¡Viva Pink Floyd!

Courtesy of our friend and fellow Pink Floyd fan Eduardo Gomez, mariachis (and I use that term generically since they're not all playing traditional instruments) rock the house at Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada, south of San Diego in Baja California Norte:



And they do Credence, too!

Ah, if we could find such a band in Sonora, what a fantastic cultural addition that would be to our birding tours....

--SW

Halloween memories

I promised to post a few photos from this year's Halloween celebration in Bisbee, and here they are.

It was quite a party. Brewery Gulch was the place to be, with a street dance benefit for a local charity in front of the Copper Queen Hotel, raucous festivities at St. Elmo's and the Stock Exchange Bar, and bizarre apparitions crowding the sidewalks.

Tom's costume got a few puzzled reactions, but most of the locals caught on right away ("Look at the horny toad!"). There were lots of compliments, particularly on his hand-crafted mask, but the best reaction of the night was from a woman who had done research on Flat-tailed Horned Lizards in California.The immobility of a mask is a challenge to character development, so I spiced things up with crouching posture, slinking walk, exaggerated head and hand movements, and eerie silence calculated to weird people out. The reactions were an interesting mix. Men seemed particularly uncomfortable with not knowing the gender of the person inside the costume, but a couple of women were thoroughly charmed by the froggie (a tipsy nerd girl even planted a smooch on my big green snout). The most disturbing comment was from a twenty-something guy who shouted, "Hey! What are you? I've never seen you in no movie!" I just gave my head a quizzical twist and gestured cryptically with my long red sleeves before slinking on up the street.

Late in the evening we ran into friends Liz and Jim. Liz made a great "Thriller" zombie, so it was a pity that the only Michael Jackson the street dance DJ played was "Billie Jean." Jim always manages to come up with a really creepy concept; this year his all-black ensemble with long coat. bowler hat, and face-concealing veil accented with a bone-pale sinuous walking stick brought to mind both Rene Magritte and the shadowy back streets of New Orleans.


The flip side of Jim's persona, hidden beneath a white lace-trimmed shroud, was leading the drum circle at Goar Park; Tom joined in on pickle bucket.


Next year, time and finances permitting, I promise that we'll do new costumes, maybe back to birds. Suggestions, anyone?

Tangy Tuna Treats

Is this the pinkest pink lemonade you've ever seen? That hot color is all natural, courtesy of a couple of teaspoons of juice from tunas, the fruits of a native prickly pear cactus.

My paternal grandmother made jams, jellies, and preserves from such wild Texas fruits as prickly pears, mustang grapes (Vitis mustangensis), algerita berries (Mahonia haematocarpa), and wild plums. Lacking the forethought to learn her recipes before she died, I was forced to develop my own prickly pear protocol by trial and error.

I got off to a rocky start with the fruits of Opuntia phaeacantha, which are only red on the outside; the resulting jelly tasted okay but was far from the visual treat I remembered. The proper species, Opuntia engelmannii, produced a gorgeous magenta juice, but I learned the hard way that the pigment is heat sensitive. The fruits are naturally low in the pectin that produces jelly, and cooking the syrup a little longer to compensate can result in a sudden, dramatic loss of color.

Getting a product with good body and good color may take double or triple the pectin you'd add to apple or grape juice plus extra sugar, so prickly pear jelly can get a little pricey. Fortunately, prickly pear syrup is just as tasty and even more versatile. Its delicate flavor and intense color make a lovely addition to pancakes, waffles, ice cream, cheesecake, fruit salads, and even in Tequila Sunrises in place of grenadine (which usually contains artificial coloring).

