Well, that’s what it looks like to me, but goodness knows. A quick Google search suggests either brittlebush or a dune sunflower, which I’m sort of pulling for, since it’s a member of the aster/daisy/composite family. However, another walk with a little more attention paid to the plant hosting these flowers makes it clear it’s brittlebush.
In any case, this is a good reminder that the desert is more than birds, trees, and signs. It’s flowers too.
Is it just me, or is there a slightly cross-eyed platypus lurking in my local grocery store’s restroom? A restroom conveniently placed at a critical point on my walks.
I have both celebrated this lovely bird and bemoaned its photographic challenges.
As the photo on the left (from a few years ago) and the photo on the right (from a few weeks ago) both show, the black-crowned night heron likes to skulk in the shrubbery, making portraits difficult.
Combined with their tendency to sit still for hours on end, this seems a lot like thumbing their nose at their photographic responsibilities. It’s all the more exciting, then, when one actually emerges from the weeds, so to speak, and Does Something. In the Spring, I guess a young night heron’s fancy turns to sticks. But I’m guessing, too, that the nest under construction is even deeper in the shrubbery.
The most-asked question at tourism offices in Arizona?
How can I see a roadrunner?
In the comments on Falling into Spring, Tom W. challenged/provoked/asked Jim T. to craft a poem about his dagnabbed roses.
Jim did, posting it as a Comment. Thanks, Jim.
Grow, grow, thou winter rose,Thou art not so moroseAs winter’s bitter snows;Thy thorns are not so vicious,As freezing rain is viscous,and never meretricious.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (which oughtta know), great egrets are 37 – 40 inches long, whereas snowy egrets are only 22 – 26 inches. You might think that size difference would be obvious, even in casual observation. I certainly thought so, until I casually observed some big white birds.
Standing in/near water and hunched down/over, ready to pounce — as they tend to be — great egrets and snowy egrets can be remarkably difficult to tell apart.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Sort of.
Unlike some evergreen desert plants, the cottonwood trees along Queen Creek Wash take winter seriously: they’ve dropped all their leaves. As I recall, they’ll be fully green again by the time we leave, in late March.
Until I looked it up, I didn’t know that “cottonwood” refers to a genus of 25 – 35 species, whose English names include “poplar” and “aspen” as well as “cottonwood.” A Prairie girl, I grew up with poplars galore, but I had never associated those fast-growing but not super impressive trees with the huge cottonwood specimens that line every source of water in Arizona, even the ephemeral ones. Continue reading
Walking back from my, well, walk, I pass a big motorcycle in the parking lot of a strip mall. On the pavement, two helmets are neatly tucked in beside the back wheel. Tire?
Funny. I don’t remember there being a biker bar in this neighbourhood mall, and neither is there. The bike is parked out front of . . . a nail salon. With the big lens on my camera, I have to back across the parking lot to frame the shot, and then only just.
As a bonus, I get another face for my collection. A little piggy, don’t you think?
Posted: 2025 Jun 21
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
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