Year in Nature Photography – Day 122

Day 2 of Arizona backyard photography.

For today we have another silhouetted animal, this time a lizard. Caught another lizard feeding on some rotting watermelon. These lizards are quite skittish and even movement at this distance will scare them off so I had to do some long distance ID for this one. Based on the color of the head and some of the patterning I’m guessing it is a desert spiny lizard which can have some quite brilliant scale coloring. The linked source indicates that females will have reddish/orangish heads during breeding season. Also apparently they can change color from light to darker to aid in the absorption (dark color) or reflection of light (light color).

In the deserts of Arizona most of the little rainfall they receive comes during the monsoon season. I’ll post about this later but this season brings out the paloverde root borer which is a member of the longhorn family of beetles and one of the largest beetles in North America. As the common name suggests, the larvae (grubs) feed primarily on the Mexican palo verde trees but will feed on other non-native trees as well. Despite their rather fierce looking mandibles (jaw, mouth parts) they seem to be vegetarian.

Cacti can be as difficult to identify as most other plants. A lot of details such as the number of folds, number of needles, how the needles are clustered, etc. distinguish different species. If you manage to catch it in flower you’ll have an easier time, unfortunately I seemed to have missed that event. All that aside, I’m pretty confident that I have a picture of a saguaro cactus with a hole in it. Saguaro’s can live for up to 200 years and many reach over 40 feet in height. They start producing flowers around the age of 55, which are borne at the tops of the ‘arms’ and main stem. The flowers bloom at night and are pollinated by birds, bats, and other insects. Some may have holes in them that may have been created by birds such as Gila Woodpecker and the Gilded Flicker for nesting. I’ll have more on cacti in later posts, but you can also see a fruit of a prickly pear type cactus.

Difficult to know for sure but guessing a Female Desert Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus magister)

Prickly Pear Cactus bud (Opuntia sp?) Could be the cow’s tongue again

Paloverde Root Borer (Derobrachus geminatus)

Lizard in silhouette

Hole in a what I’m pretty sure is a Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea)

Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii)

Year in Nature Photography – Day 121

Day 1 of Arizona backyard photography. It’s going to be a challenge to ID things I saw on my trip, but fortunately my aunt had a book of “Plants of Arizona” which I browsed through so I have some direction to head. I have several pictures of critters that I saw from their porch and due to the bright sun gave me just a silhouette, which makes for an interesting picture but virtually impossible to identify.

Today’s pictures include a bird of paradise bush (this is at least one of the colloquial names and what my aunt called it), which despite the name isn’t related to bird of paradise flower, familiar in floral arrangements. This is why local and regional names can be confusing and why we use scientific names. There are a lot of prickly pear type cacti in their yard but this particular one seems to be a cultivated variety and is named for the tongue shape of the pads. I’ll talk more about cacti in another post. Also their yard had families of gambel’s quail running around.

Stay tuned, there’s plenty more to come.

Bird of paradise bush (Caesalpinia gilliesii) bloom

Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii)

Bird in silhouette

I’m going to go with Cow’s tongue cactus (Opuntia engelmannii var. linguiformis)

Bird of paradise bush (Caesalpinia gilliesii)

Bird in silhouette (sp?)