Night of the Queen 2020

The COVid19 numbers are sky-rocketing, the timeline indicating that the Memorial Day and Mothers Day weekends with dropped lock-down have more to do with it than the protest marches, but they will also soon show consequences. AZ hospitals at capacity, Better not get sick here now.  I am dreading my gallery duty on the 11th of June.

Photo by Shawna Caldwell: How the fire in the catalinas started

Not to forget that other, probably greater problems loom: Global Warming is pushed out of the news, The slowed-down world economy may provide a small reprieve.   But our weather patterns are ominously confusing.  We had monsoon like thunderstorms for several afternoons, nearly a month too early.

Push Ridge fire by Bill George

Result: fires. We can see them glowing at night and the smoke now. The second photo was taken by a friend who lives in a development that was carved into the mountains about 15 to 20 years ago, so I remember open desert there. 

But some eternal (?) natural rhythms are still operating: last night was the night of the Queen.  Once a year a twig-thin cactus (Peniocereus greggii) produces the most beautiful, fragrant flowers. The Mystery: within miles, they all open at once. I have not been able to relate it to moon phase, temperature, day length (the date can vary by a month) or precipitation (usually there is none before the cacti bloom) barometric pressure - nothing I can measure seems to provide the trigger, and yet, they are completely synchronized. Usually, Tohono Chul Park close to Tucson monitors and celebrates the bloom, so people are aware of the event. This year the park is closed. This morning, I found several on our dog walk. We live right in the middle of a big population. This year there were fewer flowers than usual. 

Honey Bees were all over the flowers in the morning sun. These opportunistic generalists among bees are probably not suited to pollinate the big flowers. That is probably usually done by big Manduca and other Sphinx Moths. But those have been out in numbers a couple of weeks ago. I saw them at my black lights.   At the moment they seem rather scarce.  Perhaps I just do not see them at my lights because the moon is rather full..

Peniocereus greggii, Queen of the Night

By the 12th of June the Big Horn Fire in the Catalinas had spread. The inferno came down the mountain towards foothills homes and 100s of people had to evacuate, others are on stand-by.

View towards the Catalinas from Tucson on June 11th 2020

Javelinas in our Backyard

Our backyard gets visitors periodically, even though it's fenced as a dog run. They (the Javelinas) systematically uproot dozens of mamillaria cacti and eat the roots. So we pick up the buds and put them into sand-filled pots to reroot, then plant them for the next invasion. To get at least something out of it, I made the whole party pose for a painting.

 Even though they look deceivingly similar to wild boars Javelinas or Peccaries are only distant relatives of pigs. Taxonomically they are members of the same suborder, Suina, but are in their own family, Tayassuidae (New World pigs). They sport two pairs of big canines as opposed to just one in Oldworld Pigs.
But like pigs, they live in family groups, and root for their food with very similar snouts. As ours live in the desert, I never saw them enjoy mud baths, but our Arizonan, New Mexican and Texan Javelinas  live at the northern most tip of their distribution area which reaches all the way south to Argentinia. So they must use  many different types of habitats.
They are territorial and use skunk-smelling secretions of their  scent glands (below each eye and  on their backs) for marking and communication. If hunted for food, these glands have to be carefully and immediately removed or the meat is spoiled. I have eaten jerky and fresh, grilled tenderloin as guset of Mexican gold miners and it was very good.
Javelinas are rather nearsighted and also quite fearless, which results in frequent close encounters between them and human and caninen Arizona residents. Often the Javelinas just go quietly about their business. While house-sitting in the Tucson foothills at First Avenue, I once found myself surrounded by a herd  between garage and patio. They were so peaceful that I reached out to touch the big patriarch when he walked close to me. He screamed with indignation and bristled. Other people have been less lucky,  and those big canines leave bad wounds. My 40 pound Healer-type dog Bilbo got into a fight with a single Javelina last year, and he came away from it with a big, gaping chest wound. But at other times my dogs have cornered the entire resident herd including young ones and nothing happened. With Javies, you just never know.  So don't ever feed them, not even inadvertently by  keeping garbage or compost in accessible containers. The more the 'desert pigs' get habituated to humans and their houses, the more confrontations happen, and those usually end with killing or removal of the javelina herd, and our desert is all the poorer for it.

We need Connections, not Walls!

