Fall migration

Male phainopepla looking for mistletoe berries...

It is so much fun to watch migration in motion.  It is almost an overnight sensation...one day just the house finches and cactus wrens, then the white crown sparrows and yellow-rumped warblers and gracing the Preserve again.  Orange crowned warblers and Wilson's warblers abound.  The uncommon common yellowthroat, Virginia warblers and thrushes flit through the brush.  We caught a glimpse of a great blue heron at the pond on camera.  Most years I see a few real special treats.  I found a spotted towhee scratching around under a desert willow. THAT was a treat.  They are not that common here on the desert floor.  It is fun looking for the first:  the first white-crown, the first robin, the first phainopepla. They come blowing in on the first fall windstorm, fluttering out of the sky like falling leaves.  Yellow, grays, blacks with hints of orange, red: a surprising array of colors and songs.

The dog days of summer

Well, our September held on to a hot and humid summer as long as possible.  Still holding out on the heat, but the humidity is way down.  I spent time out in the pond this week trying to identify the dragonflies that are out there.  It is actually pretty exciting.  Since we have managed to cut down on the crayfish population, I am seeing insects out there I never saw before.  At least eight species of dragonflies, and three-four species of aquatic beetles. I can't "prove" it, but I am guessing that the dragonfly nymphs were eaten by the crayfish.  Now the pond is alive.  The insects in the pond, the algae and other aquatic plants now growing. I can't help but think that the health of the pond is improving.

I keep looking for migrants now. Anytime.  Have seen a few turkey vultures, and some lesser goldfinches, but that is it.  I get so excited in September....the promise of fall is here and I can hardly wait!

Flame skimmer

Funny thing about that summer heat...

It is hard not to think or talk about the heat.  It lays heavy on the sand, thick and palpable.  I spend at least some time every day working outside.  I try to do it in the morning, but that is not always possible. I was out until 11 am this morning creeping up and down sand dunes looking for the fringe-toed lizard.  It was well over 100 degrees.  And yet, the funny thing is that the heat is the life blood, the heart, the essence of life out here.  Some critters don't even show themselves until the days get hot enough.  Take the desert iguana:  a cool critter that thrives in the heat.  It wakes up after the other reptiles and goes to sleep earlier in the fall. I don't even see a lizard running until ater 9 am when the sun really starts heating up the dunes.

So many other things wake up in the heat.  It is very cool to watch the movement of the seasons across the dunes.  The sand treader crickets wake up earlier in the spring when the sun is warm but not yet baking.  Then they dive into their sandy dens to wait out the summer heat.  They come out a bit in the darkness of the summer night. This morning I watched for my first lizard to see when things were starting to wake up.  Then all of a sudden there are tracks dancing all over the white expanse of sand.

The as the day progresses everything takes a siesta as the sun reaches zenith and the heat reaches its own zenith.  Not until the shadows grow long do things start to move about again.

As the shadows lengthened today I was out at the oasis.  While I was working I heard the call of a juvenile great-horned owl calling to its parents.  The sun had not yet set, but they were all bustling about in the palms What a delight.  What beauty.

I look forward (greatly) to the movement into fall, but I delight in the action of the desert summer.

Great horned owl juvenile

Summer sliding down...

The long, hot summer is upon us.  August is pretty miserable out here.  It is muggy, hot, and the sweat just streams down my face with any exertion.  I am sitting indoors with the air on.  I try to keep it around 80 degrees (84 at night).  In June and July this is quite pleasant, but in August, nothing works.  I can't bring myself to lower the temp, as the cost of electricity spurs me on to new heights of energy watchfulness!!  So I sit in front of a fan.  I can't stand it, though, and every so often I have to go outside...to check the tortoises, to weed, clean the patio, water, sweep.  Anything to be outside.  Then I have to come in once I am drenched.  All my plants are struggling to make it.  One actually melted (at least that is what it looks like) in the heat from the past two weeks. I try new ones every year to see what will make it and what will not (I have a collection of plants from South America and South Africa).

In spite of it all, I find things to fascinate me.  The sky is one.  In the early morning, when the temps are down, the desert has a light haze over it, causing the sky to be a pale blue.  No clouds are apparent.  By mid morning thunderheads have formed over the ring of mountains around us, concentrating some of that moisture and some of the deep desert blue sky pops out among the clouds.  By evening, the winds pick up and blow some of the clouds away, leaving a few puffy ones scattered across the vast arch of sky.  The humidity does not seem so brutal at night.  It is a beautiful changing scene.

Blue skies presage fall.

