I drove through the desert in a car with no name early this morning to avoid the heat. The alarm was set for 5am but I awoke a little earlier so I was at Alamo Canyon by 0530.
There were jackrabbits and cottontails, there were organpipe cacti and ocotillos, and there were Gila woodpeckers, ravens, Scott’s orioles, cactus wrens, white-winged doves and curve-billed thrashers. And I had it all to myself and it was 70F not 110F.
White-winged doves were making lots of noise, but so too were Gila woodpeckers. The doves go ‘Who cooks, for you?’ according to Sibley but I had decided that they go ‘We have pastr – am -i’ with the last syllable being a faint whisper.
Some of the organpipes had flowered overnight – their yellowish-white flowers brightened up the place.
I arrived at the information center at about 0820, thinking it would open at 0800, but found it opened at 0830, except today it opened at 0822 because the two ladies inside were so pleased and surprised to see someone trying to get in!
They also seemed pleased and surprised when I said ‘Yes please’ when they asked if I’d like to see the 15 minute introductory film to the Organpipe Cactus NM. It was very good, as these things usually are in the USA.
I bought postcards and we chatted about F1 racing, how lovely my accent was and where I should go next before I headed off back to Ajo for stamp-buying and breakfast (and a failed attempt at a midday snooze).
I went back to Alamo Canyon at around 4pm. As I had read, all the cactus flowers from the morning, that had appeared overnight, were gone – shrivelled up or eaten. There will be more tomorrow morning – how wonderful is that?
As I left at about 630pm I saw a bird fly from the roadside and I thought it might be a towhee, maybe a canyon towhee. Canyon towhee would have been good but it was a pyrrhuloxia which is better. Better because it has a better name and because it is a smarter looking bird.
The pyrrhuloxia looks like a northern cardinal with some sort of skin disease so that it has gone all blotchy – how cool is that? And I assume that it is named after Pyrrhus, of dodgy victory fame (as presumably is the bullfinch) but I’m guessing there.
I like the desert. In the desert you can remember your name and there are plants and birds and rocks and things.
[registration_form]
Great to hear more about this. I really enjoyed my visits to the Arizona desert with the incredible richness of bird & flowers. It instilled an interest in deserts so we’ve actively sought to travel to the Sahara in the last few years. But the Western deserts if the US are probably richer in wildlife terms. Great places, keep up the Blogs Mark!
Jim – many thanks. Yes, I think I am falling in love with deserts too.
‘Just like a white-winged dove, sings a song sounds like she’s singing’.
You are turning into Chris Packham there Mark – a reference to America (Horse With No Name) and perhaps inadvertently, Stevie Nicks (Edge Of Seventeen).
Ian – thanks! Not sure CP would be thrilled by the comparison… However, I did have my hair cut in Tucson today.
Greatly enjoying your blog, Mark. Perhaps not so many comments as you usually attract but I’m sure large numbers of us are following your peregrinations with interest!
While you’re away, your successor Martin Harper, has had a wonderful series of guest blogs on the State of Nature, I hope you have been reading them. Tonight in Bristol (that should attract you) there is a Question Time format discussion, broadcast online, with Stephen Moss as QM and Martin in the team. Probably the middle of the night for you but here’s the link. http://www.nextstep4nature.public-i.tv/core
Richard – there seem to be about 400 of you sticking with this blog through its US travels. Back to ranting and raving about UK things quite soon.
Mark, Stephen Moss gave you a plug as a Bristolian on the online podcast. A little comparison between yourself and the current incumbent at the RSPB! Actually it was a great discussion. Hope it’s still available when you get back.
It was a good discussion and being there added something to the interest, but it felt like a panel of the converted talking to a room of the converted at times. To move this State of Nature issue on, things need to get a bit more gritty with all views coming to the fore. Hint for when you get back Mark.
Still plenty for you to rant and rave about, sadly. The news that the Crimdon colony of Little Terns has been wiped out by egg collectors who took the eggs from 65 nests being a case in point (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-22978582). How utterly depressing.
It would be nice to imagine a connection to a Pyrrhic victory but the derivation of the bird’s name is more prosaic: Greek pyrrhos means flame-coloured, and loxia means oblique, as in the Desert Cardinal’s bill.
However, how did Pyrrhus get his name?
Reminds me of the London marathon one year, when one competitor was dressed as a chicken and another dressed as an egg. I thought ‘I’ll watch this, it could be interesting …’.
David – many thanks. I did Greek at school, and was quite good at it, but that piece of knowledge eluded me. And I am trying to take sparrows more seriously as you suggested – but finding it difficult. And which did come first…?
I had the good fortune to be sent to Arizona for some training in 2008 and although the desert experience was very brief ( in Lost Dutchman State Park) I thought it fantastic and I am thoroughly enjoying your blog cum travelogue. Oh to be there again myself( currently unlikely), the lost Dutchman was not lost at all but killed by Apaches for trespass on their land, a little harsh perhaps but understandable in the historic context.