A Bird in Hand...

Today I held a hummingbird. This is a young black-chinned male hummingbird, or maybe it was a female, I forget. I do know that I'd just watched it and about 2 dozen others get banded.


Tomorrow is a morning of visiting bird feeders in various canyons, and then it's my travel home day. I expect to get back around 1 a.m. (knock on wood given my recent airport lack of luck).

And, a correction to yesterday's post. The hummingbird in the picture actually is a broad-billed (though that makes a boring title compared to a magnificent). It's one of only two hummingbirds in the U.S. with red bills; the other is the rare to the U.S. violet-crowned, which I also saw today...and got a very blurry photo. You can just barely see it's namesake purple head.

Magnificent!

It's 10:45 here and we've only just gotten back to the hotel for the night (we were out watching BATS of all things), so I'll just quickly post my favorite photo from today.

This is a magnificent hummingbird, one of the larger species (as in, weighs more than 1 oz., and is only found in the Southwest). Beautiful birds; aptly named.

Though the quality isn't what I would have hoped -- the sunlight I needed to light up his feathers also burned out the top of his head -- I did "stalk" this feeder for a good 20 minutes trying to get a good shot of him as he whizzed from feeder to feeder. I'm just pleased his green and blue feathers showed up (he also has purple on top of his head that you can't see).

Saguaro Oasis

First, a footnote to Monday night's post. As it turns out, those aren't ordinary TREES covering the hills I saw from the air. They were most likely shrubby palo verdes and lots of saguaro cactus. Apparently, the Tuscon Range (one of four mountain ranges that surround the city) is known for its saguaro forests. It's so cool to see those strikingly columnar cacti sticking up along the surface of the hills and along the top ridge.



My two best bird photos of the day were a perched female hummingbird (not sure what species), and then a white-winged dove on a nest. Saw a few hummingbird species for the first time, including a Costa's that eluded my camera...all my pictures turned out blurry. It was fun to see the western travelers ooh and ahh at the cardinals we saw.





It was hot, but not as bad as I imagined it could be. And now we're heading south into higher elevations so it'll only get cooler. Today, we're off to Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita mountains. Then we drive to Nogales, a town on the Mexican-US border, for the night.

Village of the dark spring at the foot of the mountain

Arrived in Tucson today. It is so much more beautiful than I expected. I'm not exactly sure what I thought it would be like, but certainly my expectations involved HOT, DRY and DESERT. Not MOUNTAINS, TREES and BREEZY.

Flying into Tucson, I could see clusters of houses cuddled near huge wooded hills that often cropped up one at a time, not in long ridges. From the air, the hills (mountains?) were tan and green, giving them a different look than the packed forests on mountains elsewhere. I felt like we were flying over a huge topographic map because the shape of the earth below was just so apparent.

So, I was already liking this place when I stepped out of the airport.

As I waited for my ride to the hotel, the warm sun and light breeze combined in that blissful summer sort of way, and I could see the low-slung mountains off in the distance, surrounding the city. And I thought, I can see why people live here.

Now, tomorrow will be my first true test of this "dry heat" thing, but today it was in the 90s, and I can say that, in the shade, it certainly felt more like the 70s. And the thing about Tucscon is that there is shade everywhere -- mostly manmade roofs, as the palm trees offer little protection (the ones in the hotel courtyard have these fruit that look like clusters of huge green grapes. Must take picture later to find out what they are). Tomorrow, we'll be out in the sun, visiting the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

I'm off to eat dinner, so I'll sign off with this other thought. Note to self: next time visiting Arizona, bring own chocolate. After my initial disappointment that the outdoor vending machine had only chips and fruity snacks, I realized that it's likely just too hot here to stock chocolate without air-conditioning. And so my chocolate craving continues.

Don't Forget the Jelly

Ever wonder if life would be easier as a jellyfish? Just float and glow. Float and glow. Simple.

Off to Arizona tomorrow. Tucson area. Work-related trip that I hope to be able to post pictures of along the way, but we'll see how well I figure out the technology I'm toting (borrowed laptop from work).

The above photo is from our trip to the Discovery World aquarium last week. Very cool aquarium.

Monarchs - The Last Chapter

I'm tardy in posting this final update. It has been almost a week since the last of our monarchs flew the coop.

Friday, Aug. 1
Came home from work to find that our two "lost" caterpillars were now a pair of monarch butterflies. They stuck to their place by the window, perhaps looking forlornly at the flowers on the other side of the glass. I coaxed them out by getting them to perch on my finger. The kids watched, but weren't interested in touching them.


Saturday, Aug. 2
I knew the reappearance of those two lost ones meant the other two from that first batch would soon be stage their own coming out ceremony. And sure enough, the next morning, both chrysalises had become clear -- the telltale sign that the butterflies are soon to emerge. When I snapped this first photo, it was 8:15. When I checked again at 9:35, the butterflies had already hatched and were mostly dry. Here I discovered something else I didn't know. I knew that the butterflies have to dry for a bit before they can fly, but I didn't realize how wet they actually are when they come out of the chrysalis. They literally drip-dried and left a pool of orange-tinged liquid beneath their perches.


