Coyote Morning

I was out doing a bird survey this morning and got to see some interesting sights. One was this coyote, a little close for comfort. The reason appeared to be some kind of injury, as he was limping badly and didn't make much of a move to get away from me. I was impressed with how green his eyes looked.

Later I saw some mule deer running through the shrubs. I got out my camera and had it ready, but due to my paltry zoom didn't get close shots of them. They ran across the meadow and soon a coyote came running out of the same willow and rose thicket. He ran in a different direction, knowing that the deer were much too big of prey for him alone.

Seeing these wildlife sightings is pretty exciting, because sometimes the bird surveys can be a little slow. Ten minutes is a long time if you have the same four birds singing the entire time. 

White-faced Ibis

I had some good bird sightings, including breeding Common Yellowthroat and Lazuli Bunting in the bushes that the irrigated meadows support on their margins, and White-faced Ibis, Eared Grebe, Sandhill Crane, and Northern Shoveler in the ranch pond. Out in the meadows Western Meadowlarks, Red-winged Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbirds, and Brewer's Blackbirds were the most common sightings.

I also got bit by a mosquito and a deerfly. They surprised me, because usually the dry desert environments don't support these biting nuisances, but the irrigated meadows provided enough water for them. My new waterproof boots were actually waterproof, so it was a good morning. Now on to more adventures!

Reriding the Pony Express Route

My nephew left this evening to go meet up with the Pony Express reride and help carry mail across the desert, bringing back to life a romantic bit of western lore. What exactly was the Pony Express? It was the way that U.S. mail was delivered for 18 months in 1860 and 1861. The railroads didn't stretch across the country. Telephones didn't exist. Telegraphs hadn't even been built from coast to coast. So if you wanted to get a message all the way across the West, it had to be hand carried.

Sure, stagecoaches could and did take some mail. But they were slow, and in 1860 the mail contract went to a company that advertised it could take the mail over 1,800 miles in only 10 days. The route went from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, and used horses and young riders to cover the ground quickly. A horse at full gallop can go about 10 miles, so stations were set up at that distance. When a rider came to the station, he would take the mochila with the mail and jump on to a horse that the station master had ready for him and continue on. He would generally go about 75 to 100 miles before another rider would take over for him. Each rider had one section of the trail that they usually rode. They learned that section so well they could cover it quickly at any time of day or night in any weather, including bad winter snowstorms or searing summer heat. One of my favorite books that includes firsthand accounts about the Pony Express is a true story called The White Indian Boy by Elijah Nicholas Wilson.
This Pony Express marker was erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s east of Callao, Utah. It is located near the remains of one of the stations. No one lives within 20 miles of this station, so not much has changed since the Pony Express Days.
Here is some of the terrain that the Pony Express riders covered. Along with the mail they carried some water and a revolver. Riders were not allowed to weigh more than 125 pounds, and they were paid $100 a month.. An advertisement recruiting riders read: "Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."
These are the remnants of another Pony Express station. The telegraph put the Pony Express out of business in October 1861. The short-lived operation has lived long in people's memories. The vision of young lads galloping across the country with important messages (like Lincoln's inaugural address) has allowed the Pony Express route to be recognized as a national trail. Every year, the entire route is ridden in June, around the time of the full moon to allow for more light on those dark stretches.

Somewhere out in the middle of the Nevada desert, my nephew will be carrying the mail, listening to the coyotes howl, feeling the wind on his cheeks, and reliving a part of history.

This year, the mochila contains a GPS tracker, so if you'd like to see where the rider is, check out http://ponyexpressnationaltracking.com/RiderTracking.html  

Breeding Birds and Their Babies

I've been doing breeding bird surveys around the ranch lately to see what birds live here. I'm using a point count protocol, which means to do the survey, I count all the birds I see or hear during 10 minutes, then move 300 meters to the next spot and count again. There are ten points along the transect. In addition to noting what birds I notice, I write down approximately how far they are from me and if they are showing any signs of breeding. This last week I noticed some definite signs of breeding in the form of baby birds. I was able to get a photo of this group of five ducklings partly because they can't fly yet. My camera is good at close ups but not so good with far away objects, so I don't have many photos today.
One of the common birds on the ranch near some of the ponds is the Yellow-headed Blackbird. (Don't ask me why, but common bird names are usually capitalized, but mammals, reptiles, amphibians, etc. are not.) This particular Yellow-headed Blackbird was part of a big family group including several immature birds. They have a raucous call that reminds me of being at a bawdy party.
This baby Killdeer was so cute. It and its sibling were following their mama around on the sand bank. Its legs look so long for its little body. 
We've had three Great Horned Owl babies hanging around our yard, and this is one of them. It doesn't look much like a baby now, growing rapidly over the last few weeks. We hear the owls a lot at night, sometimes waking us up if they're close to our bedroom window. 

I love breeding bird surveys because they make me focus just on the birds for a few hours. I'm always amazed how many different birds are out there, and how moving just a short distance from one habitat to another changes the bird composition greatly. I got excited this summer seeing my first Bobolinks and Savannah Sparrows out in the alfalfa fields, watching the Long-billed Curlews chase a Swainson's Hawk that had been perching on an irrigation pivot, and listening to the dinosaur-like Sandhill Cranes. As we enter July, the birds don't sing quite as much because they no longer need to attract a mate, but they still provide lots of color on the landscape that will be turning brown under the hot sun.