Unsweetened prickly pear juice can be combined with another native American fruit for a desert twist on a traditional holiday condiment. If you have access to plump, juicy prickly pear fruits and don't mind taking a little food out of the mouths of thrashers, quail, javelinas, and even butterflies such as the Viceroy at right, collect a few and try this recipe:

Cranberry-Tuna Sauce

1 c. tuna (prickly pear fruit) juice
10-12 oz. ripe cranberries
1 c. white sugar

Harvest 5 to 10 medium to large tunas. Salad tongs are useful for removing them from the plant, as you do NOT want to get the nasty little glochids in your skin. Wash the fruits thoroughly to remove dust and as many of the glochids as possible (a vegetable brush will help, though I once used the rinse setting at a manual car wash); trimming off the round blossom scar is optional. Place in a glass or enamel pan, cover just to the tops of the fruits with water, bring to a boil, then drop the heat and simmer for 5-7 minutes or until the water is deeply colored. Allow the fruits and water to cool, then either 1) mash with a potato masher or 2) pulse in a food processor until the larger chunks disappear. Strain juice and pulp through 3-4 layers of cheesecloth, squeezing the pulp gently to extract as much of the tuna goodness as possible without letting any stray glochids through.

Open a 12-ounce bag of cranberries, rinse in cold water, and put any underripe (white) berries aside for the birds. Combine berries in a glass or enamel saucepan with 1 cup extracted tuna juice and 1 cup white sugar (if you reduce the sugar or use a substitute, you may need to add a thickening agent to get a firm gel). Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. (If necessary, use a heat diffuser or place saucepan inside a heavy skillet to avoid hot spots that can cause carmelization.) Serve hot or cold with meats or meat substitutes or just eat it all by itself when no one's looking.

Use leftover juice to flavor and color lemonade, tea, gelatin, or homemade sorbet or gelato. --SW

Happy Halloween!

Woo hoo! It's Bisbee's favorite holiday, when it's hard to tell who's in costume and who's just wearing their street clothes.

We missed celebrating Halloween last year because I was in Cape May, but we're going out tonight in a couple of our favorite costumes (right): The Horned Lizard King and Ambassador Krkktt. This photo is from these characters' inaugural year, 2001; I'll try to get a back photo of Tom's costume tonight to post as an addendum, because it rocks.

We each made our own mask in a workshop put on by a local art gallery. First we formed the basic shape in earthen clay then covered the form with plastic wrap and applied layer upon layer of cotton batting soaked in watered-down glue. After several days of drying, we painted them and added additional touches (dimensional fabric paint works great).

It's been several years since we've been that inspired, but on past Halloweens Tom's been the World's Largest Montezuma Quail (left), a Great Gray Owl, a Javelina, a gorilla tourist in Bermuda shorts and bucket hat, a musical spider (he played The Ballad of Spider John by Willis Allan Ramsey at the now defunct Quarter Moon Coffeehouse), and Tim the Enchanter (he won a costume contest with that one).

I've been a Druid priestess, green elf, and Mother Earth, but the last few years I've been bouncing back and forth between the frog alien pictured above and a Dia de los Muertos catrina, with skull makeup and a big black hat wreathed in red roses (very Dead). One year, a guy came up to me in the Stock Exchange Bar and said, "Your makeup's really realistic and I should know...I've seen a lot of skulls." (Uh, thank you kind sir?) In keeping with my costume, I abandoned my usual karaoke alter ego, Roberta Shrub, for "Güera Calavera" (roughly, "Blondie Skull").

So we're recycling costumes again this year, but maybe the spectacle of our Bisbee neighbors all decked out in their wonderfully creative finery will get us charged up for next Halloween.

P-Dogs are in da howz!

A little good news amongst the grim:

Decades after federal programs extirpated them from the grasslands of southeastern Arizona, Black-tailed Prairie Dogs have returned to their historic home with a little help from their friends in the Arizona Game & Fish Department and Bureau of Land Management.

According to the AGFD press release, 74 BTPDs captured at Ted Turner's Ladder Ranch in New Mexico were released on Las Cienegas National Conservation Area on October 7. It's ironic that the transplants came from over 200 miles away when a small BTPD town persists less than 40 miles from the release site just across the Mexican border from Coronado National Memorial (thanks to a friendly rancher), and the largest remaining colony of this species in the world is less than 150 miles away in northwestern Chihuahua (where the PD photo above was taken).

