Bob gave me these old photos of him taken thirty-some years ago, so I could send them up to one of the social media sites as a ‘throwback.’ In the image above, the cowboy dude on the left was actually an urban cowboy while John Travolta was still having Saturday Night Fever.
The guy in the right side of the image was acting as pilot in command of one of a fleet of aircraft at the flight school where he instructed and did charter flights. Click on the composite image to enlarge.
In the winter time we seldom see any turkey buzzards overhead, since we are on the northern boundary of their range during the colder months. I was out with the camera today taking pictures when I saw this bird flying much lower than normal.
I took a lot of pictures of the buzzard and this one was about the best of the bunch. Click on the image to enlarge.
Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) roam over most of the Americas. Excerpt from Wikipedia:
The turkey vulture (Cathartes aura), also known in some North American regions as the turkey buzzard (or just buzzard), and in some areas of the Caribbean as the John crow or carrion crow, is a vulture that is the most widespread of the New World vultures. One of three species in the genus Cathartes of the family Cathartidae, the turkey vulture ranges from southern Canada to the southernmost tip of South America. It inhabits a variety of open and semi-open areas, including subtropical forests, shrublands, pastures, and deserts.
The turkey vulture is a scavenger and feeds almost exclusively on carrion. It finds its food using its keen eyes and sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gases produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals. In flight, it uses thermals to move through the air, flapping its wings infrequently. It roosts in large community groups. Lacking a syrinx—the vocal organ of birds—its only vocalizations are grunts or low hisses. It nests in caves, hollow trees, or thickets. Each year it generally raises two chicks, which it feeds by regurgitation. It has very few natural predators. In the United States, the vulture receives legal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
As long as they keep coming, I’ll photograph and post our desert cactus flowers. This is a cholla flower I photographed a couple of days ago. Click on the image to enlarge.
Snippet from eNature.com:
Opuntia acanthocarpa – buckhorn cholla
The main trunk of this tree-like cactus is short and erect; branching open and low to ground. Branches are cylindrical; the joints light green.
Habit: native perennial shrub; succulent stems, in segments 4-20 in (10-50 cm) tall by 0.75-1.25 in (2-3 cm) diameter; new growth is gray-green to purple-green; old growth has rough, scaly, brownish black bark.
Flower: delicate, lemon yellow to copper to red to pink, 2-3 in (5-7.5 cm) wide.
We took a short road trip today out to visit a touristy little mining town about 25 miles west of town today. When we got there, we found out that the facility was closed because of a special event. It seems that they had rented their park to a “photo shoot” group and no other visitors could be admitted. Bummer.
However, they had no problem with us wandering around the nearby mostly unspoiled desert. In one area, there was a large patch of Teddy Bear Cholla cactus. I managed to get close enough to photograph some of the pale green flowers that grow on this variety of cactus. Click on the image to enlarge.
In the springtime when all the cacti bloom, there is a wonderful sequence that we have become accustomed to. First, the beavertail cactus blossoms appear, followed shortly by the hedgehog cacti. As those begin to fade away, they are replaced by cholla and then prickly pear flowers.
The photo at the right is of a cactus a few steps west of our yard along the roadway that leads to our neighbor’s house up the hill. This cactus is more mature than those in our yard which do not seem to be developing flower buds this spring, except for one lawyer’s tongue variety of prickly pear near the west side of the property close to the fence.
I will continue post photos of cactus flowers as long as they bloom in the spring, summer and fall. The giant saguaro flowers are going to open in a few weeks and we are really looking forward to that.
The local quail seem to make themselves at home on the courtyard wall which spans somewhere around 50 feet long as it curves around the front of the house. Bob took this shot of one of the males as it walked along the wall yesterday. Click on the image to enlarge.
Well, the quail will have another 300 feet of walls to commandeer: two more out front and two out behind the RV drive totaling around 350 feet altogether including the courtyard.
The new walls are in place already, but not painted and they won’t be until after the RV drive concrete gets poured possibly this week. However, we observe that the quail are already testing out their new “quailing walls.”
