Mother's Day Fledging and Other Natural Phenomena

Mother’s Day has come and gone, and I know one mother who will finally get a bit of rest – one father, too! The little Juniper Titmouse family fledged. We weren’t around to help send them off – somehow it always works that way; I never get to see the babies fly the nest. Well, almost never. I was lucky enough to get up early on a Saturday in Maryland and see the Carolina wren babies come tumbling out of the bathroom fan vent where the folks had built their nest, with much coaching and coaxing from both parents. But not this time. I wonder if those busy parents will lay another clutch of eggs and raise another set of babies this summer in that apartment?

I know the Raven family hasn’t fledged down in the cottonwood trees. I know, because I can hear those babies chatter and fuss all the way up the hill to our back deck in the quiet morning when I sit out with my coffee. If you have heard a nest of small baby birds calling for mom, multiply that by a factor of 10 decibel levels. I have seen the raven parents heading overhead for their nest carrying large things in their bills. I know what the titmouse parents feed their young; I wonder what ravens feed theirs?

It’s been very birdy around here over the last few days. Lots of migrants moving through, especially warblers and hummers. Some of them are life-birds for me: a flock of beautiful red-faced warblers surrounded us on Sunday on a walk up Cherry Creek in the mixed oak and ponderosa forest, with a stunning Painted Redstart in the mix. Here at the house, I’ve had MacGillivray’s, Townsend’s and Wilson’s warblers all in the shrub oak and juniper next to the house. A pair of Ash-throated Flycatchers was apartment shopping and studied the bird-house carefully for door size. They weren’t convinced they couldn’t fit through the door to the nest box inside. What did convince them to look for another neighborhood was the titmouse – mom, I’m sure – who arrived in time to raise hell with the larger interlopers. If only I could decipher bird-talk. And imagine what birds I would see if I really took the time!

The most obvious of the hummers buzzing the yard is the broad-tailed. While I haven’t gotten a good look at him, I have heard him loud and clear. His wing feathers make a loud trill that is unmistakable. And finally, the mockingbirds are back. They are ubiquitous, of course, across the country. But here, because they are, after all, mimics, their songs are peppered more with the chips, stutters, chirrs, buzzes and chatter that is more typical here than the trills, tweedles, whistles and warbles that I was familiar with in Maryland. One songster has adopted the top of the electric post outside my office window, and spends all day there, chasing bugs and vocalizing.

I think I saw a coatimundi or two! We were out washboarding on Sanctuary Rd, where we have wandered around looking at land, and I saw, separately, two straight-up black tails attached to small, fuzzy and very fast animals cross the road. Do they have life lists for critters? And another critter we saw in family-packs down in Sapillo Creek was the infamous javelina. Locals, except for hunters, will tell you that javelinas are not a problem, except to the landscaping. Hunters will convince you that the only good javelina is on a dinner plate! I don’t know – I haven’t gotten close enough to them live or grilled.

My Christmas tree is growing. On one of the first trips we made to visit Silver City, we went to the Buckhorn for dinner. It was right around the Christmas season, and they had a dried agave blossom, sometimes called a century plant, decorated with Christmas ornaments. I thought it was outstanding. And that’s what I wanted for a Christmas “tree” when we moved here. Somehow, I thought they’d sell these blossoms on the street corners, like they sell Christmas trees back east. Nope. Gotta harvest your own – or know someone who has one and is willing to give it up. They grow wild in the Forest, as well as in landscape everywhere. One sad thing: once the blossom is up and bloomed, the plant dies. The blossom stalk grows so fast – we’ve been watching one in the neighborhood and it seems to shoot up a foot a day – and so tall in many cases, that it just takes the life out of the parent. This image is from Wikipedia, but gives you an idea of the massive stalk and blossoms.

A last flora-and-fauna note: Some things die back and green up or come out in reverse of what we learned to expect as deciduous Easterners. Here, there is a common shrub oak that is mixed with pinion and juniper. It lines the hillsides and is green all winter, like the evergreens with which it grows. But two or three weeks ago, I noticed on a ride up to Pinos Altos that all along the hillsides, the oaks were turning yellow. At the same time, the large shrub oak by our driveway dried up and dropped all its leaves. Mmm, too little water? Something eating the plant and draining the sap? No, it turns out that the oak stays green all winter, turns yellow and drops its leaves around April and by May, buds out again with new leaves in anticipation of the monsoons to come in June/July. At higher elevations, it will wait to bud and green until the monsoons actually start. Coincidentally, the crickets or locusts here start to sing in March or April, as soon as the days and especially the nights start to warm. They’ve almost stopped now that it’s getting to be 80+ during the day. Now I grew up with the old-wives-tale that winter was 6 weeks from the time the crickets and katy-dids started to sing and chirr. Here, it seems to be seasonally adjusted. Six weeks from when the locusts and grasshoppers make their presence known, look for summer! Is it almost that time of year, already? Where’re my shorts?! Sonnie