P-dogs aren't canines, of course, but rodents in the same family as fluffy-tailed feeder raiders. Their sharp alarm calls, actually a complex and adaptable language that transmits detailed information about goings-on in their community, earned them the name that, given Euro-American culinary taboos against dining on dogs, probably saved them from becoming favorite targets of hungry pioneers and greedy market hunters.

They would have been an abundant food source, too. Two hundred years ago, BTPD "towns" numbering in the thousands to millions of inhabitants were found from Texas to Montana. The intensely social nature that inspired wonder in early explorers such as Lewis and Clark (who sent a live specimen back to President Thomas Jefferson) doomed them when cattle replaced the great herds of bison, pronghorns, and elk. In the late nineteenth century, newly-minted cattle barons who saw the colonial rodents as competitors taking food out of the mouths of their stock persuaded the government to launch a campaign of extermination that persists to this day. In their heyday, the shooting and poisoning efforts resulted in mountains of dead PDs displayed as trophies.

This wanton destruction was a disaster not only for the dogs themselves but for entire grassland ecosystems. Prairie dogs are keystone species, altering their habitat in ways that benefit other animals such as Ferruginous Hawk, Mountain Plover, Burrowing Owl, Pronghorn, American Bison, the critically endangered Black-footed Ferret, Kit and Swift foxes, and over a hundred more common species. The p-dogs' range management activities include suppressing woody vegetation, cultivating tasty and nutritious forbs, recycling nutrients from their underground latrines, and providing protected nest and den sites in landscapes where shelter is normally scarce. The dogs' elaborate burrow systems also significantly enhance recharge of aquifers essential for irrigated agriculture and other human activities.

Their underdog status is just one factor that earned prairie dogs a special place in our hearts. Thirty years ago, as director of the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge in Texas, Tom (who really ought to be writing this post) launched a project that successfully introduced Black-tailed Prairie Dogs to the refuge's large bison enclosure. Actually, he tried to introduce them to a large fallow pasture adjacent to the "buffalo range," but the p-dogs had other ideas. Like characters in some prison break movie, they dug under the sunken fencing of their temporary pen, crossed the road, and made themselves at home right in the middle of the bisons' favorite grazing area. Over the next few years the dogs became a favorite attraction with the public as well as one of Tom's passions. Their behavior and ecology are complex, fascinating, and easily observed, not to mention that they're civilized creatures that don't emerge from their burrows until well after sunup or stay out past sundown.

This history with prairie dogs prompted us to attend a public meeting held several years ago by AGFD to explore the possibility of reintroducing BTPDs into southeastern Arizona. The opposition was out in full force, repeating the same kind of easily debunked myths you hear at wolf meetings. (So cows and horses break their legs in prairie dog burrows? Have you ever personally seen this happen? No? Then maybe you can tell us why the early explorers didn't report herds of bison limping across the plains?) Naturally, Tom and I stood up for PDs at that meeting, but given the controversial nature of the subject and the glacial speed at which government bureaucracies move, we didn't expect to see any meaningful progress for a decade or more. The announcement of preparations for this week's reintroduction came as a thrilling surprise, and I wish we had been able to donate a few volunteer hours to the effort.

So what do we have to look forward to as BTPDs establish themselves in their new digs? Birders will delight as Ferruginous and Red-tailed hawks and Golden Eagles cruise the colony trying to pick off unwary residents, Burrowing Owls move into abandoned burrows, and longspurs and Mountain Plovers spend the winter foraging in the town's wide open spaces. Children on school field trips will learn about the social life, ecology, and history of prairie dogs, and both residents and tourists who would never have thought to visit Las Cienegas National Conservation Area will stop in for a peek at these remarkable mammals. If left alone, the town could get big enough to support Black-footed Ferrets, perhaps even some raised right here in Arizona at the Phoenix Zoo. A few ignorant people will complain (loudly), but with positive feedback to AGFD and BLM from birders and other enlightened members of the public, these agencies may have the support they need to expand reintroduction efforts to the Sulphur Springs and San Pedro valleys.

