dozens in each location, usually mostly large females and a few smaller males. The flight of the females arched down after a few meters, but the little males flew very well and even up into my hair.


The grasshoppers occurred in solid numbers and in behavior (sitting knee-high in leafy plants, flying up nearly as a group) and wing color so distinctly different from other species that I'm surprised that they were so rarely observed.


They are probably very seasonal (like most GHs), don't occur in places other than the limited habitat of a specific riparian forest,  and maybe I just hit one of their boom years. But of course, I personally don't often feel like paying the steep price of $15 to get access to Patagonia Lake State Park. It seems that this location is quite close to the first US record in 1972.


Litrature: First records of grasshopper Machaerocera mexicanaSaussure, 1859 (Orthoptera: Acrididae)from the United States and Sonora, Mexico. R.A.Behrstock, P.H.Sullivan. Insecta Mundi 11-2-2011


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Moths of Arizona - a new Poster

December 27, 2016, 3:55 pm
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Just before the Holidays I produced another photo collage of Arizona Insects, bringing the number of available posters to four.

 
This time I chose another huge group - Moths.  We have thousands of species here in Arizona. They are so attractive that collectors come from all over the world. I see is no ethical problem with collecting. Insects, like many other animals, may be declining in numbers, but not through collection, but through the loss of habitat climate change.  Collectors can actually help us to know more about insects and thus are invaluable to conservation efforts. We can only effectively protect what we understand.

Template and corresponding species key come with the poster
My moth poster is supposed to raise awareness on a very basic level: I selected large, colorful species to show that moths are just as beautiful as butterflies, a group that so far has a much greater appeal to the general public. So I left out the rare ones and the micro moths (which are so intricately pretty that they deserve a poster of their own) and went for bold patterned Northern flags, huge Black Witches and soft, slow-flapping Silk moths.  It worked, the poster was a hit from the release.

The size is again 18 in by 24 inches, on semi gloss heavy paper.  This time I do the printing on my own 12 color Giclee printer and the result is pretty spectacular. Each poster costs $20 plus $7 for shipping in the continental US. The other 3 can also still be ordered. (mbrummermann@comcast.net)

To achieve a more elegant, less poster-like look, the prints are also available without the text.

On January 3, 2017 I will give a talk 'Where and when to find Insects in AZ' at the Maricopa Audubon Meeting in Scottsdale, and I'll have posters for sale there.

On January 21 and 22 I will be at the La Encanda shopping center with my art work, both watercolors and insect posters. Please stop by, it's a great art show in a beautiful courtyard.  La Encantada is on the NW corner of N Campbell Ave. and E Skyline Drive in Tucson, AZ.
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I always loved Ravens

January 18, 2017, 10:34 am
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 Or rather all corvids. They have been among my favorites wherever I lived. Konrad Lorenz and Bernd Heinrich did not have to plant the seed to this love, but they did nurture it in me through books and personal encounters.

Twice, as a child and young adult in Germany, I was lucky enough to become the keeper of a tame Jackdaw, which is the smallest of the black European corvids. Each was a  free flying companion for many years. Their intelligence and curiosity got them into many comical or even dangerous adventures - hiking or biking with Jackdaw never got boring.

Hooded Crows in Trondheim
 When I lived in Trondheim, Norway, Crows became my favorites. Resident researchers soon invited me to  climb huge pine trees to get to the nests of rooks to get blood samples of the nestlings - I did not particularly like that idea. But I could watch for hours the behavior of those stately Hooded Crows that stood up to the biggest, loudest Hering Gulls with dignity.


In Florida, the Blue Jays came to my balcony. Their antics helped through some inevitable homesickness. When I moved on half a year later, I sure missed those guys! 

