Scrub Notes, Bird Notes: Tucson, June 2024

I. Intro: getting there
II. Other trip expenses, so far:
III. Bird notes
IV. We did what we did when we did it
V. Firmament
VI. Scrub notes
VII. Brittlebush and the voice of a bird
VIII. A room in the desert
IX. Birdsong notes
X. It left when we rained

I. Intro: getting there

Find me at the fairgrounds, it’s as good a place as any, in whichever county you may seat. Quilt-mart. Family-style catfish. Steel, brown, breaking. Stave, stave off. Hot week, water down, the sun is stronger than we think. Strong corn, striped grass, green green.

Cosign for sonic coins. This is where we got run off the road last time, remember? Walk the river, find the seam, undo the enigma. Tapes in storage, do they still speak? The smell of gold I know only from a dream. Rusted rocking horse moving oil along the line. Flat Kansas, open air. Raw emotion, sudden ocean, pay dirt mining away.

Brown field, blue sky. White lace of Anne and cirrus. Old billboard palimpsestic, collage of what remains. Ore body. Press, release. Tips like ants waltzing in the jungle.

Cattle egret, road elk. We are cousins in madness only. You’ve figured it out. Now you have no purple and it’s risky. Four way stop, the other three aren’t looking. Pedestrian, blinking light, thirty seconds, slow it down, make it right.

II. Other trip expenses, so far

1. I don’t remember time being like this
2. What there was was trucks
3. They said we don’t have standing
4. This is just a commercial
5. There’s some sort of problem at the gate
6. Other trip expenses, so far:
7. I read all day, it was magical
8. She offered him the chicken salad
9. Bell’s Vireo, Costa’s Hummingbird
10. Garbage citizen moth
11. That stuff is gonna take some work
12. This is the first time he looks old to me
13. You think they really had turnip trucks?
14. If you were a bird, you could just flap your wings
15. He’ll get into any waste can you leave out
16. Then there was another yard full of goats
17. Looks like federal land to me
18. Have your solar panels, but we want a park
19. I bought shares even after the helicopter deal
20. OMG, an ice machine that actually works
21. Imagine putting up all that fencing
22. He said he was so mad he could eat dirt
23. She let him take her old ones from work
24. We’re still waiting to find out

III. Bird Notes

Verdin — quiet chits and chirps

Lesser Goldfinch, new to me

Roadrunner (sighting)

Bell’s Vireo — a quick, garbled repetition ; three steps forward, two steps back, hokedy-pokedy ; “And what then should we do about it?” ; scratchy, catbird-like, mewsy ; nasal-y, like the gray gnatcatcher call ; the call mixed in with the song

Gila Woodpecker — sounds like a red-bellied woodpecker’s call; loud, monotone

Gambel’s Quail — heavy flier ; flustered flapping for flight ; they scream like a cat stuck in a tree (but they can get down)

IV. We did what we did when we did it

1. The quail uncovered quite a scandal
2. Technically, I wasn’t being technical
3. Occasionally, I get up and walk around
4. Is it alright if I play piano?
5. That was the calamari I needed
6. I don’t know, I’ve never cleaned a pool before
7. Yeah, drink a bunch of whiskey before swimming
8. I could be bamboozled by scenery
9. Wear different footwear that don’t all sound the same
10. We did what we did when we did it
11. Blue sky, full of haze
12. Reflection in a cup
13. Vireos en masse at the bird bath right now
14. Within two days walk of saguaro
15. Coated with resin
16. In some ways, I’m healed
17. What does news matter to the wind?
18. They were born before numbers

V. Firmament

firmament — the heavens or the sky, especially when regarded as a tangible thing

The sky, the heavens, the blue, the wide blue yonder, the azure, the skies, the vault, the empyrean, the welkin

Make the welkin ring

Make a very loud sound

VI. Scrub notes

Penstemon, chiltepines, brittlebrush. Organ pipe.

Wait, what!? (The call of the sharp-tongued Curve-billed Thrasher unfurls, then cracks like a whip)

Verdin — burst of garble, even more of a garbled outburst than Bell’s Vireo

We are in the wild turkey‘s range, that was not an escapee, they are around

midden — a dunghill or refuse heap; an ancient packrat midden stuck back in the rocks

Creosote, bursage, juniper.

White-winged Dove

The great indifferencing

Creosote, greasewood, hediondilla (“little stinker”). Sprigs of twigs and leaves boiled as a tea. In the case of a snake, spider, or scorpion bite, creosote leaves were chewed and placed on the swelling.” They are evergreen.

