Thanksgiving week

This past week (November 23-28, 2010) I had off of work and school, spending the time over in Heber. Most of the days we went out hiking or birding, although we did have snow a couple of days that kept us inside (except for taking Eva outside to play in the snow). On Tuesday the 23rd we went down the Young Rd. below the Mogollon Rim to a place called Bottle Spring that someone told us about. On the way down, a cool sighting (to me at least) was a lone Chihuahua pine (Pinus leiophylla), a species that mostly occurs just in the "sky island" mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, south into Mexico. I had heard about remnant populations occurring along the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona, but this was the first time I had seen one here. They are a cool species in that, besides having serotinous or partially-serotinous cones (those that require intense heat or smoke from fires to open up and release seeds), Chihuahua pine is one of only a few pine species in the world that can sprout new stems from the trunk after a fire. Their cones are very tiny in comparison to the common ponderosa pine and remain on the tree for a long time. Here are a couple of pics:

At Bottle Spring we walked around the forest a bit checking out the area. Right off the bat we came across one of the largest mixed flocks of birds we had ever seen, hanging out in a clump of ponderosa pines and drinking from a small puddle along the old logging road. There were at least 40 Red Crossbills, 20 Cassin's Finches, 20 Ruby-crowned Kinglets, all three nuthatch species (including one Red-breasted), lots of Dark-eyed Juncos, a few Olive Warblers, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, and a Steller's Jay imitating a hawk's screams. Later on we spotted a beautiful rufous-morph Red-tailed Hawk which I was able to snap a quick photo of:

Later that evening when we were back in Heber, we just happened to glance out the window and see a fairly intense sunset (the pictures only capture part of it though):

 

On Wednesday night after finishing a paper up via email with my group for the ocotillo project for my field ecology class (see other posts), I checked out the windows at around 11:00pm and saw it was snowing outside. This was funny because earlier that evening when I walked Eva around the neighborhood it did not really look like it was going to snow at all. The next morning we had around an inch on the ground in places that quickly melted through the rest of the day. It was nice to have snow on Thanksgiving though. Here are some shots from the yard, including snow on our banana yucca (Yucca baccata):

 

The day after Thanksgiving my mom and I broke from tradition and decided to hike a 10-mile loop around Horton Creek just below the Rim, instead of our usual Picketpost Mountain hike (see other post for pictures from this hike). The next day we all did a day trip over to the White Mountains in eastern Arizona to take Eva out to the snow and to check out the birds over there. Highlight birds included Northern Shrike, Snow Goose, Gray Jay, Common Yellowthroat, and Belted Kingfisher (the last two species common at other times of year, but rare this late in the fall). Despite the good bird sightings, we were depressed for the rest of the day after visiting Big Lake, where we found 8 Western Grebes stuck in the ice. One was already dead and being consumed by a crow (based on how bloody and ripped up it was, I suspect the Bald Eagles are also feasting on the grebes and ducks that get stuck in the ice). The other 7 grebes were still alive, but could only move their necks. One was even pathetically calling out. I think the birds just got caught unaware when the temperature plummeted really fast one of the previous nights. They probably fell asleep and woke up to find themselves trapped. Even though every thing dies someday, that is a horrible way to go.

On a lighter note, here are some shots of Eva going bonkers in the snow at Gabaldon Campground (1st picture at lower elevation Wenima Wildlife Area, which also had a few patches of snow):

Porcupine

On November 13, 2010, my mom and I went birding in the morning over in Holbrook before I had to work on a class project. After birding our usual spots near the golf course in Holbrook, we went over to an abandoned lot along the Little Colorado River that has some riparian vegetation (cottonwoods, willows, tamarisk). Being midday by then there were virtually no birds, but a large brown clump up in a distant Russian-olive caught my eye. Thinking initially it was just a hawk, I trained by binoculars on it to find that it was way too wide-bodied to be a hawk and looked furry. We moved closer and, sure enough, it turned out to be a PORCUPINE! This was our first time seeing one alive in the wild (we only had previously seen them at the Phoenix Zoo and as roadkill). It was just napping in the tree when we came up to it, but we could see where it had been stripping the bark off the branches. Reading up on porcupines afterwords, apparently in winter bark makes up a large portion of their diet. Seeing a porcupine was way better than seeing any bird that day! Freaking cool!!! Here are some pics:

 

A week or so later I was over in Heber for the weekend and on the drive back to Flagstaff early on that subsequent Monday morning, I saw the porcupine up in a cottonwood visible from the Hwy. 77 bridge over the Little Colorado.