Morning has Broken
 Their large cosmopolitan relative, the Common Raven, is the most intelligent and impressive. I love watching our resident pair here in the Arizona Desert. In Summer, they let  the vortex of a thunderhead cloud carry them up into the sky, only to swoop down with breathtaking speed and start it all over again. An amazing spectacle!
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Dung Beetles - important for environment and agriculture

February 4, 2017, 11:53 am
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Scarab beetles are one of our largest and most divers beetle families. Most Arizonans are quite familiar with the day active Green Fig Beetle and smaller brown beetles of several  genera that tend to accumulate around porch lights and are often just called June Bugs.

Hercules Beetle larva

 Gardeners among us usually hate the white, c-shaped, fat grubs of scarabs that live in the ground and supposedly feed on the roots of your favorite plants. Some of them might in fact do that.

But most scarabs are decomposers, and therefore very important for gardening and agriculture. Their grubs feed on dead plant material that they digest with the help of bacterial symbionts in their widely extended guts. Hence the impression that they are fat. The strong mandibles of those often very large grubs are able to break down decaying wood and leaf matter, utilize amazing amounts of material,  and thus open it up to smaller decomposers, and finally fungi and bacteria. So eventually the nutrients will again be part of the garden soil and available for uptake by plants..

Dung Beetles of the genus Phanaeus
  Among scarabs, dung beetles have evolved to break down the feces of larger animals. The importance of this 'service' can hardly be overestimated.  Obviously, they are removing waste that would otherwise pose a serious health risk. For example, dung beetles help to remove harmful pathogens like E. coli from soil. But if you consider the amount of dung that  big herds of  grazing animals produce, you'll understand that the mere accumulation of this dung would eventually cover so much surface that the grasses that the herds a feeding on would be displaced by a rather sterile crust of dung.

Canthon indigaceus and Canthon imitator form dung balls to bury their share away from competition, as food for their own offspring. 
Although there is no longer a source in the US to buy dung beetles of any type, historically, the U.S. government sponsored dung beetle introduction programs. When the local dung beetle population did not seem to be able to handle the waste of Texas' huge Cattle herds, Digitonthophagus gazella (Gazelle Scarab) was brought in in the 1970. Of Indoafrican origin,  it is now perhaps the most widespread dung beetle in tropical and subtropical pastures. (Noriega et al. 2010).  Euoniticellus intermedius was brought to Texas from Africa. Thus dung beetles from traditional feeding grounds of big herds were introduced.  I do not know why dung beetles were not brought in from old buffalo grounds like the midwestern prairies, but instead from Eurasia and Africa. Maybe the introducers thought them more suitable for the Texas climate. The beetles proved invasive. They quickly spread throughout most of the southern U.S. 
Digitonthophagus gazella (Gazelle Scarab) and Euoniticellus intermedius, both introduced
 The introduced species are doing the job. They propagated so successfully that they are found all over Arizona by now. In fact, by now most larger dung beetles we find are of those two species. It is difficult to tell if this is harming the populations of endemic species that they compete with, but it is hard to imagine that they wouldn't. My impression is that the  two introduced species are generalists that can deal with nearly all types of soil, and exposure. They also fly well enough to quickly move into areas were grazing is so poor that cattle may only be brought in every few years. Our endemic large Canthon imitator, the smaller Canthon indigaceus and the three Phanaeus species seem be more discriminating in their choice of habitat.
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Santa Rita Mountains, February 2017

February 10, 2017, 10:37 am
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Yesterday morning I finished my 'Coyote Prowls' and then headed south for the Santa Rita Mountains. More about the painting in my watercolor blog.

After a rainy January, the weather has turned sunny and gorgeous. With all the early precipitation, we don't even have to feel bad about it. The mountains, covered in last years dead grasses reflected the sun like fields of gold, nicely set off by the blue shapes of Mount Whrightston  and Mount Baldy.


I could see snow on the higher elevations, but down in Box Canyon the temperature reached the high eighties. I met a naturalist friend and we looked for insects: He found interesting syrphids. The antennae of the males were shaped like bundles of feathers. Copestylum(Hiatomyia) plumosa? I got no photos, too bad. I hope to go back for them.




