The first Rattler of 2014

On January 26th, I found my first active (sort of) rattler of the year at the Santa Cruz River Path in Marana, Pima Co Arizona, USA.

When I was walking my 4 dogs, camera and binoculars around my neck, a lady informed me of a run-over little snake just ahead. I said: 'run-over on this path, what a pity'. She responded 'I'm only telling you so your dogs won't freak out.' When we found the little rattler it was stretched out and quite stiff, but seemed unharmed. He was obviously cold and trying to warm up on the sunny pavement. Only a little over one foot long he had already accumulated several rattle elements. By the way, it's a myth that one can tell the snake's age in years by the number of those.  After a little coaxing with a piece of straw the rattler woke up, buzzed indignantly, and moved out of the bike path. My 4 dogs were staring at him with too much interest and too little fear for my taste.

Check out how his winter weight-loss shows at his tail-end: his skin is throwing two big folds there. 

When I posted the story on fb, someone remarked that this might be a Mojave Rattler, and I think that is possible. Going back through my earlier slides, I found that there were always a few among all the Diamondbacks that I photographed. It's not too difficult to tell them apart conclusively, but you have to take a closer look at them than I sometimes do. Here is a link to a blog written when I did.

On the same walk we saw two Northern Harriers, both gold-brown, a Red-tail, a Cooper's, the territorial Kestrel, a group of Lawrences's Goldfinches,  a Belted Kingfisher, several Abert's Towhees, some Mallards, and flying overhead, two clouds of thousands of birds. The first cloud consisted of sparrow sized birds and I couldn't tell what they were, the second was made up of Blackbirds, mostly yellow-headed, and grackles.A lonely Monarch was fluttering among the willows along the river.

Superstitian Mountain, a challenge

 watercolor painted from Apache Junction in 1995

A giant monolith, Superstition Mountain, rises to the height of 3,000 feet above the surrounding desert floor and dominates the eastern fringe of the Salt River Valley east of the metropolitan area of Phoenix.

When I lived in Scottsdale I loved hiking to Weavers Needle or up the Siphon Trail, but I always found the iconic shape of Superstition Mountain an intimidating and awkward topic for a painting.  Last week I tried again to meet that challenge. It was the third time I think. With more distance, I'm living in Tucson now, I approached it after acquiring  a little more background knowledge which always helps. But I think most importantly, I didn't try to sit out there in June to do a plein air study. I did that before: it's too hot for watercolors (and me). So I turned to my old slides for inspiration and did a studio painting.

Plein air study in June of 1997

From the web site of the Apache Junction Public Library I got a little more than the usual 'Lost Dutchman Mine Story'. To the Apaches the mountain was the home of the god of thunder. Having seen huge anvil clouds amassing around the mountain top before summer monsoons, I understand that notion.The Pima Indians called it Ka-Katak-Tami meaning "The Crooked Top Mountain." The Spaniards called it Sierra de espuma (Foam Montain? not quite clear to me). The Pimas had many fearful stories about it, which seems to have given rise to the name Superstion Mt. among white settlers. It appears under this name on military maps from 1870.

The website explains the geology of the strange shape that rises so abruptly out of the desert flats: 'This land of towering spires and deep canyons was formed by volcanic upheaval some 29 million years ago during the tertiary period of geologic time. Superstition Mountain was formed during a tectonic maelstrom which resulted in a massive caldera. The caldera was almost seven miles in diameter. After the lava cooled, magma pushed the center of the caldera upward forming a mass of igneous rock. The mass was slowly eroded for millions of years by running water and wind forming the mountain we see today. Superstition Mountain in the distant past was a thousand feet higher than it is today. Uplift, subsidence, resurgence and erosion have all played a role in shaping Superstition Mountain.' 

Large studio painting, watercolor, 2014

 Superstition Mountain close to Apache Junction is only the most well-known part of the Superstition Wilderness Area containing some 242 square miles or 159,780 acres of Arizona's rugged desert mountain terrain. Mountain peaks tower 6,000 feet above sea level and deep canyons dissect this vast wilderness region. The lower slopes are a great place to experience exuberant spring flower blooms in years with just the right pattern of winter rains.  Down there, the summer heat can be brutal. But I did see my very first Collared Lizard there, running on two legs like a miniature Tyrannosaurus rex. The higher, more remote areas support even Ponderosa Pines and are the home to Bighorn Sheep, Black Bears and Mountain Lions.   
This year I'll definitely be back for more exploration, hikes, and maybe paintings, who knows.