Ocelot and Mexican Amberwing, watercolor October2017

 I live in Tucson, Arizona. 30.7 miles, or 50 kilometers, or 44 min by car from the US/Mexico border. In my dual role as artist and biologist I spend much of my time in the field. Tucson is surrounded by the Sonoran Desert. As deserts go, the lower Sonoran is beautiful and rich in geological formations and fauna and flora. But also hot and dry most of the year. The long drive to the Colorado Plateau and Grand Canyon in northern Arizona  would take me through the endlessly sprawling metropolis of Phoenix. So I turn south instead. The borderland to Mexico, studded with sky islands and the first hints of the Sierra Madre Occidental has become my favorite hunting ground.  I regularly join  excursions to study the biodiversity south of the border wit groups of US and Mexican naturalists and biologists. More often, and on my own, I spend time just north of the border. Long dirt roads connect the Canelo Hills and the San Rafael Grasslands, Parker Lake and Copper Canyon, Sycamore Canyon and Arivaca. Many side roads take me directly to the border fence. There are often heavy truck barriers, but they are low enough to step over. In other places, tall metal beams, set too close to each other to squeeze through, form a more impressive interruption of the landscape, but it still seems penetrable for small wildlife and cougars have been shown to jump it. In Lochiel, an old, nearly abandoned border town south of Patagonia, AZ, I used to pet Mexican horses grazing on the other side of an old chain link fence with big holes.  It's a quiet area, somehow suspended in time, and full of natural beauty.

It's not all paradise. In many areas along the fence, there is a wide gash in the vegetation, where border patrol erased every living thing to create a corridor for easy surveillance. There are strange contraptions that the agents can pull behind their trucks to sweep the ground so new tracks of border crossers show up clearly.   There is thrash that crossing people abandoned and sometimes clearly the packing material from drug transports. There are water stations that good Samaritans established because the harsh desert claimed so many lives. Very occasionally I meet people who approach me for help - who ask for water or need a charge for their phones. Or even a connection to the next agents of 'la migra'. The white, green-barred  SUVs of the border patrol agents are usually not far away, always cruising, waiting, watching ... but also often the last resort for people in need. The agents keep up the immigration restriction that US law dictates, but  so far, the situation is very different from what we experienced in the Europe of my childhood along the Iron Curtain and most of all the Wall and Death Stripe of Berlin. I can only hope that it stays that way.  

Arizona Spiders in July

To me, orbweavers with spiny abdomens seem exotic and tropical. But actually we have at least two in SE Arizona that I see occasionally.  
 

Acanthepeira close to stellata (Starbellied Orbweaver)

 When I found Acanthepeira stellata (Starbellied Orbweaver) in Sycamore Canyon, Santa Cruz County, and nearly mistook her for  a shriveled leaf. She typically rests during the day in the vegetation and occupies her web only at night, so this kind of cryptic shape and coloration seem certainly useful.

Micrathena funebris

Rather colorful and obvious, the day active Micrathena funebris hangs in her vertical orb web during the day. The spider occurs from southern Arizona and southern California south to Costa Rica. Until a couple of days ago, I had seen one specimen in Montosa Canyon (Santa Ritas). But when Heidie and Eric Eaton visited Sabino Canyon (Catalinas) on a balmy hot July morning Eric spotted many in the understory of the vegetation of the riparian-desert interface, and one day later, with a freshly honed search image, I saw them in the Athascosa Mountains (Santa Cruz Co) as well.

Cheiracanthium sp. (Longlegged Sac Spider)

Along highway 83, I collected two tightly woven retreats hoping they contained young Jumping Spiders. Instead, they turned out to be Prowling Spiders Miturgidae.  Eight eyes in two rows of four, claw tufts, conical spinnerets, and the habit of building silk retreats or sacs characterize the group.

Cheiracanthium retreat

 The spiders I found along AZ Highway 83 and again in the short vegetation along Montezuma Canyon Highway  belonged to genus Cheiracanthium (Longlegged Sac Spiders). They hunt, running quickly over the vegetation at night and build a new retreat every morning.

Diguetia sp

The space-filling, tangled web of the Desert Shrub Spider (Fam. Diguetidae) is suspended from the spiny pads of a prickly pear cactus. In the middle hangs her retreat, a dome that incorporates many old prey items.

Female Desert Shrub Spider weaving

Diguetidae possess only three pairs of eyes. Their bodies are usually covered in reflective setae, probably an adaptation to the radiation of the desert sun. At night, we found several females weaving  and repairing their webs.