The creeks were gurgling with clear fresh water. No bugs except some Water Striders.  Bonewhite Sycamores rose ghostly in the early evening shade of the canyons.



Several dark butterflies were flying around: Mourning Cloaks, Bordered Patches and Pipevine Swallowtails. Does their dark coloration give them enough thermoregulatory advantage for an early start? 



 Already, Desert Broom was attracting scores of wasps.  These are potential queens of Paper Wasp species that overwintered, I assume. Like every year in spring, I'm confused - their coloration differs from that of the workers I'm used to seeing in summer and autumn.
   

 At Madera Canyon Lodge, a Coatimundi visited the bird-feeder area. He seemed well-fed, content and rather tame. Probably not a great situation, but I did enjoy watching him for a while. 

White-nosed Coatis in SE Arizona are the northernmost ambassadors of the south and central American genus Nasua (in German Nasenbaer). They are Racoon-related omnivores but more day-active than those (less hunting pressure, historically?. They feed on insects, lizards, roots, fruits, nuts and eggs. They are very fond of fruit, especially the manzanita berry, and obviosly don't dislike easy-picking bird seed.

  On the way home, the grasslands glowed even more and mountain shadows undulated. It's hard to decide which photo to choose.


P.S. In the meantime I found several Flickr posts of the little group of  Coaties at the Madera Canyon Lodge. I was quite dismayed to see how very obese at least one of the three regulars is.  Feeding wild animals is illegal in Arizona. But feeding birds is exempt from this law. In fact most birdlovers still believe that they are doing a commendable service to the birds. As a biologist the only value that I can see is that people might get interested and feel protective about more than just hummingbirds. Also,  for the lodge and several B and Bs in Madera Canyon the bird feeders are an intrinsic part of a lucrative business and beloved by so many visitors that it would probably be impossible to end this practice. But the feeding and overfeeding of the coaties is problematic. The feeders are alraedy positioned pretty much out of reach of even good climbers.  I hope there is a way (and I will raise the issue) to keep the spilled birdseed from reaching the ground.




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Paintings of Desert Animals in their habitat: Jack Rabbit

February 15, 2017, 2:31 pm
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In an effort to brighten up social Media with art postings, I will regularly post some of my watercolor paintings here and on my Facebook page.  Hopefully they'll all have some appeal to the naturalists among us as well 


We ( Jack Rabbit and I) live in the Sonoran Desert. It's not bare like the Sahara, but not usually covered in grass, either. Except after really good summer monsoon storms. A carpet of little Cheat Grass plants covers the creosote flats. But the life cycle is short and soon they are producing awfully sticky seeds.  By then the grass itself is bleached and golden until the wind blows away every trace of it. The painting was mainly about this: the short golden grass in the sun. But the Jack rabbit was there and made a great center of interest for viewers who are less intrigued by temporary Cheat Grass lawns.
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Painting of desert animals in their habitat: Racoons

February 15, 2017, 9:57 pm
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 'At Night at Sabino Creek'. Often I just find the left-over shells of crayfish in the morning, but lots of five-fingered prints tell the story. The clear, cool water shows the gold-brown color of tannins from decaying oak leaves: this creek originates high in the Catalina mountains and can tell of snow melt and towering Ponderosa Pines, rare Arizona Cypress, Live oaks  and Aligator Juniper, and finally Saguaro Cactus and lush Cottonwoods. 
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Desert animals in their habitat: The Owls of Sabino Canyon

February 16, 2017, 9:13 am
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To me, this is also a painting of wildlife in its habitat. If you can't see it, close your eyes and listen. There: the hooting call of Great Horned Owls. I have never hiked the area at dusk without hearing them calling to each other. In fact, a Native American friend who was often with me felt their presence so keenly that they made him uncomfortable (I did talk him out of it). Why is it that owl...s have such a bad reputation in many traditional cultures? When I was a kid in Germany, my mother thought that owls might have been drawn to windows that were illuminated at night and in the old times that often happened when someone lay sick or dying. So they were thought of as harbingers of death. Anyway - I'm glad we moved away from those superstitions and can enjoy our owl sightings now. Not all old traditions are to be cherished.
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Desert Animals in their habitat: Urban Doves

