Uncategorized – Page 108

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Image adapted from Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects by Balthasar van der Ast, ca. 1630. The painting is in the collections of the National Gallery, London. The digital image is in the public domain.

Destination next: There will be no posts for a few weeks. My sisters and I are assembling in Chicagoland for a road trip. We’ll be searching out Michigan tulips, and Petoskey stones, and the perfect slice of pie. Cunning and clever salt and pepper shakers will be bought and added to the collection. There will be maragaritas, and there will be celery sticks with pimento cheese. There will be shenanigans.

Fresh posts resume mid-May.

This map of Johnson’s Wisconsin and Michigan

(ca. 1864)

is adapted from a map in the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Sitting. Thinking.

Black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), at Pioneer Park, Peoria, Arizona.

I usually find these birds to be secretive and skittish, but this night-heron seems fully adapted to his suburban home. He has learned that the people who fish the lake at Pioneer Park will feed him small fry catfish or trout, just for the pleasure of his company. No one seems to know exactly what he is. When I was taking this photo a woman asked if it was a penguin

― an understandable mistake given his erect posture and coloration, though the fact we are in Arizona should be a bit of a clue.

Male night-herons display their distinctive long white head feathers during mating season.

Untitled.

Garden Butte saguaros.

Untitled.

The chief lizard.

Desert spiny lizard (Sceloporus magister), at the Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, Arizona.

Please click photo for an enlarged view.

Cardón.

Pachycereus pringlei in bloom at the the Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, Arizona.

Fishhook barrel cactus blossoms (Ferocactus wislizeni) with a sprinkling of spent palo verde flowers, at the Desert Botanical Garde, Phoenix, Arizona.

Please click photo for an enlarged view.