Future Headlines

Posts coming up by the end of the weekend...

This happened yesterday.

This happened today.

This will happen tomorrow...

Boy Needs A Bib!

Scott's Oriole feeding on Ocotillo

The last couple of months in and around the yard have been like an amateur birder's wet dream.  The short list of birds is pretty stunning.  In addition to the pollen-covered Scott's Oriole, above we've seen-

• Bullock's Oriole
• Blackchinned Hummingbird
• Roadrunner
• Mockingbird
• Curve-billed Thrasher
• House Finch
• Red Tail Hawk
• Turkey Vulture
• Cactus Wren
• Western Kingbird
• Ferruginous Hawk
• Kestrel
• Cooper's Hawk
• Harrier
• Golden Eagle
• Gambel's Quail
• Scaled Quail
• White Winged Dove
• Gila Woodpecker
• Loggerhead Shrike
• Western Bluebird
• Lark Bunting
• Western Meadowlark
• Horned Lark
• Pyrrhuloxia
• Lesser Goldfinch
• Slate Colored Junco
• White Crowned (or White Throated) Sparrow
• Boat Tailed Grackle
• Common Raven

And probably more that I can't remember right now, or haven't seen yet.

The hummingbirds are probably happy the Ocotillo finally began to bloom, as it's now keeping the Orioles out of the feeder...

Persistence Hunting

The pronghorn. The fastest mammal in North America.. the second fastest animal in the world, capable of running 55mph for extended periods.

In another part of the state of New Mexico, hundreds of miles from where I'm sitting, human beings tried to run a pronghorn down, using only their lung capacity, their legs, and their brainpower.  What the hell are they up to?

"The pronghorn is the second-fastest animal on earth, while the men are merely elite marathon runners who are trying to verify a theory about human evolution. Some scientists believe that our ancestors evolved into endurance athletes in order to hunt quad­rupeds by running them to exhaustion. If the theory holds up, the antelope I'm watching will eventually tire and the men will catch it. Then they'll have to decide whether to kill it for food or let it go."

I'm not sure whether or not I can buy into that theory, but it's really tantalizing to picture it.  Read the whole article to find out how these world class marathoners fared against our New Mexico Pronghorn.

This, of course, is not the only animal that is run down by humans.  There are numerous, incredibly fast and agile football players in college and pro ranks, including the University of Michigan who hale from a poor, rural location in Florida called Pahokee.  They  hone their skills like this..



Cottontails and "muck rabbits" (whatever they are)are one thing. Our blacktail jackrabbits are another thing altogether. Nobody is going to catch one on foot. That's why we use another method that's nearly as old as persistance hunting-

Simple Mathmatics

I can do the simple cipherin'. For instance, if I know that we have a healthy sized swarm of honeybees that hang around the leaky faucet in the yard (1), and I walk into the living room and find Buffy has changed her name to Puffy (1), then I can posit that the silly girl has put her face where it doesn't belong, and is likely       not to ever go again.That equals "2".   (1 + 1 = 2. Get it?)

Two Very Tangible Signs of Spring in the High Desert

Turkey Vulture

Peaches in the yard

Horn of Plenty..

and to think there have been times when we've walked for hours and never got a sniff..



H/T Jim Heffelfinger via Dutch Salmon

Another Spring Visitor.

The peach tree is attracting all kinds of insect life, from common houseflies, the metallic green sweat bees featured in yesterday's post, regular honeybees, and this solitary Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly. I don't know where his friends are, but he's now thoroughly worked over the tree for the last 3 days.

Nectar

Another peach blossom image, but this time with Agapostemon virescens, (Metallic Green Sweat bees)

Hummers Rule!

Past 30 day count shows the hummingbird film is beating the former most viewed post here.. Dipshit Glenn Beck. I think I owe Soso Whaley one.

Not A Couple.

Ever wonder what would happen if your dog jumped a jackrabbit when a large bird of prey was in proximity?   Would the bird, (in this case a handsome Prairie Falcon) join in the pursuit?  Would it steal the prey?  I wondered the same thing!
I’ll keep on wondering, too, because the falcon  flew off just a second after I snapped this image, and a good half hour before we finally jumped a hare.   Ah, what might have been.

The Hummers of the Summer of 2010

On an eye-bleedingly, bone-chillingly cold day in the middle of Winter, where the last two days set record low temperatures, and tonight promises to do likewise, I was inspired to finally put together a film from last Summer. I was probably complaining about the flies and the heat then.



I may have mentioned - more than once - that we had an unusually large numbers of hummingbirds around the yard last season. May this make you feel warm. (Not doing much for me so far...)

Everything But the Antlers. Lepus Alleni

OK.  Cleared that up.  Not a Jackalope.

If the (probably) extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker is the "Lord God Bird", then the Antelope Jackrabbit of the Sonoran Desert of Arizona (and a whole chunk of Mexico) must be the "Holy-Jeebus-Christ-on-a-pogo-stick-that's-a-big-fuckin- Jackrabbit."  They're just huge!

I'll get a longer, more detailed post on the trip to Arizona to chase these guys in a day or so. It was quite a trip.

Snipe Hunt?

Taking off later today to meet up with Dutch and head to Arizona. We're taking a couple of dogs and will be on the hunt for the famous, elusive Jackalope! I've never seen one, and Dutch hasn't hunted them in a long, long time. More than 25 years, in fact. Everyone's seen pictures, of course, and.. um..

