A Roadrunner, Two Amorous Lizards, and a Sunset Eclipse

Awww, I love it here.

Sometimes it feels like we’re living in one of those nature shows on Channel 22.

Not long ago a long dry spell ended with dramatic thunderstorms. Nearly an inch of rain one day. Next day, nearly an inch and a half in an hour or two. Then nearly a half inch in an hour, punctuated with pounding hailstones.

Then near silence: birds, chastened but pleased, calling somewhat tentatively; water (and pea-sized white stones) still falling from the canales into the rain barrels, and the pleasant sound of muddy water chortling down our normally dry arroyo.

Rainbow with ocotillo

We wandered around outside, musing that there’s nothing quite like the scent and sight and sound of the desert after a rainstorm, and waited for the rainbow – which appeared, moments later. A huge double rainbow.
[ At left, a closer look at the rainbow touching a foorhill of the Organ Mountains -- then a hailstone caught in a barrel cactus, looking rather like an abandoned egg in a nest. 
Don't think it'll hatch. ]

Earlier this year, we came home one afternoon from the Bosque del Apache at about sunset. (The sand-hill cranes and snow geese had put on an extraordinary show at sunset and sunrise, but that’s another story.) The clouds at sunset looked interesting, so I walked around back to shoot a few photographs. I leaned against the wall, its surface still warm from the late afternoon sun, and became aware of something unusual beside my shoulder – and I jumped when I recognized him.

Our local roadrunner was perched for the night on our electric meter. His tail and much of his body was against the wall, to enjoy the heat, and his beak was pointing toward the setting sun. I had stood just about touching him. Now I proceeded to shoot his portrait. He never budged, or even looked at me. Turns out that at night roadrunners go into near hibernation, their metabolism drops like a meditating Tibetan monk’s, and they’re vulnerable to predators until dawn. I wasn’t a predator.

I left him a vegetarian hot dog. It was gone in the morning, and so was he. He slept there several nights, but hasn’t since.

Of course I felt lucky. A lot of folks in the world never get to see a roadrunner. We get to see one moonlighting as an electrician.

We also see woodpeckers and Scott’s Orioles posing as hummingbirds, landing on the feeder and struggling to steal nectar.

Hummingbirds stage air battles like something out of a World War I film; and the clowns, the Scaled Quails and Gambel’s Quails, strut around out back several times a day. Meanwhile, doves and coyotes provide an evocative sound track we never tire of listening to.

Sunday night, when our neighbors called to remind me of the eclipse, I was looking over video I’d shot of a Texas Horned Lizard. I was puzzled by the fact that in some of the shots there appeared to be, above the lizard’s face, a smaller, similar face, like some sort of visual echo.

Our neighbors have a welder’s helmet, so we rushed out to gawk at the eclipse – but stopped short immediately.

The Texas Horned Lizard was now just outside the front gate, and in the late afternoon light there was no doubt that she had a hitchhiker: a smaller version of herself, riding on her back, like a kid getting a piggy-back ride.

Hope I didn't interrupt an amorous interlude !

I shot some video and a couple of stills. (Tex’s defense mechanism, freezing in place, is not only effective, since its body is a natural camouflage suit designed for its particular habitat, but convenient for still photographers – though kind of dull for video, ‘cause there ain’t a whole lot going on.)

Then suddenly the male got spooked and jumped off, paused a foot or so away from her, then returned, sort of nuzzled her, and climbed back on her back. Thanks guys. (I’d initially assumed they were offspring and momma or poppa; but checking with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department corrected that: the Texas Horned Lizard lays the eggs and splits – there ain’t no mother-offspring relationship beyond that. And males are noticeably smaller than females.)

It struck me that on the way to see such a rare and beautiful sight, the eclipse, we’d been stopped by one nearly as fine.

As we sat around not watching the sun, our neighbors pointed out the nest on their porch where a bird (Say’s Phoebe, we think) builds her nest every year. This year’s first crop of youngsters kept playing in the strange sunlight in front of us, or perching over our heads on a mobile. Our neighbor has his morning coffee out there, so they’re used to him.

Then the star of the show reasserted its claim on our attention. I’ve watched the sun set over those distant hills a bunch of times, but tonight it looked like a crescent moon on steroids: way too bright and oddly swollen, as it dropped below the horizon.

Aww, I love it here!