In 1968, Audubon magazine published an article titled "Dark Days in Dog Town" about the federal poisoning program. Here's hoping that those days are over and a brighter, more rational day is dawning in our relationship with prairie dogs. --SW

Resources:

Black-tailed prairie dogs return to historical site in Arizona

The Role of Prairie Dogs as a Keystone Species: Response to Stapp

Black-footed Ferrets Return to Mexico

Wired: Rodents' Talk Isn't Just "Cheep"

Arizona Daily Star: Can we talk? Prairie dogs do

More resources

Even more resources

The good, the bad, and the bugly

Hummingbird numbers are rising. Though there seems to be plenty of natural nectar from both native and garden sources, they're hitting our feeders hard. This gorgeous Broad-billed has been one of our regulars this summer:The "monsoons" have been generous this year, cloaking southeastern Arizona in an abundance of green rarely seen in the desert. Unfortunately, some of that green consists of weedy annuals such as the pigweed (Amaranthus palmeri) that grows so fast that in a few days of inattention it's shot up to five feet and is already setting seed. It likes disturbed soil, and we've been disturbing the soil on our property pretty seriously lately in an effort to control the highly invasive Ailanthus (an epic struggle involving our cars and a tow cable as well as garden tools and herbicides). At least pigweeds are edible, though I'm not sure collecting enough seeds to make candy from is worth the time, sweat, and prickled fingers.

In between the weeds, though, our garden is blooming like crazy. The "Red Bed," a sheltered corner of the yard where we've concentrated our less desert-adapted hummingbird flowers, is pretty colorful right now, with Desert Columbine (Aquilegia desertorum), Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), and seven varieties of salvias in bloom. Here's Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips':

All four flowers in the photo above are on the same plant, which is the main attraction of this unusual "sport." The flowers are usually bicolored but may be solid red or solid white, apparently determined by temperature (individual flowers don't change color like a mood ring, though). Right now our plant has all three. It's not a huge hit with the hummers, but it's still worth having around just for this bizarre trait.

The Mountain Sage (Salvia regla, acquired from salvia maven Rich Dufrense), two varieties of Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha), and native Transpecos Morning-glories (Ipomoea cristulata) should be blooming soon, but I'm starting to lose hope of ever seeing the alien-looking flowers of the Aztec (or Jacobean) Lilies (Sprekelia formosissima) given to us by a friend. Our sunny front walk is also bordered with flowers, including two varieties of wild-type cannas (Canna sp.) and four types of lantana (grown especially for butterflies).

The rains have also given insect populations a big boost and, like the plants, not just the nice ones. The "sabertoothed gnats" (a type of black fly, apparently) are on the decline now, but a couple of weeks ago we didn't dare go out without full-body protection (the damned things act like DEET doesn't exist). We haven't found any kissing bugs in the house since I posted on them a few weeks back, but we're still getting bitten occasionally. Grasshopper populations are on the rise, too, just as our tomatoes, peppers, and squash are finally starting to set fruit. Then there's the carpenter bees that slash open the salvia flowers, ruining them for the hummingbirds and butterflies (I can't find the reference just now, but they can see red better than other bees and feed on other red flowers such as ocotillo).

But the bug bounty isn't all bad - we've also got lots of butterflies, White-lined Sphinx Moths, and occasional surprises. This week this formidable creature dropped in for some watermelon:
This is a Long-jawed Longhorn Beetle, Trachyderes mandibularis, the first we've seen in our yard. (Addendum: He can fly, even with that outlandish headgear, but it's like an elk taking wing.) The brilliant green beetle behind it is a Fig Beetle or Green June Beetle, Cotinis mutabilis.

With all the rain, our little water features aren't getting much use. I miss all the activity from the dry season, when one corner of our yard was like a popular neighborhood pub. Here are a few highlights:

Juvenile Costa's hummingbird bathing in the solar fountain

Male Bronzed Cowbird

Male Varied Bunting (a first for our yard)

Male Pyrrhuloxia

The hummingbird and butterfly action should get even better as we slide toward September, and there may be other surprises in store. Stay tuned!

--SW