“The foliage emits a strong aroma, especially after rains. This fragrance is identified as “the smell of rain” wherever creosote bush grows. Though pungent, it is not repulsive like the wood preservative called creosote oil, a petroleum product unrelated to the creosote bush.” —from A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert (link)

“It can live for at least two years with no rain.” —Ibid

“Desert peoples used its sticky secretions as a multipurpose sealant and glue.” —Ibid

Bell’s Vireo, scratching records

Albert’s Towhee, curious about the pool

All of them love the water

VII. Brittlebush and the voice of a bird

Chewed some brittlebush stem. Shall I make a tea from the leaves? Why not?

I gathered some of the greener leaves (thank you, plant) and boiled water. Steeped the leaves in the water…

It’s a little minty. Like chamomile, let’s say. A bit of a woody stem flavor. Color of green tea, or of mint tea. It’s supposed to help with hay fever.

Phainopepla — black bird with a red eye, seen at bird bath; size of a cardinal; looks like a grackle except for that red eye; shiny but not iridescent

Quail call and answer; something meow-y and foamy, like styrofoam being rubbed or pinched; a feigned cry for help; rises and falls, one note

All that evaporation. I’m struggling. It could be the heat

Vermillion Flycatcher drops down to skim something from the surface of the pool; perches bright red on a small mesquite branch hanging out above the water

Saguaros are nocturnal bloomers. What pollinates at night? What flies at night? Moths and bats

The Curve-billed Thrasher‘s song is a lush, wild, quizzical quest of fruity garble I had not previously realized it issued. Rollicking, varied, popping, bursting, peppered with one trick note after another. Like a Mockingbird or a Catbird spewing the treasured trill of its life. Kitchen sink and then some. It has the range of several birds in one. Is this a Tom & Jerry sequence, or the voice of a bird?

Cicadas here, too. Late afternoon buzzing, metallic, insect-y.

Saguaro fruit is going to fall…soon. The flowers are on top of the fruits, which are like nodules atop the green column of the cactus. Look for doves (and bats) eating the fruit before it dries out and falls to the ground…

June 24 is San Juan’s Day. Call in the rains. Drink a wine made from the fruit of the saguaro…

VIII. A room in the desert

The geographic zone known as desert scrub sits at an elevation of about 2,500 feet

The Catalina Foothills are at an elevation of 2,575 feet

This is the place for the mortar and pestle, all these desert plants

scarified — seed scarification is the process of altering the seed coat to allow quicker water absorption and improve rates of germination

Velvet mesquite, honey mesquite. Dropping more leaves

It’s a different kind of a goldfinch, the Lesser Goldfinch. Pretty song. So, wheat, pretty please, tweet, sweet, summer’s day, yup, twisky-dee, ope. Year-round in Tucson.

The day of longest light

I was sweeping but the wind undid my work in less time than it took me to sweep only some of the patio tile. In much less time than it has taken me to skim the surface of the pool. Mainly clearing mesquite leaflets and their tiny yellow nibs. Size of a baby’s fingernail, if they’re even born with fingernails. I’ve never had one and I don’t remember back that far. The leaflets were almost always yellow last week, when we got here, when I started skimming the surface of the pool using the pole-net. Now I am seeing more green leaves or larger parts of leaflets, whole clusters, the trees shedding more of their spring growth as the hot dry bite of a Tucson June clamps down one day harder. Today, it’s at least one hundred degrees, not a cloud in the sky, the sun beastly. The burgeoning breeze like a double edged sword, offering distraction from the heat but causing tiny leaves to havoc the scene I futilely try to tidy.

It’s that time of day when the towhee runs along the edge of the ledge around the pool, looking like it is thinking about diving in, or wondering if it can bend far enough down to take a sip without falling all the way in. The thunderous trailer associated with construction across the street has rumbled its way back out of here, 4:30 pm. It arrived this morning at 6:30 or so. I do not know what it brought, I do not know what it wrought, I do not know who had it bought, I do not know what it taught, I do not know that it’s for naught, I do not know what it sought, I do not know if it bore a yacht, all I know is that’s all I’ve got.

IX. Birdsong notes

Bewick’s Wren. Very pretty, not long. Like a thrush or the end of a Song Sparrow’s song, similar to that of the Eastern Towhee but less insistent. Understated, a quiet fluty song, with some variation along the basic structure.

This morning we saw a Hooded Oriole eating opened/ripened saguaro fruit, up the road here in the Club, uphill of here, on Javelina Drive. This oriole is an awesome yellow and black bird with a long tail. Sleek, stately, black-throated, with black wings and tail but with a yellow back, head, and breast. Pointy black beak. Overall size is slightly less than that of a Blue Jay.

The saguaro fruit might ripen earlier at altitude. You are starting to work your way up the mountain back there, where we were when we saw it. In his blog called “Foothills Clusters Wildlife,” Dan Weisz writes that the Hooded Oriole’s song is “distinctive but variable. Their songs have been described as a ‘scratchy, abrupt warble interspersed with catlike cries, chatters and sometimes mimicked parts of the songs of other species.'”

