Hygge Outdoors

 

The dear little things that warm our hearts --

The little guy is so cute --

 

Sculpture By Nature

Adventures Close to Home: Ocotillo Forest

So often what I show you in these adventures must seem repetitious, but today's mountain hike went in a different direction. Our destination was high ground where the ocotillo is getting ready to open its flowers to the sun. Here is the point where we really started to climb --

-- and maybe the photograph directly below will give some idea of how far from the road we ventured. Can you see our ghost town home at all back there in far distance?

One thing I know you can see in that last image is how open the ground is, compared to lower down in Dos Cabezas. We had gradually left most of the mesquite behind and now encountered more barrel and prickly pear cactus.

The old girl (dog girl, that is) had been staggering around earlier in the cabin, as if her legs could barely keep her upright. She can be like that in the mornings. Once outdoors, though? She is a new animal! Rambunctious as a puppy, eager to run and explore! I do keep an eye on her, of course, to make sure she doesn't get dehydrated or exhausted, and when she seems to be looking for water, I stop and we both have a drink. I also suck on a lemon -- for the electrolytes -- and Sarah has a couple of dog treats for energy.

Despite many stops for purposes of hydration and photography, the humans were on a mission this trip. Here is Therese (Sarah standing by), showing me why we made the arduous climb. 

But you still can't see how very tall they were, those ocotillo. This picture Therese took of me, standing right next to one of the plants, may give a better idea.

And here is Buddy in the ocotillo forest. Can you see him? He's a big dog but looks little here!

The ocotillo flowers are not yet fully open, but before long every tall wand ends in a bright red flame. They're getting there....

The forest of ocotillo had been our main objective, but it was not the only gift the mountains gave us. What has Therese spotted here on the edge of a deep ravine?

If we were back in Michigan, I'd call these black-eyed Susans, but what are they called here?

Then there were these brilliant mounds of color, such are also blooming along the roadsides right now, and I took the opportunity (far from roads) to get a good closeup. Now do my friends want to argue about what this flower is?

Once again, it was a beautiful and exciting day in the mountains -- and this time we humans refrained totally from political discussion. Not a single word! That was the icing on the cake.

A Hole in the Clouds

Outdoors behind the cabin, I was talking on the phone with my son when for no reason at all I looked straight up into the sky above me. This  is what I saw. The formation lasted only a minute before it was gone.

A Few October Reds

Fall color is not far from my front door. I chose my viburnum (above) years ago because I love it in every season but especially in autumn. Peonies (below) bloomed months ago, but their deep red leaves make a vivid splash at this time of year

And nature is doing her own work, beyond my garden and all over the countryside. The Virginia creeper is spectacular this year!

Unless You Knew They Were There...

...and unless you stopped to look very carefully, you would never see them at all. Wily wild turkeys!

Someday, Hallelujah!

Good Morning, Leelanau!

For many who live or visit Leelanau County, 

Lake Michigan is its most important feature.

The clean beaches (smaller this year),

the vast waters.

My Leelanau focus is smaller

and more inland-looking.

It is animal tracks on a dusty back road

and drops of dew on the seedbeds of grasses.

Discovering Jewels in the High Desert

Handicapped early in life by nearsightedness and youthful impatience, I was never any kind of serious birder. Wildflowers hold still, allowing me as long as I need to gaze and consult a field guide, plants are more my speed than darting, swooping, here-then-gone-in-an-instant feathered things. 

But the birding obsession comes on with advancing years, I’ve noticed. That is, I noticed it first in other people and now find myself succumbing in turn. Bird-watching, I guess, is kind of like bridge or golf that way (though I’m still holding the game and sport at bay, thank you): a pastime that seemed deadly boring for decades suddenly becoming all-absorbing. Nowadays, though not yet a maniac, whenever I can add a new species to the list of birds I’ve managed to identify, my “discovery” fills me with a little thrill of excitement. 

Recently a little grey bird perched on a bare branch in the dry wash stopped me on my way to the mailbox and captivated me with a repeated tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-bzzz. What was that bird? I posed the question to friends on Facebook, since I had no photo to compare to pictures in books and had only the remembered sound to associate with a “little grey bird.” Several people made suggestions, and by following up on one of them in particular I was able to find the black-tailed gnatcatcher online and listen to its song. That was it! My field guides could then fill in the details.

No telephoto lens: big handicap this year. Handicap I’ve been feeling for weeks and weeks — until I dug my camera carrying case out of the cupboard to retrieve the macro lens, thinking it would help with photographing tiny, tiny flowers. Lo and behold! It is a tele-macro lens! Perfect for the birds!

Small birds seem almost designed to chase away blues and cares. How on earth do hummingbirds survive? And with such élan? It’s inspiring.

Pyrrhuloxia

The pyrrhuloxia, Arizona’s silver cardinal, has a call so much like the northern cardinal, familiar to me from Illinois and Michigan, that here in Arizona I have to look twice to see which cardinal is visiting. I learned about the pyrrhuloxia in 2015, but only this week have I been able to see (through the magic of the tele-macro lens) and thus identify the colorful little house finch and the ladder-back woodpecker. House finch, I think, should have a more exciting name, as a friend said to me years ago about the name of the state of Idaho, which probably made her think of potatoes. House finch makes me think of house sparrow, and — sorry! house sparrows, albeit cute in their way, are not exciting to me, for I’ve seen them all my life. Now the little ladder-back woodpecker — he is just plain cute, so much smaller than woodpeckers more familiar to me, with his little head ruffled up in the breeze.

House finch

Ladder-back woodpecker

Other birds without brilliant colors make me smile, though. The canyon towhee, for example, is not a bird of vivid hues but makes up for drab coloration with personality — friendly, companionable, perky, and confident. The “most confiding” towhee, as one of my guides calls it, seems to invite something like friendship.

Canyon towhee

Then there is the mockingbird. Simple Puritan grey with white accents, it is an elegant, self-assured bird and the star vocalist among my avian acquaintance.

Mockingbird poised

Though the little black-throated sparrow, dressed in black, grey, and white, also has a beautiful morning song.

Black-throated sparrow

The black-throated sparrow, I may note here, is “Arizona’s most widespread and numerous breeding sparrow,” according to Birds of Southeastern Arizona, by Richard Cachor Taylor. And that’s all right. The description reassured me, the first time I found it, that I’m on the right track, too. It’s tempting for amateur naturalists to want to “discover” some rare species, but odds are that what we’re seeing most of the time is what is most common, and becoming familiar with as many of the common birds in an area as possible will make the less common stand out to the amateur eye as it gradually acquires knowledge.

I might as well throw the tiny flowers in here. My quest started with rattlesnake weed, so easily overlooked, so small in the vastness that you could walk all over it for years without seeing it, but once it catches your eye you see it everywhere, at least around Dos Cabezas.

Rattlesnake weed

 Going back for camera and newly rediscovered lens and returning to photograph the rattlesnake weed, I found other tiny flowers I’d never seen before. (I've used a dime for indication of size.) I’ll have to go out again with that plant identification app on my phone can help me with these, because none of my wildflower guides seems to include them, probably guessing that no one would be noticing anything of that scale. 

I brought the sprig of tiny white flowers back to the cabin to photograph them but was quickly distracted by a hooded oriole, the flashiest of birds visiting my feeders. If only he would be more accommodating about posing for me! But the oriole is not as “confiding” as the towhee or as self-assured as the mockingbird, and at the slightest rustle on my part, he is gone. I no longer suffer from youthful impatience, however; I’ll bide my time, and the oriole will return. Isn’t he worth waiting for?

Hooded oriole