February 17, 2017, 9:50 am
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 Mourning Doves are so adaptable. They breed on top of sun exposed cacti in the pristine desert, but I also had a pair in the tiny patio area of my very first Tucson apartment. They raised their 2 chicks in a flower pot and afterwards started right over - up to 5 times a year. I called the painting originally ' Keeping an eye on the alien'. At the time my I was on a J -Visa and and frequent questioning by border patrol agents was still upsetting to me. But when I entered the painting in a show, it was rejected. Later it won an award in a different setting. Go figure. I had changed the title, but that may not have been the reason.
As an afterthought: Today, but not in the early nineties when I painted this, our local doves, Mourning and White-winged, really have to compete with alien invaders. The Eurasian Collared Doves are pushing them out of several prime nesting sites in our backyard as we speak.
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Desert Animals in their habitat: Backyard Hummingbirds

February 18, 2017, 10:24 am
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Costa's Hummers stay year round in our backyard and the males fiercly defend their territories, often in form of a particular feeder and pearch nearby. February is already mating time and nest-building time for the females. The male accompanies his flight display with a long, piercing whistle. In our backyard, Aloes introduced from South Africa are blooming. While they are mainly ignored by local insects, Hummingbirds, Orioles (and Honey Bees) are less fussy and enjoy the early nectar board.

 Anna's hummers are also in their nuptial best right now. Gorget and forehead are shimmering in metallic colors from purple to orange and green. depending on the light refraction.  Much of their mating song is produced while sitting on the highest point of a Mesquite tree. Anna's only lately became year-round residents of Arizona. Garden flowers, feeders and decorative water features enabled them to do so - one of the species that benefited from the transformation of pristine desert into suburbia.
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Animals in their habitat: Acorn Woodpeckers in Madera Canyon

February 19, 2017, 9:38 am
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 Acorn Woodpeckers in Madera Canyon. The creek was running underground at the time, as it does during longer and longer periods each year now. When water is a limiting factor, artificial water sources become a big draw for wildlife.
Acorn Woodpeckers don't just look like clowns. As the only social woodpecker species (that I am aware of) they are given to a lot of very entertaining antics from the human point of view. And they are smart. I'm sure these two were discussing the idiot who had closed the valve so tightly
The old little drinking fountain at the Lodge fell victim to the parking lot extensions years ago. The dated Tucson-insider title was 'CAP' Water?' An engineer from Tucson Water bought the painting
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Animals in their Habitat: Coatimundis in Sycamore Canyon

February 20, 2017, 6:17 pm
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A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to watch a single Coati foraging under the bird feeders of Madera Canyon Lodge. That reminded me of a quite dreamlike experience from my very early days in Arizona. I was camping in Chiricahua National Monument with a group of friends. I woke up early and peaked out of my tent.. The young bright white sycamore trees were too thin to block the rays of the raising sun. While I was drowsily squinting, the trunks seemed to sway and move. But as soon as my eyes adjusted, I recognized that the moving things were actually the straight-upright tails of a gang of coatimundis. They hung around for a while, chattering and sniffing noisily under rocks and branches that they seemed to move with their little hands.
    
White-nosed Coatis, Nasua narica, are related to Racoons. Our Arizona coatis are the northernmost ambassadors of a genus that is widespread in central and south America. They are day-active omnivores with a taste for insects, lizards, roots, fruits, nuts and eggs. They are very fond of fruit, especially manzanita berries. Normally, they weigh from 10 to 25 pounds, but the ones at Madera Canyon look like they are quite a bit heavier.
Coatis mate in early spring. A litter of 4 to 6 young is born after a gestation period of about 11 weeks, usually in a den in a wooded canyon. Coatis usually stick together in groups of one half to two dozens, but lately a group of 40 was observed in Ramsey Canyon in the Huachucas. Although they seem to like woodland and creeks, they also sometimes appear in the backyards of Oro Valley and Tucson.