Metepeira labyrinthea (Labyrinth Orbweaver):

The typical cactus spider in our own backyard west of the Tucson Mountains is Metepeira labyrinthea (Labyrinth Orbweaver). Her web is an orb surrounded by tangled labyrinth lines. Egg cases are incorporated into the tubular retreat that is covered in detritus. Spiderlings often stay within the mother's labyrinth.

Metepeira labyrinthea (Labyrinth Orbweaver)

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Close b to the ground, also protected by the cactus spines, a Agelenid spider (Funnel Weaver) lurked in her funnel entrance. Her web is not sticky, the fast spider rushes out to run down  prey that comes close. Eight eyes in two procurved rows and a pair of dark longitudinal stripes on cephalothorax and abdomen are characteristic.

Sosippus (Funnel Web Wolf Spiders)

 In similar locations the funnel web wolf spider can also be expected. So look them deeply into the eyes: all wolf spiders share a typical eye arrangement: a row of four in front plus a trapezoid of four further back.

Neoscona oaxacensis (Western Spotted Orbweaver)

 In the prickly pear at the Canoa I 19 rest stop we also found Western Spotted Orbweavers that already looked surprisingly grown up. That's a clear sign of the waning of another Arizona summer.

A magnificent Longhorn Beetle

About every three years the beetle collecting community - that does not include me, as a mere photographer - buzzes with new about the emergence of the spectacular longhorn beetle Megapurpuricenus magnificus   (Texas Canyon Longhorn). It's the beetle that used to be called  Crioprosopus magnificus, but when I had just learned that name, it was changed.

Many big beetles go through several years of larval development. But members of most species still emerge every year. But like the 17 year cicadas, the Texas Canyon Longhorns emergences appear to be rather synchronized. The beetles are very rare for a couple of years, then they appear in numbers, then again only a few individuals show up. Despite their common name, they do not only occur in Texas Canyon but in several sky island areas of Arizona and Mexico. The three year rhythm seems consistent everywhere, but the different populations all seem to be on their own clocks, so in a particular year they may fly in one mountain range, but not in the other.

Their host trees are several of the local live oaks, Arizona white oak, Emory oak, Silverleaf oak (Hovore 1983). In Arizona, the beetles seem to like smaller trees (or the host trees are stunted due to the beetles activity?) - the diameter of the stem  between knee and hip height is usually only about 10 inches. From Mexico there are damages reported, and those mostly occurred in pure Quercus potosina stands at 2500-2642 m elevations.  Under trees with fresh emergence holes you can often find piles of old saw dust that former generations of beetles pushed out when they emerged.

From Fred Skillman I learned a little about the beetle's biology. I'm not sure in which layers of the tree trunk the wood boring larvae feed, but when they are ready to pupate, they chew and exit hole to the outside. This is important because the adult beetle lacks the mouth-parts to chew its own way out. The hole is closed with a double plug of  wood pulp, then the larva pupates. When the imago (adult beetle) sheds the pupal skin in early summer it removes the first plug, but leaves the second in place. Behind it, the beetle is ready for the first heave rain of the monsoon.  At that time it emerges, neatly timed with its neighbors. Now males and females will be active for a short time, usually on warm mornings between 9 and 11 am and preferably after rainy days or nights, so they can find each other to start a new generation which will take flight after another three years.

If they don't get caught by collectors first. Luckily, the beetles behavior protects them to a degree: to find each other, they climb to the top of the tree canopy. The females may just sit up there and send out their pheromone signals, but the males can be seen cruising from tree top to tree top. In Texas Canyon, the oaks are fairly low and loosely spaced, so the beetles are quite visible once you develop a search image for them. Flying up there, the beetles are out of reach of most butterfly nets.

But there are other ways. Once I came upon a group of collectors on a friend's private property who were lounging on the soft carpet of leaves, leisurely watching the top of an oak.  In the morning they had found a female emerging from her pupal chamber in a nearby tree trunk.

They put her into a little cage and with a rope pulled her up into the tree canopy.  There she obviously did her chemical calling, because eventually we saw a male flying in.

 He circled, found the cage, landed on it. The collectors lowered it, reached impatiently with their nets, lost him. Warned, he disappeared. But soon another one showed up, and this one was caught.

 It took a lot of convincing to make the guys set him on a tree trunk for  me to take pictures. Believe me, their nets hovered right out of sight. They got three or four males that day, no harm was done to the population.

