Desert Babies!!! ©

As one looks out into the still vast Sonoran desert, anytime of the year, it is a beautiful sight.  But when you see movement from the corner of your eye in the still of the desert your radar goes up and you set your sights high on what will come out of the srub!  Most times it is just a bunny, a family of quail or a lizard.  Sometimes it is a snake slithering over the hot desert floor or maybe a roadrunner in search of that snake.    

No matter if the desert is green and silent or brown and dead looking, from the heat of the harsh summer, the desert is never really dead!  It is alive with different vegetations, bugs and creepy crawlers, many varities of birds along with the baby quails, and all the other off spring of the desert mammals.


The baby Bob Cat showed up first and maybe you wouldn't  have ever  know he was around if you weren't paying attention.  But for the desert lovers and exploreers clues can start appearing--obvious things like the scat that is left on the rocks of the water feature leading into the pool.  Less obvious clues like landscapeing gravel all over the flagstone patios and cactus and flowers broken and pushed aside.  And one morning you turn the corner into the backyard and there it is, a juvinale Bob Cat, using your pool for it's watering hole. Or you look again into desert or you glance down over the fence and see this beautiful little face looking up at you.  So now you are hocked--you are on the look out for that Bob again!

But the next time you look into the desert hoping for another sighting of Bob you see something different and can't hardly believe your eyes.  After all the desert is usually empty but you spot a skinny little four leggedtiny critter that can hardly hold itselve up on all fours and you run for a camera and set you sights and lense on three more little critters looking back at you!

(Copyright 2013)

An Unexpected Visitor from the Land of Bob! ©

This guy has been using the pool as a watering hole!

He watched me for a while but must have become bored and walked away slowly.

(Copyright 2013)

Bird Alert! ©

This is not a baby Cardinal--it is a Pyrrhuloxia or Desert Cardinal.  

The desert cardinal is a common thorn scrub songbird of the America Southwest.  The songs vary and  are repeated, such as "cheeeer-a-dote, cheeer-a-dote-dote," "purdy, purdy, purdy...whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit," "what-cheer, what-cheer, wheet, wheet, wheet" and "cheer, cheer, cheer, what, what, what, what..."  Pairs use the chirping noises to locate each other, or to warn each other of approaching danger.

Not as showy as the northern cardinal, the male desert cardinal is a gray bird with a red mask, a short stout yellow bill, with a red crest and red wings.

(Copyright 2013)