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Animals in their Habitat: Elegant Trogons

February 23, 2017, 9:23 am
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'Habitat' includes of course the geologic base (soil and profile), the resulting plant society, climate and geographic location. But the animal neighbors are as important. They are part of the food chain as prey or predator and, usually most importantly, compete for the same resources or provide them, like food and nesting cavities. In this painting after my very first observation of Elegant Trogons in Madera Canyon (1994), I posed them and their neighbors in a thicket of Sycamore branches, Ferns and Columbine flowers. So I considerably shrunk the distance between canopy and forest floor in my imaginary world.


I think back then, Trogons, who reach the northernmost point of their distribution in SE Arizona, only migrated north for the breeding season. Trogons are primarily occupants of tropical forests, but as omnivores, they are somewhat adaptable. They glean the brush for insects and they love the berries of the Madrone tree, but they do not refuse those of introduced Pyracantha shrubs. In spring, the pair raises 2 to 4 chicks in a tree cavity, and Sycamores seem to provide the most desirable ones. Nowadays Elegant Trogons can be seen year round in SE Arizona's canyons and riparian areas.
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Animals in their habitat: Gamble's Quail

February 27, 2017, 11:50 am
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Gamble's Quail Family. This species lives in the creosote and Saguaro areas of the Sonoran Desert. We have Mearn's Quail in the south eastern canyons and Scaled Quail in the grasslands further east. February is a little early for chicks, but at last weekend's art show, prints and note cards of this image sold out very quickly. So humans are eagerly waiting for spring, The male quail are also getting all territorial and sit on their perches calling 'ChiCAgo!' for hours. During most of the year, quail live very socially in coveys - probably related groups of siblings from those large clutches. Quail mothers lay 10 to 18 eggs in a protected hollow under dense vegetation or in a suitable flower pot. Not much nesting material is used. The hen does not incubate before she is completely done, and at one egg per day, this takes a while. Dangers lurk: snakes, Gila monsters, Roadrunners, Ravens, Coyotes, all love to gobble up a whole clutch. But if it works out, all chicks hatch at the same time. They are extremely precocious, fully feathered and able to follow their parents after only a couple of hours. The group does not return to the nest. Both parents are vigilant guardians, and the kids stay together instinctively. The chicks not only grow amazingly fast, they can also fly long before they are fully grown. The breeding season is long: groups of chicks can be seen from late March to late August.

 Like many desert-dwelling species, Gambel’s Quail populations undergo a “boom-and-bust” cycle. A year with ample winter-spring rainfall that generates lots of green vegetation will yield larger clutches and an abundance of chicks. Dry winters mean less food and lower productivity. So this year, we are expecting huge rows of chicks to follow their parents around!
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Animals in their habitat: Burrowing Owls

February 28, 2017, 9:28 am
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Animals in their habitat: 'Burrowing Owls'. These little long-legged owls are fun to watch and don't seem to mind posing for photos and sketches. They like to take over burrows of rodents or just irrigation pipes, so they can be found in the Avra Valley fields where Pima Cotton is grown (hence the uninspired background). But they are versatile and according to literature once lived in all open spaces of the Americas (not in the tundra, though, I'd guess). They are day active b...ut do most of their hunting at dawn and dusk. They perch and swoop or just jump and run after insects, lizards and small rodents, occasionally birds. Supposedly they bring cattle dung to their nest to attract dung beetles. But I know dung beetles: they like it fresh. So I doubt that interpretation of the behavior. Another behavior seems easier to understand: from inside their burrow, incubating females often make hissing and rattling noises very similar to that of a rattle snake. Rattlers also sleep in burrows. So the imitation seems like a good sound-based Batesian mimicry that might keep a badger or coyote from getting too inquisitory.
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Animals in their habitat: Blister Beetles on Spring Wildflowers