The female was eventually released, and after my photo shoot, she made her way up to the tree tops, this time without a lift and free to seriously enter the mating game.

It is not easy to harm insect species by collecting. The number of eggs that each female produces is enormous. So gaps left by the ones collected should normally be closed by the offspring of those that remain. None-the-less,  older collectors tell me that this particular species used to be much more numerous, if never common. Due to its popularity and its insular distribution, it may have been over-collected. But Fred Skillman also tells of occasional floods in Texas Canyon that may have drowned big numbers of beetles waiting to emerge - remember, most of their holes are only knee-high in the trees. And besides such local catastrophic events, there seems to be an ongoing decline of insect numbers not only in the Southwest, but all over the world may it be due to habit loss, insecticides or climate change. 

References:

Hovore F.T. (1983) 1984. Taxonomic and biological observations on southwestern Cerambycidae (Coleoptera). Col. Bull. 37: 379–387 (Full text)

Sánchez-Martínez G., Moreno-Rico O., Siqueiros-Delgado M.E. (2010) Crioprosopus magnificus LeConte (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) in Aguascalientes, Mexico: Biological observations and geographical distribution. Col. Bull. 64: 319-328 (Full text)

Kissing Bug or not?

It's time for the Kissing Bug post again: Yes, we have them in the Southwest US.

In the Soutwestern US, they are neither new nor uncommon. 
They may carry the microbe that causes Chagas desease (Trypanosoma cruzi) in fact, studies showed that  
about 40 % of the Kissing Bugs around Tucson are infected 
 with Trypanosoma cruzi. .But so far they are not known to transmit it to humans here in AZ. Behavioral differences from tropical species may play a role. 
Some possible cases in Texas were reported (there are different species of Kissing Bugs there, the same genus, Triatoma, plus some others.)

Female Triatoma rubida in Tucson, AZ

 Adult Kissing Bugs fly to lights at this time of the year, from the end of May to the beginning of July. They are NIGHT-ACTIVE. But I have found them sitting under our kitchen light in the morning, still there from their nightly visit. They are very flat and can get through narrow openings under doors.

Nymph of T. rubida, stilll flightless

I've found nymphs (flightless) indoors since January. The dogs may bring them in? We have packrat middens too close to the house and should get rid of those.  That's were most Kissing Bugs grow up.

Side view of the elongate head of a Kissing Bug (conenose) At rest, the sucking mouth parts are folded back. They stretch forward when in use. Photo by Eric Eaton (detail)

Taxonomically, Kissing bugs belong to the order Hemiptera, 
so they are True Bugs, not Beetles. One characteristic of that group are the piercing, sucking mouth parts.

Several other True Bugs are often mistaken for Kissing Bugs
Let's separate the Kissing Bugs, also called Conenoses, from similar True Bugs that are often mixed up with the real thing.

Eastern Boxelder Bugs Photo by Seth Ausubel

Some hints: if you find bugs on flowers, or anywhere in the sunshine, bugs in big aggregations, on leaves or fruit: Those are NOT Kissing Bugs. Several related species of these
Rhopalidae (Scentless Plant Bugs) and similar Lygaeidae (Seed Bugs) are very common in Arizona. They feed on leaves and milky, fresh seeds piercing them with their probosces and sucking the juice.

 Here are the Small and the Large Milkweed Bug. They are plant suckers and not interested in animal blood at all. Both are smaller than our common Kissing Bugs in AZ.

Some of our Leaf-footed Bugsdon't have actual 'leaves' on their legs

A number of Leaf-footed Bugs (Coreidae) is as large or larger than Kissing Bugs and shape and coloring may be similar. If you see flanges (leaves) along the hind legs, the separation is easy, but not all Coreids actually have those.  The large ones feed on fruit and cactus pads, often in aggregations, usually during the day 

Some Assassin Bugs found in Arizona may resemble Kissing Bugs

 Remember that  

Kissing Bugs are Assassin Bugs, but not all Assassin Bugs are Kissing Bugs! 

Most Assassin Bugs are predators of other arthropods. Many Assassins look similar to Kissing Bugs. They can be of similar size and also share a similar color scheme of red on black. If you look closely, their heads are not cone shaped like those of the Kissing Bugs.  Hint: if a predatory Assassin Bug bites you it hurts very much. 

If a kissing Bug bites you, it's completely painless and usually goes unnoticed.