Dog stories: Bilbo

A couple of weeks ago we received a new tag for our second youngest dog, Bilbo. To our surprise he will be eight years old in October 2014 according to the paperwork. Can that be? We still call him and Frodo 'the puppies'.

In December of 2006 our three older dogs, Tana, Cody, and Laika, had firmly established their pack and territory when they found two backpacks at our fence with the State Trust Land. Someone had gone out of his way to hide them there in a the place far away from any road or trail. Anyway, I heard loud squealing and found that Cody was roughly grabbing one of two small puppies that had been left out there with a little food and water. That afternoon we were about to drive to Tempe to set up my art booth for a three day show. No time to take care of puppies. So we called the sheriff. But in the meantime the male puppy ran away, probably because Cody was so aggressive towards him. The sheriff arrived and sat in his car with the female pup, waiting for the arrival of animal care officer, meanwhile fell in love with the pup and convinced his girlfriend to adopt her. We all searched for her sibling until we had to give up because it got dark. At night while we were setting up my tent in Tempe the  temperature fell to a rare 19 Degree Fahrenheit. We couldn't stop thinking about the little guy out in the cold with only our resident coyotes for company. Randy drove back to Tucson in the morning. The pup had come back to his backpack!

When I came home three days later, the tiny dog was 'quarantined' in the old goat pen, living in what Randy called an igloo. To me the little structure of cardboard and blankets looked more like a miniature Native American sweat lodge. The pup was smaller than our cats, too short to drink from the cattle tank that the other dogs use, too short for the steps to the patio, too short to climb in Randy's lab, and short enough to walk underneath Tana, who had the shortest legs of the bunch so far.

But even though one of his legs still showed an ugly bump where Cody had grabbed him, the little guy was ready to join the pack!  And the three older ones did tolerate him now under Randy's supervision. Their tails were still raised tensely and Cody wrinkled his nose, but soon enough the new kid joined the fun.

In 2006 Cody and Laika were still quite young and very much into rough-housing and wrestling. But when the dust cleared the pup was usually still (or again) on his crooked legs with those over-sized paws ... Tolkien's description of a Hobbit came to mind, and so 'Bilbo Baggins' it was ... The 'Lord of the Ring' movies came out some time later, but people who ask for his name still don't understand the reference.... it must be my accent.
 Another question always comes up, but remains unanswered: what breed is he. When I take him with me to art shows, he is very much  admired. He really is a good looking dog: The floppy ears finally stood straight up and the bow-legs stretched. He stopped growing at about 40 pounds. The coat is a rich brown with a slight hint of a ridge on his back, and he carries his tail in a nice curve. He is muscular and elegantly proportioned. At four years old his voice broke, so he doesn't really bark anymore, but he can howl with the best and makes low growling pleasure noises when he roles and wiggles to scratch his back. He is crazy about cattle, but he is no workaholic herder. He doesn't resemble any breed I know, but he looks like the ultimate, classical dog. You can find his likeness in frescoes of Egyptian pyramids, in Roman sculptures, in depictions of Australian Dingos and in kids drawings.  

Randy calls him the motor of the pack who drives the others to run and play. Laika encouraged this from the beginning: when Bilbo was still tiny, she rolled over for him whenever he grabbed her throat, so they could play even though her wolf-legs were more than twice as long as his.

But his best friend was Tana: they spooned in her bed when it was cold, and every morning he thoroughly groomed her face. She had developed a wart on her forehead, a common skin problem in huskies. It was unsightly but harmless, so we hadn't done anything about it. After some time with her new groomer, the wart shrank and disappeared.

Bilbo didn't get to spend a lot of time as the spoiled youngest kid. In February of 2007 Frodo was born in a den in the desert, and three months later he joined the pack. For a short while, he looked up to Bilbo as his admired older brother, but very soon they became partners in crime: equals when it came to chewing shoes and pillows, un-potting lettuce plants, uprooting cacti, and terrorizing the cats.