I am waiting for the first touch of fall: we are only 3 weeks away from the fall solstice.  Even now, the evenings are hot but a cooling wind is blowing and it is pleasant out once the sun has dipped below the horizon.  Today, the sky was hot an blue, no trace of the humidity that has been plaguing us.  Just a fall teaser....

travelling, travelling

Old railroad bridge on the Oregon coast.

people are the same no matter where i travel to
i go to see what's new and fresh
to sweeten bitter eyes
i go to look on different skies
     less blue and bright
     with different stars
to taste salty wind not filled with gritty dust
and talk to folks whose view is not the one i hold

who see foggy crags and forests dark
swept clean by snows and icy winds
and hilltops bright and sinister
topped by blinding glaciers and
rivers that are most like lakes to me
and grasses blowing in clean winds
bending, seed heads bowing in submission
to summer's fading brow

crashing waves and smokey skies
and drought cracked lands
and golden fields drenched in dear-bought water
and birds of a different color
silver salmon leaping
frogs croaking mightily
hawks and eagles circling lazily on a different
thermal draft

but people are the same
no matter what road i travel on 

California's bread basket

Headed for parts north this week, escaping the summer heat.  It was warm the first two days, but not as bad as the 115 + humidity in Palm Springs!  So, I became part snowbird and headed up to the Olympic Peninsula for a week.  Arrived today in Lacey, after 3 days of driving through  the heartland of both California and Oregon.

Corn in the Central Valley

It was awesome and disturbing.  Everywhere you looked there were fields of crops:  corn, trees of some fruit or nut, grains and other things I could not recognize from the road.  Immense watering wheels and sprinklers, field workers.  The smell of the air was hay and dust and the hot, wet smell of watered soil.

The smells of the air were so distinctive all along the way.  The smell of hay, or at least dried, cut grasses, was dominant until north of Sacramento.  There I noticed a pungent, almost bitter smell that was heavy, making breathing a bit challenging.  Not that I couldn't breath, just that I was aware of my lungs pumping.  I did not know what it was, until I made a wrong turn looking for a Wildlife Refuge.  I drove along this country road and noticed a small biplane swooping in low, banking sharply, then reversing its trajectory.  I swung my car to the side of the road, and hopped out with my camera.  Sure enough it was spraying up and down the fields south of the road.  I'll be that was the smell.  It was disturbing, because there I was, there people in their cars were, and there were the field hands laboring in the neighboring fields.

It was a bit disturbing.  This, of course, brought up thoughts of Monsanto and patented (!) seeds, loss of small farmers, monoculture, GMO foods and Monsanto, water rights and dams, and So Cal desperate for water, salmon struggling, heirloom seeds and native food heritage, agri-business and buying avocados and persimmons from Mexico when they are grown in my own back yard.

Biplane spraying north of Sacramento

And most disturbing of all, when you see this,  miles and miles and miles of it, one can't help but wonder if the things I do to try to help (buy organic, plant a desert landscape, conserve energy) isn't a pathetically insignificant thing.  What can the likes of me do about it?

Bats!!

Had the pleasure of accompanying a colleague of mine to survey the oasis for bats!!!  Great experience, great night.  I knew we had bats, and see some small ones at dusk frequently, but if you think birds are difficult to identify, try identifying something flitting madly about in pitch blackness.

Pallid bat in flight at dusk.

So she had her Anabat - a high tech listening device that detects and records the sounds that bats make as their sonar insect detection mechanism tics into action.  She used the detector while her assistant and I wielded our trusty high beam torches.  We would highlight them as they flew by so she could follow them. We saw lots and lots of small bats that she identified as pipistrelles and California myotis bats.  These are the bats I am familiar with.  As the night weighed in around us, and the half moon started up the dome of heaven, as the stars started to shine, but the sun light was still enough to break the darkness, this great big bat - it must have been 3-4 times bigger than the rest - came floating by.  WOW.  How cool was that.  It was a pallid bat.  It was really big.  I guess I just thought of bats as small, unless it was a jungle-living-fruit-eating bat. Saw several of them fly by.  Then we heard (but did not see) a yellow bat.  This was the bat I was hoping for.  One of them flew by and she detected it on Anabat.  Several minutes later another came by.  I think the third or fourth fly-by, I happened to catch it in my spotlight.   It really has yellowish pellage on the belly and kind of a darker head.

I had a chance to practice with my new camera...quite a challenge catching bats in flight.  Got a couple decent ones, though.

It made my day.  It was a good lesson in stress relief.  I had had a really rough week, and the strain of it was telling on me.  The focus, the night, the moonlight, the quiet talk among friends, the flittering of the bats:  in a few short hours the strain was relieved. I felt better than I had in days.  The lesson:  get your mind completely off what is going on and do something that will focus your mind in a new direction.

Thunderstorms

Summer thunderstorms are my favorite!!!

I grew up in the desert southwest.  There are two things I think are quintessential "desert": thunderstorms and night skies.

Thunderheads building up over the mountains.

A thunderstorm starts building early:  the humidity builds, the sun scorches, the heat becomes heavy and full.  As the day progresses, clouds start to build up along the mountain tops:  huge columns of thick gray cloud, tinted with the pink and gold of sunset.  As night slinks silently over the overheated soil, air columns start to rise, twisting the cloud columns into grotesque and beautiful forms. And then, as the sun sets, lightening starts to flash along the horizon, morse-code for "God is Alive and Well, but only cares as much as you do".

Then the electricity sparks and seems to emmanate from our very bodies. As night sets the flashing continues, pulsing at the rate of my heart.

I sleep well under the eerie sight.

It's too darn hot!!