It’s Wednesday. We’ll leave Sunday. I’m at a point where I don’t really want to leave but even if we leave on Sunday, we’ll still be gone for one more week: Sunday Albuquerque, Monday Greensburg, Tuesday Farm/Rolla. Wednesday home. Thoughts of home, house. Coffee. And now I’m sweating.

We hiked a while this morning. An hour and twenty minutes, with frequent stops so I could run the birdsong-sensing app. Footsteps are loud enough to interfere with its ability to hear bird sounds. Some songs are faint or just too far away for the app to identify them. So I couldn’t just run the app as we stepped among the rocks. Finger Rocks Trail, Catalina Foothills, Arizona, USA, Sonoran Desert, North America, Earth, this solar system, Milky Way Galaxy, whatever name we have for this Universe, the Big Bang, life before life, the chicken and the egg, myfirstlife.existence

The app identified three birds I had not seen or heard before. One was the Black-throated Sparrow. Sounded similar to a Song Sparrow. Lighter, higher, a little quicker, flutier. I didn’t get a good look at any of the two or three I recorded singing. This was desert scrub we were in. Jojoba and saguaro. Once we decided to turn around we were in a shaded spot and the air was just a touch cool. Mesquite offered some shade but the sides tops/walls of the mountains kept the sun off us as we meandered up and into a canyon, or something like a canyon. What is a canyon? There was a dry creek, a wash. What must be beautiful and awesome when it drains a thunderstorm.

With the help of the app, we also saw or heard a Rufous-capped Sparrow and a Brown-crested Flycatcher. The flycatcher sounded similar to the Great-Crested Flycatcher. It also looked like a flycatcher, but otherwise nothing stood out. Not like that Western Kingbird and its golden breast back in Beaver, Oklahoma on the drive out here. Kingbirds are a type of flycatcher. The Brown-Crested made that robin-like sound. If a frog were huffing it might sound this way. It’s a gurgle. A gurgled, brief warble.

The Rufous-capped Sparrow was off at a distance so I never saw it but I picked it up on two distinct recordings. It sounded a lot like the Bewick’s Wren from yesterday, last evening. A quiet, pretty, fluty sparrow-ish song. Its song was longer than Bewick Wren’s. It was higher up in the canyon, closer to the canyon walls. The app suggests that it is usually heard before it is seen.

This all took place from 6:35 to 8:05. It wasn’t busy on the trail. Judging from the number of cars in the parking lot that serves this trail and one other trail, most of the other people parked there must have gone down the other trail, Pontatoc. Which someone said might lead to some old mines.

There were also plenty of Verdin on the trail. A bird dressed in brown, gray, and yellow. I saw one pretty close up. The Verdin is a small bird, found swinging in mesquite branches. It has a chirpy, cricket-like call. The app calls it, “A tiny unique songbird with a sharply pointed bill. Mostly plain gray with a yellow head. Small rufous patch on shoulders is sometimes visible.” That patch was visible today. The Verdin “forages solely or in pairs in scrubby habitats, especially mesquite, feeding on insects.”

There are plenty of bugs around here. Ants, flies, spiders, grasshoppers, you name it.

Among other species we saw or heard along the trail were a Crow, Cactus Wrens, and Gila Woodpeckers. The Gilas were active and vociferous, perched just along the top rim of a saguaro crown to feed on the now-opening fruit. We went on the hike hoping to see another Hooded Oriole. We figured if the fruit on the saguaros sitting at a slightly higher elevation is what was currently ripe, it would be those saguaros attracting the widest range of birds. Toward the end of the hike, when we were just about back down to the road, we did see a Hooded Oriole flying between saguaros. It wasn’t a great view but the bird is an unmistakable yellow and black.

There were also a bunch of Gambel’s Quail, including some baby quail, small ones. Adult quail elsewhere were vocal with their strange bemoaning chortle. Early on we caught the sound and sight of a Pyrrhuloxia, a reddish bird that looks a lot like a female Northern Cardinal with a wild, dweeby mohawk. There were also Northern Cardinals around.

X. It left when we rained

We’re trying to turn into rain, fall to the ground. We’re not looking to be picked up before we get there, we don’t want to hail.

Rain. Rain! Real rain. Real, actual rainfall. Rainbreak. Rainwalk.

The mesquite tree turned into a dripping, aerial fountain. Rain and shine, same time.

It didn’t rain long but it did rain a little, and for us that will have to do. It is June in Tucson and while clouds threaten, and though a little rain might fall, the real rains won’t be here for a little while yet, and we will miss them.

Postscript. Yes. We left on a Sunday. The next day, it rained. The washes ran wet, the ocotillo wore new leaves, and Tucson’s second spring began to the tune of many happy birds.