Springtime in the desert

Today is one of those perfect days which reminds me of why I love the desert so.  Mornings are cool - a good time to water plants and do the yard work that needs attention.  Palo verde trees are all in bloom this week.  Beautiful bright yellow blossoms against the green of the tree.  The city is blanketed with fallen yellow blossoms which swirl in the breezes.  My gardenia plant is in bloom - scenting the day with its beautiful smell.  Every once in a while as I work on the computer I get a waft of the gardenia. Lovely.  Birds are all singing - particularly the mockingbirds.  My yard is the corner of 2-3 males' territories.  So I benefit from a lot of singing.  White-winged Doves were out this morning, eating seeds from the acacia and cooing.  Finches are working over the hummingbird feeders.  Afternoon is warm.  We're in the mid-nineties which is perfect to me.  But soon it will be hot.  That's when I pull out photos like this one and remind myself that cooler times will return.

Snow in the Grand Canyon is always a beautiful thing.  It was chilly this day - with snow showers blowing through the canyon.  Wind was icy to our faces and we didn't linger anywhere for too long.

But now back to my beautiful day.  Split pea soup in the crockpot - thanks to the Easter ham bone that my brother saved for me.  2 salads as I couldn't choose between them.  Dinner and swimming at my brother's house - it's a wonderful day.

Harris' Hawk kind of Day

Yesterday was just one of those days I savor.  Very nice weather, great sports, good food and a great bird to end things up.

Weather was warm - but not hot, with high clouds sailing through.  Every time I looked up to the sky there was a different formation.  Not puffy clouds,  but big banks of wispy clouds.  Great Blue Herons and anonymous ducks flew over, somewhere nearby there must have been a park with some water.

I spent most of the day at a rugby tournament.  The Wolves played hard, but lost in the end.  An enjoyable game to watch as it wasn't one-sided.  My son is an assistant coach for the team.  He played with this team as a high school student for 3 years and then 1 year with his current school - ASU.  He's loving the coaching side of things as he is a born leader.  Loves to talk and explain things, wants to make the people around him aspire to greater things.  But I regress... rugby is a great sport to watch once you figure out the game.  I stayed on to watch the Mens' game.  My son now plays for that team, though he didn't play yesterday.  Much faster paced.  Much more colorful language.  :)

On my way home I saw what I thought was a BIG grackle drinking from water in the gutter in an neighborhood intersection.  As I got closer I realized it was WAY too big to be a grackle.  Two young boys stood nearby, straddling their bikes with their mouths wide open.  I pulled over as I realized it was a Harris' Hawk.  I was hoping he wasn't injured.  They usually sit way up in trees or on light poles.  You never see them on the ground.

Harris' Hawks are interesting as they hunt in packs.  I once watched a trio wear down a rabbit in the desert.  One would fly after the rabbit which would zig and zag and eventually find shelter under a bush.  When a second hawk would suddenly show up on the other side of the bush, the rabbit would bolt to zig and zag to another bush.  They kept this up until the rabbit tired at which point the third swooped in for the catch.

This guy wasn't hunting and he wasn't injured.  Just thirsty.  Mockingbirds were mobbing him, annoying birds when they take it in their heads that they don't like you. Ask my cat.  The hawk eventually drank his fill and tired of the mockingbird swarm over his back so flew up to a giant mesquite.  Just as an aside, this particular mesquite is one of my favorite trees in the area.  It is enormous and the trunk twists like a piece of candy up to about 15 feet where it branches out into a huge umbrella of green.  It is beautiful.  And, a great hawk perch, which is where this guy flew along with his accompanying swarm of mockingbirds.

He proceeded to preen himself, trying very hard to appear oblivious of the noisy bunch around him.  He gave himself away, not as calm, cool, collected as he would like to seem, when he occasionally flinched as a mockingbird whacked his backside.  They were careful to not get to close to his face.  I like this picture as it shows the mockingbird's patches well.  They use those to frighten bugs into flinching and giving away their hiding places.  Wasn't working on the hawk though.

I eventually left the hawk to his "peace".  A Gila Woodpecker had joined the fray and was being very vocal about hawk's not being wanted in his neighborhood.  It was getting too noisy for me.  Besides, my porch chair and book were calling me.  Dusk is a beautiful time to read.