Monday, Aug. 4
That evening, I noticed I could see the beginnings of the monarchs' wing markings through the chrysalises, and knew that the second batch was going to hatch soon. I made a final attempt to reattach the two chrysalises that had accidentally gotten knocked down from their spot on the lid, but the glue just wasn't drying fast enough to hold them in place, so I left them on the floor of the container, put in a couple sticks for the butterflies to crawl onto and hoped for the best.


Tuesday, Aug. 5
Admittedly, we slept in the next morning, so it was 8:30 before I got out to the porch to check the butterflies but I was surprised to find not chrysalises but butterflies in the container. I'd really hoped to be able to see one emerge, but they were too quick for me!
Since we were heading for the beach, I decided to wait until we got home to let them out -- that way I knew they'd be dry. I noticed that one of the butterflies that hatched on the ground was fine, but the other one was having trouble getting onto a perch to dry. This was due in no small part of one of the other monarchs that kept flying at it and knocking it down. Two males perhaps and a territory issue? I'll have to consult the butterfly expert at work about it sometime.

When we got back and were set to release them, I took the kids out onto the porch to help. The first two butterflies took off almost as soon as I opened the container. But the last two were sticking around. And Owen even agreed to hold one. He has been a little shy about it ever since one of the swallowtails from last month kinda flew at his face unexpectedly.


First was little Bent Wing, which seemed to be having some trouble flying, but I hoped some air and nectar would do it good.


And then there was this guy, which stuck around for quite awhile. I placed it on a globe thistle in our front yard and snapped a few photos. Then Owen wanted to move it to "his" zinnias in the back yard, and the butterfly surprisingly obliged. It definitely preferred the zinnia and its proboscis came out to feed as soon as I placed it on the flower. I had to snap a lot of photos to get a few with its wings open, because it would only pulse them open for a second at a time. And if my memory serves me, this one is a male monarch, recognizable by the two black dots on the lower wings, which the females don't have.




So that brings the summer of the butterflies to a close. All told, we released eight monarchs and four black swallowtails, which is not that many compared to the "Butterfly Lady" down the street who gave me those first swallowtail eggs, but it was plenty for this working mom. The whole life cycle took place in just under 4 weeks, from July 10 when we saw the monarch laying the eggs, to Aug. 5 when the adult butterflies emerged. Twelve of those days were spent as caterpillars and 8 in the chrysalis.

It definitely was a fun learning experience, for the kids AND me.

Sand, Sun and Goats

The last two days have been fun...in the sun.

Yesterday was the beach. They've really cleaned it up this year. The sand was nice, the water warmish and no fish stink :) AND great tacos at the snack shop. A hit all around.


Today we went to State Fair. Nora was old enough for some of the rides (though we had to ignore the height requirements since she still was 2 inches too short...no one was checking), so they had fun doing that together. Owen just loves doing stuff with his little sister. He really didn't want to go on any rides without her.


A new feature this year: Petting Zoo! I was apprehensive at first, but they both liked attempting to feed the goats (and camels!). Some of those poor goats just wanted to rest, though. They'd had their fill of dry pellet food. A couple of them did try to sample the straps on our stroller. My favorite part were the three or four turtles that were lurking around.




And since this IS vacation, we've also done our fair share of just plain layin' around...(Or is it lying? Heck, I don't care. I'm not at work, don't need to be grammatical)

Marquee Day

Two posts in one day?! I definitely must be on vacation.

We went to see Wall-E today. All four of us. It was Nora's first movie, and the first time in 5 years that Jon and I have been in a movie theater together without having someone back at the house to watch the kids. I feel like a whole new world has (re)opened up to us. They'll be kid movies, yes, but to have the freedom to spur-of-the-moment go see a movie again...it's something I think we've BOTH been looking forward to for awhile now. I'll even put up with an occasional Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Happy birthday, honey!

Take Me Home

It was only a month or so ago that I first heard the term "staycation." It was in the editor's letter of some women's interest pub -- forget which one -- talking about how more people are spending their vacation time in or near their hometowns instead of spending the $$$ to travel.

So now we're part of a trend, complete with a made-up, conglomerative moniker.

Instead of spending the money to rent some condo near a lake for our vacation this week, we decided to just stay home. We'll do some water activities (including taking our kids to Milwaukee's Bradford Beach for the first time), go to State Fair, check out the local water park that only costs $8, take naps, go out for dinners, maybe catch a movie...and best of all, NO PACKING. Which, of course, is probably the best part for me.

Besides, though Owen loved our trip last year to the Waterpark Capital of Wisconsin, as evidenced by the photo above, he's clearly fine with smaller-scale pools.

And Nora won't know the difference.