This is now near the top of my list of Things I Don’t Want to Find Under My Car, ahead of Radiator Leak and Flat Tire—but still much lower on the list than Deceased Pedestrian.
He was under a neighboring car in the San Pedro House parking lot at the end of my walk today. Even rattlesnakes deserve some shade.
If anyone can help with ID I’ll be grateful.
The most hated bird: brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) at San Pedro House.
From the Cornell Lab:
The brown-headed Cowbird is a stocky blackbird with a fascinating approach to raising its young. Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks. … Some birds, such as the yellow warbler, can recognize cowbird eggs but are too small to get the eggs out of their nests. Instead, they build a new nest over the top of the old one and hope cowbirds don’t come back. Some larger species puncture or grab cowbird eggs and throw them out of the nest. But the majority of hosts don’t recognize cowbird eggs at all. …
Cowbird eggs hatch faster than other species eggs, giving cowbird nestlings a head start in getting food from the parents. Young cowbirds also develop at a faster pace than their nest mates, and they sometimes toss out eggs and young nestlings or smother them in the bottom of the nest.
Untitled.
Red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) at Kingfisher Pond, San Pedro House. This first-year male’s shoulder patches are just beginning to show color.
First-year male red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) at Kingfisher Pond.
This bird was feeding on tent caterpillars in the willow thicket. I love his cocked head and expression here, as though seeing the ladybird beetle on the twig and thinking, “Perhaps something crunchy for dessert.”
Yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia). Truth in advertising at San Pedro House.
Desert evening primrose (Oenothera primiveris) at San Pedro House, Cochise County, Arizona.
Wilson’s warbler (Cardellina pusilla), at San Pedro House.
This is quickly becoming my favorite member of the warbler tribe, because they spend most of their time at eye level where they can be seen and appreciated.
Also, if little yellow birds wore obvious and ill-conceived toupees this is what they would look like.
Voyage Autour de ma Chambre.
Please click any photo in the set for an enlarged view.
Journey Round my Room is the title of an 18th Century satirical work by Xavier de Maistre, who wrote a description of the mundane objects in his room in the form of the popular travelogues of the day. He was confined while under house arrest for participating in a duel.
Fendler’s desert dandelion (Malacothrix fendleri), at San Pedro House.
Dithyramb 