We quickly learned to always keep one of them leashed during our walks, or we would have to wait at least half a day for them to come home. Together they would visit all our far-away neighbors, sit for hours with the cattle in the state land, drive squirrels into chollas, dig for lizards, flop down in puddles ... but they always eventually showed up together, happily panting and in time for dinner.

So Bilbo and Frodo became, and still are, simply 'the pups'.

The one thing that Bilbo gets to do more often than the other dogs, and without his alter ego Frodo, is booth-sitting at my art shows. He is easy going with other dogs and he likes all humans. He doesn't love everybody, as Cody might, but he is polite and entertaining and not too distracting from my art work, I hope.

Bug Forensics

I went to Madera Canyon today. With snow on Mt Wrighston and an overcast sky, not many insects were active.

Argoporis costipennis (?), Eleodes subnitens (?), Metoponium sp.

I found a few tenebrionid beetles under rocks and this Western Leaf-footed Bug under a loose patch of Sycamore bark.

Leptoglossus clypealis

 But I wasn't realyy in the canyon to look for bugs, I needed to get some soil from home for my 3 Strategus cessus grubs that seem to have a hard time deciding to pupate. I also had to find some rotting oak logs to feed 9 Strategus aloeus grubs that are huge by now and the Dynastes granti grubs that are finally beginning to hatch. But their story will be a different blog chapter.

Marginitermes hubbardi (Light Western Drywood Termite)

In our dry climate a lot of wood decomposes through dry rot. They are broken down by powder-post beetles, fungi and termites and there never is the moist brown wood pulp that my scarab offspring supposedly needs. But moisture does collect in stumps that remain upright. Soon the wood in the center of the stump softens and crumbles and additional organic material gets trapped. This is supposedly the cradle for many species of beetles.

Sycamore, still alive and standing with rotting stump hole

When I pushed against one of these stumps, this one was oak, it came off the ground easily. It was completely hollowed out. Only a pile of mulch remained where the center had been. Mixed with it were the shiny remains of several insects.

Sorting through the debris, I found parts of the elytra, the pronotum and some sternites of a buprestid beetle. There was just enough to deduce that it had been a big female of the blue footed Lampetis webbii. The pieces in the bottom left corner belong to this beetle.

Lampetis webbii

A single shiny black elytron with a light band ( upper right) indicated that a scarab in the genus Gymnetina had died here, too. I have seen Bill Warner and Pat Sullivan look for theses beetles in locations just like this because the beetles are known to deposit their eggs in stump hollows. I usually see the adults flying high out of reach and I still don't have any good images with natural background.

Gymnetina howdeni Warner and Ratcliffe

The third is a big head capsule, top left. At first I mistook it for the head of a beetle larva because of the huge biting mandibles and the simple small eyes. But the larvae of the big boring beetles don't have heads like this and the holes in front of the eyes clearly indicated that this insect had a pair of well developed antennae ...

Stenopelmatus sp., Jerusalem Cricket

  BugGuide and my well chosen group of facebook friends solved the mystery quickly: a Jerusalem Cricket was also buried here.

Now I can speculate what kind of drama happened here. Are the beetle parts remains of females that oviposited and then died of old age? Or were helpless young beetles killed while they were waiting in their pupal chambers for spring to arrive?  Was the Jerusalem cricket the culprit?

My most interesting arthropod photos of the year 2013

At his Scientific American blog, Alex Wild is curating a list of everyone's best science/nature photos from the year 2013.
I changed it to most interesting, making clear (to myself) that I wasn't looking for just the prettiest pictures. I didn't really remember a favorite photo that I took this year. But as always I remember the favorite that got away!
2013 was a great entomological year for me including a trip to Costa Rica in May, several three-to-four-day tours with clients into the sky islands and to the Mogollon Rim, the huge BugGuide meeting that I organized at the Santa Rita Research Range, half a dozen invited talks with black lighting at very nice locations, two bug parties with entomologists from all over the world and finally a biodiversity survey of two Sonora, Mexico Ranchos with a group of great biologists for the Sky Island Alliance. 
 I enjoyed searching through my 2013 flickr images that brought back a lot of fond memories. Of course I got hooked and spent much too long staring at thousands of photos organized in flickr's neat nesting system of sets and collections.
So here are twelve photos, in chronological, if not monthly sequence:

Megachile parallela (Leafcutter Bee) on Brittle bush in February. I like it because she is showing off the pollen load under her belly so nicely.