March 1, 2017, 9:48 am
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 Finally! The first wildflowers and the first seasonal insects are gracing the Arizona deserts. After a relatively wet winter, poppies are popping up (ugh, sorry!) under Creosotes and around saguaros. We don't see great fields of them yet, but it's early yet. While I've never found specific pollinators on those periodic spring blooms, there are beetles that feed on pollen as well as petals of lupines, scorpion weed and poppies: several species of blister beetles, most of them in the genus Lytta. They are not the much maligned threat to life stock that some of their relatives (genus Epicauta) have become thanks to industrial hay harvesting methods. Our horses usually don't feed on poppies after all. So just enjoy those shiny little jewels! Read more about their biology in another blog chapter
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Animals in their habitat: Desert Sparrows

March 2, 2017, 10:03 am
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Animals in their habitat: Black-throated Sparrows are character birds of our SW desert. All during spring their metallic song can be heard around our house in the bajada of the Tucson Mountains, but I've also found a nest in the grasslands around Cochise Stronghold on a friend's property. True to style, even that nest was hidden in a cholla cactus. But one of the five eggs in it was bigger and whiter than the other four. A cow bird had smuggled in a little parasitic guest. Th...e nest was very well protected with spiny jumping cholla branches, but my friend, being an entomologist in search of dung beetles, was armed with very long forceps. So he removed the cow bird egg. I was ambiguous about this interference, but he did the math: minus one cowbird means plus 4 sparrows, because the early hatching CB chick would have pushed the sparrow eggs out of the nest.
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Animals in their Habitat: Crossidius sp. Longhorn Beetles

March 3, 2017, 10:05 am
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Animals in their habitat: for many beetles all the habitat they rely on seems to be a single plant species. They are so faithful to their hostplants that they show up on the flowers as adults, may it be to feed on pollen, nectar or the petals themselves or to meet their mating partners. The female then lays her eggs so the larvae can feed on the stems or roots of the plant. Next year, there will then be a new generation of beetles just in time for the flowers of the plant. For the sake of exchange of genetic material, I hope the beetles at least cruize the whole local population of their plants. The example here is the longhorn beetle Crossidius coralinus on Burrow Weed (Isocoma sp.?). Beetles of this genus frequent similar asteraceae all over the western US.
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Animals in their Habitat: Roadrunner

March 4, 2017, 6:56 am
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Roadrunners are one of the icons of the deserts Southwest. They are most often depicted running through open spaces of sun-bleached sand with maybe some cactus, or, cornier, an even more bleached cow skull in the background.
But our huge raptorial cuckoo-birds would not really like that cliché landscape too much. While they are tough enough and very adaptable and often run rather than fly, they still appreciate the low trees of the thornbush chaparral just as much or even more than the wide open desert.
Their nasal wouw-wouw-wouw calls are most often heard from the height of an ironwood or mesquite tree, and later I see our resident bird up there all fluffed up, turning exposed patches of his black skin towards the morning sun to absorb the warmth. I know he is perfectly able to regulate his bodytemperature by autonomous means (shivering, panting) - much better than for example the tiny hummingbird - but he seems to prefer those primitive behavioral ways.
To me, that makes him seem even more like some ancient saurian velociraptor that his sharp profile and strong running legs remind me of. Fast, fierce and insatiable and smart. Even the tiniest, blind nestlings can swallow whole lizards that the parents provide. Adults catch everything that moves, from tarantulas to House Finches to rattlesnakes. One was filmed while catching hummingbirds at a feeder. Roadrunners are probably the greatest  menace in the young lives of baby quail.  When our cat got out last summer, he came racing back with a Roadrunner in angry pursuit.
And yet - I'm delighted each time I catch a glimpse of a speedy runner or hear their fast, clacking ratchet noises in our backyard.
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