                                               -30-





[The foregoing column (with just the road-runner) appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 27 May.]

Last Week

In a week dominated by an old friend’s struggles with kidney disease, the beauty of our surroundings kept refusing to be ignored.


A well-camouflaged visitor


We were particularly delighted to find a live Texas Horned Lizard – which I’d always called, incorrectly, a Texas Horned Toad or Texas Horny Toad.

("He’s a lizard," Dael insisted; "and we don’t know anything about whether or not he’s horny.")

Catching the late afternoon sunlight

He eats ants, which is certainly fine with us. He seems to be happily dividing his time between two large ant colonies. Even though the ants from at least one of those colonies have a nasty bite, we left them for him. We’d taken pictures of one of his kind here last year, then found one dead this spring, and hadn’t seen one since.  Now we've seen this fellow three days in a row.




His uncle or cousin from last year

in an alternate universe . . .

. . . stripped of his camouflage

What we have seen several trillion of is grasshoppers. When we walk through the desert grass, it seems alive with little guys jumping out of our way, lighting, and jumping again.  Scores of little guys like this one, all but invisible -- and larger ones, some of which make a sharp clicking noise when they fly and reveal surprisingly bright blue or red wings. Only a few, mostly the larger ones, pause for photographic portraits.

This guy, who patiently posed for a long time as I lay stretched on the ground with the macro lens, we call the elephant cricket, but I've no idea what he actually is.



Of course, instead of tinkering with their photographs I should be outside pouring soapy water and chile oil on the two little pomegranate trees and the Mexican Elder, to keep these voracious little guys from defoliating them before autumn does.
But I'm a grasshopper myself, in the old grasshopper-and-ant story they tell kids.  I'm still leaping about like an idiot, instead of preparing for winter.

This pleasant sunset . . .

 

. . . feels more like this . . .

. . . or even this.



The full moon, of course, performed his monthly show.


Two nights in a row we sat out on the old deck, watching him peek over the peaks; and in the morning when I wandered out to water trees he was speeding toward the horizon, looking somewhat tired after ten or twelve hours of our company. 



I'd have preferred the moon rise a little further North



which might have looked like this ...

. . . or like this.












In the morning he fell, looking weary after nine hours of our world.

We hear coyotes most nights, and recently we've found their paw-prints and mesquite-filled scat around our place every morning.   Thursday morning as Bud and I sped into town toward his kidney doctor, I spotted a dead coyote just off the road, near the new high school they're building.  Must have happened during the night.  I'd a lot rather photograph 'em alive.  I think I'll slow down some.  Whoever hit him, it could as easily have been I.

He reminded me of the dead road-runner we saw on Baylor Canyon Road a few months ago.

Saturday we saw a live road-runner as we drove toward the Farmers’ Market. Didn’t photograph him, but paused to admire him. He moseyed along parallel to us, but pretty soon the ocotillo and creosote hid him from view.

Returning from the Market, we spotted the two golden eagles hunting near the road, a mile or two before our place. We stopped to watch. 

They soared like eagles.  Which seems a perfectly logical thing for them to do, but was a pleasure to watch.

Eventually one of them landed on a utility pole on our side of the road, just in front of us, and we moved closer.  They sometimes hunt near our house, talking to each other as they hunt. 
Saturday they weren't talking, but each obviously kept aware of the other's whereabouts.   I sat in the truck, nearer to them than usual, marveling at their strength and envying of course the freedom with which they floated up there on the breeze. 


Driving home I thought about the way Coyote and Road-runner, along with hummingbirds and comical families of quail, and the golden eagles on their occasional hunting trips our way, begin to populate our lives more than people do.

Thinking about it just now, I wondered if we’ve been coming to take our home for granted just a little. We love it here. This morning we chatted briefly in the market with some friends, who moved here years ago from California, and could still say we don’t miss the Bay Area. Yet I spend less time out contemplating and photographing our little world than I did during the summer.

Then Dael called from out by the smallest ash tree, and suggested I bring the camera.  A

small rattler lay catching the thin last rays of sunlight as the sun disappeared behind the West Mesa.  He seemed disinclined to move just because of our company.  There was something peaceful about him, though he was reminding us not to reach into places we couldn't see.  We suggested a pact under which he and we would leave each other alone while he'd shrink the rodent population.   I took his silence for agreement.