Day: October 27, 2024

Rattlesnakes doing the Tango, a Rare Native Plant, Spring and Summer Images

If any of my few readers have wondered why it has been so long sice I posted a new entry to this blog…  It has been a hard summer and a harder fall for my family, culminating in the loss of a beloved family member. Here in the Middle San Pedro Valley, bastion of the state’s second-largest expanse of wild, undeveloped land, (Grand Canyon National Park is the largest), a huge power transmission project, (spearheaded by a mega-company called the Pattern Energy Group LP),  is busy ripping a tremendous gash across the length of the valley. A deep, wide, and ugly scar has been bulldozed for dozens of miles, traversing an irreplaceable tract of de-facto wilderness. Yes, all of us depend upon electrical power, but at what cost?

In other news, the political affairs of my country have degraded into a nightmare of national divisiveness, hatred, religious self-righteousness, and utterly stunning voter gullibility. How can any nation, much less ours, allow a lifetime criminal with multiple felony convictions to run for the presidency? How can our country allow those who preside over the highest court in the land to be hand-picked by only one person?

All of these things have combined to leave me in a pervasive state of depression and more than a few near-sleepless nights. When depression rears its ugly head, it  becomes very difficult to get into the mood required to write. But I am determined to try…

The past summer monsoon season brought the usual fickle rains to the valley; some locations received considerably more – or less – rainfall than others only a few miles apart. Here at our place, we recorded 7.94 inches of rain, substantially less than usual. Our bosque never greened up with a lush understory of Amaranthus palmeri as it has done so many times in past summers. The irreverent common name of this native plant is “Palmer’s pigweed.” It plays a very important, multi-faceted role in the local ecology. Despite the brown, withered understory and general lack of moisture, the natural world has gifted us with some beautiful sights and special events this year, including the appearance of a “life bird” at our water dishes, (a dickcissel), and the dazzling sight of a long-tailed comet blazing across the twilight sky.

A rare, perennially-flowing reach of the San Pedro River literally glows with the intense fecundity of summer life. I captured this photograph in late June, when plant growth in the riverbottom explodes in a riot of lush greenery teeming with insect life, bird song, and much more. Very high daytime temperatures combine with high localized humidity to make the river and its summer forest feel almost tropical.

Gould’s turkeys are part of a group of varied creatures native to the Sierra Madrean Ecoregion that reach the northern tip of their ranges here in southeastern Arizona. In a word, they are special. This spring, a hen began frequenting our bosque on a daily basis. One day, she appeared with a clutch of nine freshly-hatched chicks in tow. During the next couple of weeks, the nine young turkeys had been reduced to these survivors that the mother bird managed to rear successfully for the remainder of the spring and summer.

Our resident pair of Chihuahuan ravens, Mike and Mavis, did it again this year! This time, they hatched a clutch of four chicks in a nest built in a velvet mesquite tree located just 125 feet from my office window. Here is the entire family in early summer – four extremely inquisitive young ravens being protected and taught by two devoted parents. As always, we are honored to share habitat with them.

Our hit-or-miss summer rains fell with greater abundance on parts of the lower valley, resulting in a landscape adorned with lush plant growth. In late August, a wonderful friend and fellow naturalist, Daniel Baker, asked if I could accompany him on a morning walk into that area – he wanted to show me something extraordinary he had discovered. Daniel had found some rare plants that shared something in common with Gould’s turkeys –  their natural range extended beyond Mexico just far enough to allow them to thrive here in Cochise County.

I will never forget that morning, for the plants that Daniel shared with me were fascinating, captivating, and rare. Growing as vines, Mexican passionflowers – Passiflora mexicana – were in bloom, exuding the penetrating essence of napthalene. As our walk ended that morning, I kept wondering what species of insects those gorgeous flowers could be courting with the essence of mothballs!

Certain events in our lives weld themselves into our permanent memories. As a lifelong naturalist, I tend to recall with exceptional vividness and in intricate detail many things I have seen in the natural world that are rare and therefore beyond forgetting. My first wild wolverine, mating grizzly bears, the first lynx, a hawk owl in the contiguous USA, a glittering male trogon perched in an oak tree, an avalanche roaring downslope to flatten a mature forest, a pack of Montana wolves teaching their pups how to hunt voles in tall meadow grass.

I have been very fortunate to witness nature in ways that most people will never know, but this September brought an event that I thought I would not ever be lucky enough to see – rattlesnakes engaged in “combat.” What’s more is that I spotted the two snakes rising up from the floor of yon bosque from my desk window! The rattlesnakes were forming a gentle “S” curve side-by-side as they reared upward, their white scutes facing me at a distance of about 80 feet. Although I had never seen such behavior, I knew immediately what was happening. Excitedly, I rushed outside with the only camera I own these days, the cheap one built into my “smart” phone.

       A number of different rattlesnake species have been documented to exhibit this seldom-seen behavior. Only male rattlesnakes do this. To this day, I don’t know of anyone who has proven definitively what is going on when they “fight” like this. A prevalent theory holds that such behavior may be a contest for male dominance during breeding season. That seems to make good sense. However, I observed these two western diamondbacks at close range for several hours as they “fought;” I looked very carefully during the whole event for any nearby female without any success. Perhaps one or both of the male snakes had been scent-trailing a local female when they met one another. If you have ever wondered how snakes find one another in order to mate, that is how it is done – olfactorily, via exquisitely sensitive forked tongues and very capable vomeronasal organs.

This is what I saw on a warm, late September afternoon from my window – a pair of adult male western diamondbacks rising upward, their visually-striking white belly scutes contrasting vividly with their surroundings.

The snakes lifted upward in tandem to amazing heights again and again and again.

As they neared the limit of their upward postures, one of the snakes would attempt to cross its body over its opponent. If that move succeeded, the snake would violently throw the other one to the ground with a quick, powerful twist of its body.

When one snake slammed the other to the ground with enough force, one – or occasionally both of them – would land upside down on their backs. The struggle between the two rattlesnakes continued for hours without abatement, until dusk. As it got too dark to photograph them, I went indoors. I don’t know how much longer the snakes battled, but they must have been utterly exhausted when I left them. What a show this was!

This Gila monster appeared on a hot, late August afternoon, seeking shade behind my mini-split AC unit. Note the large head, a characteristic of adult male Gila monsters. This one measured 18 1/2 inches in length. They are always welcome here, as are all native reptiles, including the rattlesnakes that do us a great service by keeping a very destructive mouse population in check. (Certain local species of mice do major, costly damage to the electrical systems of vehicles, chewing the wiring as if it were gourmet mouse candy.)