Okay, now it is hot.  Over 110 this week, maybe up to 116.  I wonder if the incidence of crimes of passion go up with the heat?  I know it can make me cranky and irritable.  I know it is getting hot when I have a bout of near-dehydration...even though I am drinking a lot!!

Desert tortoise feasting on forbs.

This kind of heat stops most activity. My tortoises are mostly underground...I only see them every few days.  Now they know how to deal with this: estivate!!! We have our air conditioners and coolers, malls and swimming pools.  I was thinking, though:  I remember when we had only what my friend calls desert coolers, and no air in the car.  Even 10 years ago I remember trying to stay cool in my apartment without air.  We did it then. Now we seem to think that there is no life in the desert without air conditioning and swimming pools.

My air conditioning went out in my car a few years ago.  My friends were flabbergasted when I opted to wait for a couple years before buying a new car or repairing my AC, and live through the summer without.  Well, we never used to have them. Pretty strange how a matter of a few years can disappear the reality of an earlier time.  And we are not talking the "olden days!!!"

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate my AC, but I have only had it for the last 4 1/2 years.  I just think we need to remember where we have come from so we can truly appreciate what we have.  Only then can we appreciate the cost.

Summer Rain

Woke up this morning to the scent of summer rain.  If water can smell hot, then summer rains here smell hot. The pungent scent of the creosote and the wet leaves of the desert willow, in tandem with the air thick with water and the sky painted up with clouds make for a scent as thick as honey and as heady. The moisture in the air sucks the brilliance out of the sky: the haze cuts the desert asure blue.

Today is a lazy day.  It is the Fourth of July.  Should be a great celebration of our Nation's independence.  Like so many holidays, it is lost in the soup of material madness. Yes, I enjoy the fireworks, although not under my window at 3 am.  And I do appreciate this country, having seen a bit of others. So yes, I am cynical about it all, but I love having a lazy day to smell the rain, read, drink my morning joe at leisure and think about my life.

I think about what my parents are leaving for us and what my generation is leaving for our children.  Hmmm. I think about how much firecrackers scare my dog and keep me awake, and yet how fun to watch them burn -- there is a little pyromaniac in all of us.  I can smell the neighborhood bbqs, although I am not participating in that particular ritual, but the smell is tantalizing, and my dog keeps putting her nose to the wind and tasting it. No, we shall close the doors, and she will huddle and shake as the fireworks go off and I will comfort her and drink sweet tea and read a good book.  And appreciate my life.

Early summer

This is the hopeful part of summer. Today the temps hit 109.  Not bad, really.  At least that is what is seems like in the early summer.  Right now the heat is on, but it is still pretty new. So the temps are expected to run from 105 -110 this week. So in this way we shall melt right into July.  Ahhh...new summer is much more agreeable than old summer. The long days linger still, with sultry breezes sloughing through the summer/cricket nights.  We are awash in sumptuous summer fruits: cherries peaches and apricots.  Our barbecues are on and the pools are full.  And meanwhile the critters come out to play now, too.  Lizards abound on the dunes and the rocks.  Snakes slither and foxes slink, owls hoot and nighthawks glide.

Yes, early summer is good.  Before the lingering heat begins to sap energy and dampen spirits.

Old trail through the palms.

luminous landscape


languid moon
mossy stone
sultry june
palms moan

torpid nights
sizzling sun
hazy lights
lizards run

windy dune
rustling trees
stifling noon
buzzing bees

owls hoot
bats twitter
seeds root
wind litters

Summer Solstice

Spring slides into summer...early.  Summer heat came early this year, and hot summer skies reflect my thoughts back to me. Real reflection is inward looking:  look deep inside and we don't always like what we see.  I guess we are all part fuzzy bunny and part wild beast:  it is just so hard to admit to the wild beast.

Once a year the sun reaches the furthest north in the sky that it will go.  In the north pole, eternal day light reigns.  The day stretches on and on, the sunlight glaring metallic across the sky.  The sun pales the palette of desert colors -- purples, blues, browns and reds -- into a brassy reflection of the colors of spring. The sunlight is to bright, too yellow, too hot.

Midsummer is not really midsummer, but the beginning of summer. Funny how the richest part of the year -- filled with peaches and corn, sun ripe tomatoes and summer squash -- begins as the year starts the process of winding down. The days start to diminish, one second at a time.

Summer brings a time of deep reflection. Perhaps in colder climes, winter is that time.  It is a time of withdrawing, of contemplation, of inner cleaning and inner work. Summer in the desert brings estivation, a sluggish summer sleep: time to think, not to act. It is just to hot to act.

I was reminiscing with a friend tonight.  We are in the midsummer of our lives, and our lives are so rich and full.  If you had asked either of us ten or twenty years ago where we would be now, we could never have guessed that we would end up where we are. The twists and turns of life rock us, roll us and tumble us in the cosmic polishing machine!!! I am lucky and I am happy.  I am happy in the summer of my life!!  Maybe that just comes from accepting what life has thrown at me.

Hot summer skies over Californi fan palm oasis.

summer

summer days
hot sun blinds and rages on
hot sap
rises up early then is gone

summer nights
eclipse follows gibbous moon
hot wind
sloughing over silky dune