I had the chance to follow the molt of this male Olios giganteus (Giant Crab Spider) in our neighbor's olive tree. I posted the series of photos to my blog. The spider currently still lives in the same hollow tree post, nearly 10 months later.

This click beetle in the genus Semiotus did get his portrait in for being pretty, and the leaf was chosen as a nice background to show him off. But: this is one of the photos I took in early May in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. We tend to take for granted that tropical species are so much more colorful than their relatives from temperate zones but the question remains why?

Apiomerus barrocoloradoi (Bee Assassin) preying on Apoica pallens (night-active Vespid). Initially I was very proud that during my short visit to Costa Rica I found this only very recently described Assassin Bug. It turns out that these bugs were long known but had so far eluded description as one species because they are so  very variable in coloration.

And 'Ausnahmen bestaetigen die Regel': our own Arizona Bee Assassin Apiomerus flavivestris is more colorful than her tropical brother. But she made my list because of the pray she tackled here: a Pogomyrmex sp. Harvester Ant. Their sting is the worst I have experienced so far (I stayed respectfully clear of the Costa Rican Bullet Ants) It is said that Arizona would be completely uninhabitable if our Pogos where the size of Jackrabbits. I'd say that I'd move if they were the size of packrats.

For this shot I climbed down a steep embankment at Copper Canyon in Cochise County, and while I didn't loose my footing and roll down into the Mexican flatland, I did bang my little Olympus point-and-shoot against a rock and nicked the lens. James M. Carpenter  identified the pair as Parazumia tolteca.

I had watched the progress (or no changes rather) of this Sceliphron caementarium (Black and Yellow Mud Dauber) nest for months when finally little moist spots indicated activity. By the time I had my camera set up, I caught just about the last young wasps hatching. Here is the blog, complete with video.

When light-trapping insects, it's not always quality that impresses. During this night in Peppersauce Canyon on the north side of the Catalina Mountains the moths covered the sheet so densely that nothing new could land. The air was so saturated with scales from their wings that we could hardly breathe.

At a friend's house (luckily a coleopterist) Brachinus elongatulus (Bombadier Beetle) accumulates in great numbers. Just imagine they all get organized and let lose simultaneously! Beetle collectors beware!

Tylospilus acutissimus is a predatory stink bug. He got chosen because he is pretty, but also as a representative of the last great insect-photography opportunity of  the year, which comes around with the bloom of the Desert Broom Bushes in early November.

 

On a Sonora Mexico trip for the Sky Island Alliance, I found this tiny (3mm) bug in the genus Systelloderes at my light. It belongs to the family of the Unique-headed Bugs (Enicocephalidae), which occurs around the world, but the majority of species remains undescribed.

I usually don't set up photo opportunities by staging encounters of subjects that may or may not meet in natural surroundings or harm each other. In this case the millipede had been left in the sandbox from a previous photo shoot by accident when I introduced the Giant Vinegaroon (Mastigoproctus giganteus). But she tackled the millipede immediately, and although it managed to wiggle away once, in the end all that was left were the hard segmental rings of the exoskeleton with their pairs of legs and an even fatter vinegaroon.

Happy Holidays and a Mystery

All through December I have been too busy to blog. The art shows were busy and more originals sold than during the whole rest of the year. On the day before we drove out to California I was still working on tables for a paper on Buprestids for a friend and client in LA, a translation from English to German of an abstract for an Orthoptera  publication from Zagreb, a commissioned painting of the Pima County Courthouse for one of the judges who used to work there and waiting for the pick up of another little original as a last minute gift. Then some communication about a package with prints that should have reached Florida by the 20th, but didn't make it...meanwhile our house phone-line succumbed again to the influx of moisture and technicians have to come out to fix it... Not all of the xmas business is fun.

For 2 days we escaped to California to visit with Randy's family and take the dogs to the beach in Oceanside. It's our Christmas tradition that provides us with fine sand in the back of our car for the entire next year.

 There isn't much room for Trevor  and the 4 dogs in the back of our Toyota Fit, and I really admired Trevor's great patience on the way back to San Diego, when they were all quite wet.