Oh.. hold on a second..

It seems I've made a mistake.

I'll get back to you on this in a couple of days.

Tumbleweed Road Kill..

Because we had an El Nino winter, and a fairly wet summer, we've got about 40 million acres of tumbleweeds.. or so it seems. Therefore, we don't miss them when they run in front of the car..

Make a gif

I was surprised to learn that this ubiquitous symbol of the Old West, didn't exist in the US before the 1870's, when they hitch-hiked with the flaxseed that were imported to South Dakota by Ukrainian farmers. Like so many invasive species of plant and animal, I guess they liked it here.

"At Least Our Percentage is Good"

The wry comments of one M. H. Dutch Salmon, after Ashley ran down this hapless hare in the tall cover, (with a little help from Sandia, and Dutch's dogs, but it was pretty much all Ashley's hare).

Things have improved only marginally since the previous post bemoaning the lack of jackrabbits in our area.. in about 6 trips, we've run 4, caught 2 for sure, and had one hole up on Ashley and Willow. 75%. Will we still be catching them at that rate when we've run a hundred? I'd really like to find out.

Where Have All the JRs Gone..

Long time passing;

Where have all the JRs gone,

Long time ago;

Where have all the JRs gone,

Beats the shit outta me, every time...

And I'm getting tired of it.

Back in the Spring, when we ended our hunting for the Summer, we had no idea what the next season would bring. The Winter and Summer had been pretty wet, at least out in the areas where we hunt, if not in our yard, (but that's a whole 'nother story). Late Summer into September gave us greenery in the desert and mountains the likes of which we haven't seen in our short time here, and now that it's finally starting to be cool enough in the mornings, and the dogs are plenty antsy, we finally hit the dirt a couple weeks ago. The green is pretty much gone now, but the cover is unbelievably high. Cows! Do your job!

Option one is always option one- the big ranch between here and the Cruces. We started off in the north end, which has always been good. Not so much this time. We walked around for almost two hours without a sign of life. And when I say "sign", I mean no sign.. not a single pellet was seen in all the time we were out there, and the field looked like it had been submerged for much of the Summer.

We decided to head to the south end, where we finally jumped... and caught, our first hare of the Fall season. We managed to jump one more, but he was able to elude the hounds in the high cover. By then it had warmed up so that it would be a little dangerous to continue hunting, and we repaired back to Deming, and our old standby- the Campos restaurant.

Between then and now, I did some scouting around for some new fields, West-Southwest of Deming, and found a possible goldmine, (pictured above). Hundreds of sections of grazing land, and all public. About 2/3 BLM and 1/3 State, with no hidden private parcels to accidently stumble upon. It's mostly flat, and the walking is easy because there's no "bunch grass". Cover is moderately high. When Dutch Salmon saw it, and we began walking it, he called it just about perfect rabbit hunting land! But there's a problem.

We've been out twice now, in two different areas and have yet to even sniff a jackrabbit!

The irritating part is, we know they're out there. We've seen them from the road when we're driving in. It's a matter of time, and I know we're being impatient, but the dogs want to run one now! I saw one this morning when we went back to Option One. Dutch called to say he was running late, so Sandia and I just wandered around near the truck when I noticed a big one trying to sneak away, which was hard because he had to leap high in the air to see where he was going (the high cover effects everything!). If Sandia was looking north, he'd have seen it. He was looking east. It stopped, with its long ears standing out above the cover, but by the time I got Sandia pointed in the proper direction, it had fled the scene. It was the only jack I'd see the rest of the day.

A Day In Nature Pictures.

Why?  Because, that's just the kind of day it was.  It began right out the gate this morning, (literally), with this young fellow posing for a portrait.

After an uneventful trip to the bank, I decided to find a couple 

Geocaches out in the flats; a drive of about 10 miles.  Not long after turning off the main highway, I interrupted this immature

Harlan's Red Tail Hawk, who was opportunistically gobbling up a road-killed jackrabbit.  Sorry dude.

At the second cache, I felt I was being serenaded, looked up on the wire and saw this non-raptor meat eater.. a Loggerhead Shrike. 

 I enjoyed the song for a while, then headed back north for another hide.  That's when I whizzed past a Coopers Hawk relaxing on a fence post.  I made a quick U-turn, and stuck the camera out of the window and snapped off a shot just as it was tensing to make it's escape from my intrusive scrutiny..

At that point, I gave up on the caching, because I needed to get up close to something very spectacular that was going on on the west foothills of the Florida Mountains.  I had to get here:

Yes, the Mexican Poppies are blooming great guns.  It looks impressive from here.  Up close it looks completely insane!

And if that impresses us as humans, imagine the effect it has on these guys:

"...All the Way Home"

When you take your dogs out into the field, you just never know what you're going to see.  Some (most!) days it's Golden Eagles, or rattlesnakes, or tarantulas, or coyotes.  Gila Monsters have even been seen locally, although happily, not by me.  The list (in the Desert Southwest at any rate) seems endless.  So, it was really no surprise to see this solitary Javelina crossing the road as I pulled out of some ranch land after running Sandia and Ashley.  What is surprising, is that their paths (fortunately) did not cross while they were all out and loose in the same plot of land!