Itching welts and inflammations may appear later. The strength of the reaction is dependent  on the immune reaction of the victim. Over time, after repeated exposure,  hypersensitivity can be developed and a person becomes allergic. These allergic reactions can be severe.  

Photo by Tony Palmer

 Here is Triatoma rubida, our most common Kissing Bug, feeding on a Mediterranean Gecko. The reptile made no effort to avoid the painless bite.  The bug injects an anesthetic and an anticoagulant.

 

1 Macrocephalus dorannae; 2 Lophoscutus sp.; 3 Phymata sp.; 4 Pseudozelurus arizonicus; 5 Narvesus carolinensis; 6 Oncocephalus geniculatus; 7 Reduvius sonoraensis; 8 Rhiginia cinctiventris; 9 Triatoma protracta; 10 Triatoma recurva; 11 Triatoma indictiva, 12 Triatoma rubida, 12a Triatoma rubida nymph

We have 3 or 4 species of Kissing Bugs here, all in the genus Triatoma,  In Tucson proper you'll see most likely Triatoma rubida, In Madera Canyon T. protracta is quite common, T recurva I have found at Clear Creek in Yavapai Co. All are night active and come to lights. 

My blog should help you to better identify the bugs you find. To learn more about Chagas disease and the status of vector infection in AZ, I suggest the paper 'Infection of Kissing Bugs with Trypanosoma cruzi, Tucson, Arizona, USA'  by Carolina Reisenman  et al. 

Dark Morph Red-tailed Hawk with the Gallery Gang

Because of a chain of sad events in our close family plus some serious wind damage to our house, I had no real drive to write blog posts lately. But life goes on and most of it is good. Like a visit of my photographer friends from the Gallery Gang plus artist friend Mary Lee who all came to see our famous 'Dark Female'. They all stopped by on May 6 early in the morning. A spectacular Red Tail Hawk has been raising her brood not far from our house for nearly 10 years now.

I checked the previous day - the chicks had grown quite a bit but were still sitting quietly high on top of the nest. Mom was vigilantly screaming from her favorite saguaro perch nearby.

But when the 'Gang' walked out early on Friday morning, the hawk chose an aerial display instead. My friends had exactly the right cameras for the occasion and the sound of so may rapid-fire motor drives sounded a little ominous.

From my friends' photos, I gained a completely new very personal view of  'our Dark Female' whom I've now watched for nearly 10 years.  Ned, who specializes in Raptor photography and has contributed his work to several books on that topic called her the most magnificent dark morph RT hawk that he has seen.

Ned and Tom with their heavy duty 'guns'

Tom and Lois in action. Doris' photo even brings the Tortollitas and Catalinas close

Her beauty was slightly marred by a broken tail feather. Incubation and rearing two fast growing chicks takes a lot out of a bird.

The kids are very close to fledgling now. We believe that this time, one of them has inherited mom's rare coloration. The one on the right is definitely much darker than its sibling. The left one shows already a pattern similar to that of the male (who never showed up during our visit).

Kestrels, Night Hawks and Desert Iguanas had also been high on everyone's wish list, but they all did not show themselves to my friends. Of course a day before our photo excursion and the very next morning when it was just me and the dogs, all of them posed very nicely.

The resident Kestrel pair has fledglings to guard, too. Their sississississi calls betray their location, but the young ones are already acrobatic flyers and can avoid most danger (as long as they stay away from the Chainfruit Chollas

Lesser Night Hawks are very active at dusk and dawn. Their purring sound can be heard from our patio and mated pairs glide close to the ground and loop through the ironwoods along the washes

This big Desert Iguana was around a day before and right after the visit of the photographers. They would have loved him! (Her?)

5 days after our group visit, the Dark Female had shifted the center of her attention about two thirds of a mile westwards. When Randy and I inspected the empty nest she still dutifully came over to screech, but soon flew back to where the chicks were probably resting from one of their first flights.

Around the nesting saguaro, big swatches of white wash on the ground still told the story of the fledged former occupants. In other years, I have seen RT hawk chicks come back to the nest to spend the night for a couple of weeks. The parents will still be around their keening offspring for a couple of months. It's a very stressful, hot and dry time in the desert. It will be a hard test for the survival skills of the young hawks. Some birds migrate to cooler mountains for the summer, but I have seen our Dark Female around at any time of the year. And next year hopefully at the nest again!

For the photos of the Hawk in flight and the close-ups of the chicks I thank Doris, Lois, Tom, and Ned!