Last night we came back from CA to AZ around 2 am. We were greeted by the most beautiful starry sky I've seen in a while and coyotes howling. When Cody ran to chase them and followed to bring him back I heard strange noises:  Randy called it a cross between a goose and a donkey. The bird or animal that makes them is definitely not small. The call is a very regular, repeated hunnn - hunnn - hunnn with about 5 sec intervalls. First I thought it might be a dog that's choking on something, but coming closer I realized it was clearly a call. Two weeks ago our neighbor Frank has described the same noise after he heard the sounds also at night on the other side of the property. A roadrunner with night mares and a very strange rhythm? My facebook friends suggested foxes or mule deer, but we have no deer here, and I would have seen them I think.

Caracaras of the Santa Cruz Flats

Crested Caracara, Caracara cheriway Photo by Ned Harris

 I liked those stately birds even as a child in Germany. Our zoo in Dortmund had a few that were walking freely (though probably with wing feathers clipped) among the visitors. Their dignified but curious demeanor appealed much more than the stately beauty of the peacocks or the aggressive gobbling of the turkeys that were also strutting around.
Last May in Costa Rica I saw Caracaras a couple of times in the wild, but we were always on our way to something more interesting, rare, or otherwise attractive, so I never got a good look...and while they were more common in Costa Rica, I also hoped that I would eventually see them in Arizona. Because, even though wikipedia and some other sources mention only US populations in Florida and Texas, I knew that a few pairs breed regularly in the area around Sells, Arizona, on the Tohono O'odam Nation. Access there can be difficult, though

Pima Cotton at Picacho Peak

 Yesterday my friend Ned Harris took me to the Santa Cruz Flats west of Picacho Peak where this year a group of Caracaras is wintering in the fields. He has seen as many as 50 there at a time. The wide open area is used to grow cotton, alfalfa  and sorghum. The fine clay soil is the source of dust storms that often cause deadly accidents in Interstate 10, and we got our share of the dust when trucks loaded with huge cotton bails raced by on dirt roads.

Juvenile caracaras in pecan trees

 Pecan trees grow along the roads, but they are neglected and suffer from lack of irrigation. For the Caracaras the bare top branches offered a perch which made for some unusual photos because these birds can more often be seen walking busily on the ground.

We found two groups of about 5 birds on a berm where they were feeding in the company of a bunch of ravens.
 The birds seemed social. They were not just feeding close to each other, they interacted. They watched and followed each other on the ground, and stole from each other. When one left, the others soon joined him. They are carrion eaters and, like vultures, probably profit from strength in numbers when they have to compete with other predators at a large carcass. Phylogenetically, they are now grouped with the true Falcons in the family Falconiformes, but they have little in common with them. In behavior and even appearance they reminded me much more of the small Egyptian Vultures that I often watched in Southern Europe.

Photo by Ned Harris

 Yesterday it was cloudy and cool, and most raptors were on the ground or perched with no soaring-thermals to be found. The Caracaras and some Ravens were walking on berms between irrigated cotton and alfalfa patches. While the ravens poked at the ground with their beaks, the caracaras used their strong yellow legs and feet to scratch and turn over whole chunks of vegetation and soil that may have been loosened by a plow. Ever now and then a caracara got lucky: he reached out and grabbed something with one foot and then elegantly lifted the morsel to his beak to eat it. I do not know of any other birds that eats like that except parrots....Does the gawky African grassland raptor, the Secretary,  do something like that? I approached three Caracaras that were busily scratching and digging to see what they were catching, but they kept slowly moving out of range. They didn't fly up, they just kept walking and searching. When I checked the soil that the birds had turned I thought I saw holes stemming from grubs or earthworms. I tried to get some video, but I had nothing to rest my camera on, so the tele-lens video turned out awfully jumpy.
I went back today when the light was better, but I only saw three caracaras on the ground and even they took off soon...later I saw them soaring high above. 

On the wide open Santa Cruz flats, telephone posts are the most appreciated perches for most raptors other than Caracaras and Northern Harriers. We spotted amazing numbers of Kestrels, several Merlins (not on the poles or wires), at least three color morphs of Red-tails, a Cooper's, a Ferruginous Hawk and several Prairie Falcons.

Ferruginous Hawk