Montezuma Well, Red Tank Draw

Back on November 12, 2010, I went down to Montezuma Well (part of Montezuma Castle National Monument) near Camp Verde south of Flagstaff. The main purpose of my visit was to chase after some rare warblers that were reported the previous day, one of which I found: a female Black & White Warbler. This was only my second time seeing this species ever and my first for Arizona. This is an interesting warbler species in that behaviorally, it acts like a nuthatch crawling along branches and tree trunks. Here are a couple of photos of the bird (not great, but good enough to tell what it is):

After birding the lush vegetation at the picnic area, I walked around at Montezuma Well itself, which is a collapsed limestone cavern where water gushes out from springs. The water pooling in the well has very low oxygen, so no fish can survive in it. There are aquatic animals that make it home though, like muskrats, leeches, and aquatic insects. The water leaves the well at a "swallet", which is an opening of an underground stream. The water here travels 150 ft. before coming out of a hillside adjacent to Wet Beaver Creek. The ancient Sinagua indians that lived here created a canal to capture the outflow of water emerging from the well, which is still present today. Within the well, there are several cliff dwellings and above it there are remnants of pit-houses. Here are several photos of Montezuma Well:

 

Before heading back to Flagstaff, I stopped at Red Tank Draw a few miles north of Montezuma Well. The drainage has water intermittently, although south of the bridge there is enough water moving below-ground to provide for lush vegetation like Arizona alders (Alnus arizonica). To the north of the bridge there is more cottonwood-ash habitat along the draw with desert/chaparral habitat on the surrounding slopes. There are very scenic rock formations up and down the wash too (one of my favorite spots to hike). On this day I just went a little ways south of the bridge and checked out some ancient indian petroglyphs on a rock slab someone told me about. Many of the etched pictures have been covered up by lichens (a mixture of algae and fungi):

Another highlight at Red Tank Draw was finding a Madrean alligator-lizard, which has a very smooth, snake-like appearance and movement (notice the short legs):

Lakes Mary, Mormon, and Ashurst

After getting back in the early morning from camping out for the juniper-field ecology project, I went out to Lake Mary, Mormon Lake, and Ashurst Lake just southeast of Flagstaff for some birding. November is typically a great month for rarer migrant waterfowl, loons, and grebes in Arizona. At Upper Lake Mary, I was rewarded with good looks at a Herring Gull and a Horned Grebe. Both of these species I had only seen once before in Arizona, so it was cool to see them again. I was able to get a photo of the Horned Grebe:

The distinct contrast between the dark cap and white cheek, peak near the back of the crest, and white tip to the bill are all good traits to help separate Horned Grebe from the similar Eared Grebe. Just below where I had the grebe were two Common Loons. I was able to digiscope shots of one bird:

By the time I got to Mormon Lake and Ashurst Lake the winds were blowing strong and the birds were hunkered down for the most part. Ashurst Lake had a Herring Gull there too, which may have been the same bird as I found earlier on Lake Mary (I think it probably got spooked by all the boaters and went over to this nearby lake). It was nice to see Mormon Lake still having water in it. With the recent drought years, it is usually dry at this time of year. I think Mormon Lake is only one of two natural lakes in Arizona. Here are some photos of that lake (in the first photo the San Francisco Peaks that Flagstaff is at the base of can be seen towering in the distance):

Junipers again

For a follow-up to our juniper project for the field ecology class, we went back out near Strawberry Crater yesterday and camped out overnight. We brought a pressure chamber device called a "pressure bomb" to measure the water potential in juniper stems that contained gymnocarpy (cones that are not fully-formed around the seeds) vs. those that did not have gymnocarpy. Basically, you put a stem in the chamber and apply compressed air to it and look through a magnifying glass at the stem until you see water seeping out of the cut. Then you see how many "bars" the meter reads to give you the negative potential water pressure. We thought that trees growing on more stressed sites with less water would be more susceptible to insect larvae causing gymnocarpy in the cones. For this test, we collected stems in the mid afternoon yesterday and pre-dawn today to measure differences in water potential (this changes in the trees at different times of the day). Our results were mixed and seem to suggest that gymnocarpy was higher on stems with more water potential. So, we are going to do some carbon tests as a follow-up later on to help figure out what's going on. It was cool to use the pressure bomb though!

 

While collecting samples of juniper twigs, we also looked inside some of the gymnocarpous cones to see if larvae were present. We did find a few that had larvae:

Again we found some cool stuff while collecting data. The area has several ancient indian sites and pottery shards were everywhere. Here are some of the various decorations/designs on the shards:

We came across another instance where a Loggerhead Shrike (a predatory songbird) had impaled a grasshopper, this time on a juniper stem, for later eating:

A Sage Thrasher singing its heart out near our campsite:

There were remains of some large mammal near our campsite too. It looked like the skeleton of maybe a pronghorn or mule deer (?). One of my group member's dogs is posing near the skeleton in the 2nd photo for a size comparison. The last photo shows that some hair was still clinging to the bone.

A shot of the juniper-grassland ecotone where we camped: