Plants and Birds and Other Items

In this blog post we will look at a few birds, a few plants and some other items. It should be fun and entertaining. Let us see what we have here.

This is a plant called a Sacred Datura. It is a perennial plant that we see around here in Southern Arizona in the late spring. It is a very nice looking flower but it is poisonous. Purportedly it is sometimes used as a hallucinogen due to its psychoactive alkaloids but we have not tried that facet of the plant as of yet and most likely won’t.

This is another plant or was a plant, mostly twigs now. It was an Anaheim Pepper plant in our small garden but the mice decided they needed a pepper leaf salad for dinner.

There are now a few less mice in the area. Everyone around here has mice problems in their gardens, it is really dry and it seems there is little food for them hence the garden is a great smorgasbord. Last year we had no mice problems what so ever.

This is a Northern-rough Winged Swallow in flight. The swallows are really hard to capture while in flight. They are very irregular in their movements and rather fast. I am only glad for the digital camera and not having to incur the time and expense of slides just trying to get an image of one of these swallows.

Here is a fascinating ant mound. Our good friend Rodger says they are Harvester Ants because of all the green vegetation around the ant hill. It was most curious as there is no green vegetation with 25 -30 feet of this circle. They certainly are busy.

This is an Ash-throated Flycatcher. According to the Audubon Web site and other Internet sources "they live in dry terrain where trees are often small or scarce, they will resort to other sites for nesting; nests have been found in such odd places as exhaust pipes, hollow fence posts, mailboxes, and even in trousers hanging on a clothesline." Certainly an enterprising bird.

When the cactus blooms it can be really spectacular. Lots of beautiful color and often time many flowers from a relatively small plant.

This is a Ladder-backed Woodpecker going after what is left of an orange. The oranges attract a wide variety of bird species probably for the sugar content and resultant energy. If you look closely at the photo you will see the ants are attracted to the orange as well. The woodpecker might add a little protein to his meal with some of the ants. Some of the woodpeckers especially the Northern Flicker feed a lot on ants.

This wild flower blooms in the spring and much of the summer and is called a prickly poppy. Many of the flowers around here have many names but prickly seems appropriate for this plant. The leaf structure seems to resemble a thistle. We see these in a lot of place as we travel around, not in big massive fields like the California Poppies but in sufficient quantity to catch your attention.

This is a good example of a Lark Sparrow. For some reason there is an extreme abundance of this species this year. We see them everywhere. They are easy to identify due to the striking facial markings.

No this is not our “Bird Mobile”. We saw this in the Safeway parking lot. There are a number of owls on the roof and almost every square inch of the vehicle is covered with bird or other paraphernalia, even the wheels for the tires. I think the resale value has been dramatically reduced unless you find that certain someone who just has to have this car. Not sure if you have to wax the car to maintain it's pristine condition.

In an earlier blog post we showed a Summer Tanager female, she was a different color than this, here is the male of the species, bright red in color.

This is a Wilson ’s warbler. Warblers are pretty much migratory birds. They pass through here in the spring heading north. This bird was grabbing an insect on a branch higher up and was coming back down when I got this image. They are yellow with a pronounced black cap.

This is an American Coot. They are not the most graceful flyers and need to run across the water to get airborne. The image shows a little action. They are seen in and around the water all the time but their feet are not webbed, as a duck's feet are, they are lobed, hence when they swim it is with a really jerky motion.

Here is an adult Black-crowned Night Heron. They feed on fish and aquatic critters. They will sit by the edge pf the water and wait for an unsuspecting meal to swim by where they will hurriedly grab them with their large beak.

This is a juvenile or young Black-crowned Night Heron. He has not developed the coloration of the adult. He spent a lot of time just loafing and basking in the sun. The adult in the above image was not very far away we are sure keeping a watchful eye. Note how large the beak is on this juvenile, one serious beak.

This image of a hummingbird was interesting due to the lighting. I was trying to stop the wings in motion and had a fast shutter speed. The camera in its compensation made the background dark. I used some software to lighten up the image and achieve this effect.

We hope you enjoyed this look at some plants and birds and perhaps your future bird mobile, or at least an inventive mode of transportation with some creative ideas for your own car.
Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

All the best – George & Deanna