Xeriscaping with Native Plants

Don't you just love the word xeriscape? I mean, how cool is it to use a word that begins with the letter x. The meaning of the word is neat, too. It's landscaping without the use of supplemental water, and the word was invented by combining xeros, Greek for dry, with landscape.

This last year my husband and I have been trying to come up with ways to make our house and yard more sustainable. We live in a one hundred year-old house that has a rock foundation, and in the winter we didn't like all that cold air seeping under the house. So he put a planter around it and filled it with dirt as an insulator. Our heating costs went down, and the planter has the added benefit that I have a convenient place to plant. The water that falls on the roof of the house drips right into the planter, so I have a built in watering system.

This spring I did some research on the internet and found a native plant nursery a couple hours from our house (everything seems to be a couple hours away, if not more). We went over and I had a wonderful time picking out some native plants. One of the best things about the native plants is that they've evolved with the desert conditions, so they don't need as much water as most of the other plants available in nurseries.

We only get about six inches of precipitation a year where we live, compared to 35 inches a year in Chicago and 42 inches a year in New York. So most plants that grow in the East or Midwest don't do so well in the dry Southwest unless they get a lot of extra help. That extra help means watering, which as you can see by the precipitation amounts, is a scarce resource. 

Desert plants aren't necessarily drab, as you can see in the photo above. This beautiful flower is desert globemallow (Sphaeralcea grossularifolia), a common flower that decorates the desert valleys and benches beginning in May and lasting through a good part of the summer. It grows well, so is often used in reseeding mixes after wildfires. 
This little fern bush (Chamaebatiaria millefolium) will grow into a five foot tall bush with beautiful yellow blossoms. I love it because it's leaves look like ferns, which are so incongruous in the desert. Yet it is a native plant.

Great Basin wildrye (Leymus cinereus) is a native grass that can grow up to a horse's belly. It's not nearly so large in our yard, probably because the deer like to come through and munch on it!

When we planted this squawbush (Rhus trilobata), it looked like a stick in the ground. Fortunately a couple weeks later it started leafing out. In the fall the leaves should turn a beautiful red. Another common name is skunkbush, apparently because the leaves stink. I will have to go take a sniff soon.
We have several kinds of currants that are native here, including the wax currant (Ribes cereum). I think that's the one this is, but I'm not entirely sure. In the late summer they produce tangy berries. 
Cliff rose (Cowania stanburiana) is a shrub that has small white flowers. So far ours hasn't produced any flowers, but hopefully it will next year. It will grow to be a couple feet high. Deer also love to browse this plant, so we will need to train our puppy Henry to keep them away. So far Henry hasn't been good at keeping anything away, including the skunks.
Penstemon (Penstemon sp.) lend a lot of color to the planter. I really should have written down which kind this is (or take the time to key it out), but for the moment I will just say that it's a beautiful penstemon. We don't always have to know the name to appreciate the beauty, right?
And finally, this little cactus (maybe Simpson's Hedgehog Cactus (Pediocactus simpsonii)) surprised me by producing a flower bud. I can't wait to see it open. 

So what native plants do you have or would like to get for your yard?

Cows 101

I live on a ranch, so it's probably about time that I talk about the cows!  I'm using the term cows here generically to mean cattle. Technically, a cow is an adult female bovine that has raised a calf, a bull is an uncastrated male bovine, a steer is a castrated male bovine, and a calf is a baby bovine. That sounds easy enough, but it so happens there are other terms. A heifer (pronounced "heffer") is a female bovine that has not yet raised a calf; a feeder calf is a weaned calf that is in a feedlot.

So in the interest of simplicity, I'm just going to call them cows. At least most of the time. You'll know what I mean.
We have a cow-calf operation, which means that we have cows that give birth to calves, and those calves are raised for beef. Some of the calves are kept on the ranch to replace old cows. A cow is usually kept for 10 to 15 years on the ranch as long as it is productive.

The gestation for a cow is 9 months, just like humans. Some other time we'll go into the details of how they're bred. I bet you can't wait. It really is fascinating. Anyway, when a calf is born, it usually weighs about 55-100 pounds. It stays close to its mama, but before long it is romping in the meadows with the other calves. We have several different kinds of cows on the ranch.

Black Angus and Red Angus cows provide the yummy steaks found in higher class steakhouses. Notice that they are all one color.

Black Baldy is a mix of Black Angus and Hereford. They have a black body with a white face. These are probably the most common type of cows we have on the ranch.
Herefords, with red bodies and white faces and bellies, are the type of cows that my husband's family started ranching with. It's a family ranch operation that has been passed down from generation to generation and is now operated by my husband and his brothers. 

During the summer, most of the cows graze in the meadows. In the winter, some of the cows go out on the desert range while others are taken to the feedlot. Cows are able to eat otherwise indigestable foods because they are ruminants and their stomachs have four compartments. After they eat food, they regurgitate it and rechew it, called chewing the cud. They may repeat this process several times until they have broken the food into small enough pieces that microorganisms in the rumen have time to break down the cellulose and other carbohydrates into volatile fatty acids, which give cows their oomph. Oomph is the highly technical term for metabolic energy, but I think oomph just sounds a little better. 

This is probably a good place to dispel one of the common myths about bulls, that if they see red they charge. That's why a matador uses a red cape to entice the bull to charge him, right? Not quite, it turns out that cows are red-green colorblind, so they can't even see the color red. The matador's movement of the cape is what attracts the bull. 

And because I'm an ecologist, I couldn't help but slip in a photo of some wildlife with the cows. The mule deer population on the ranch is booming. They find plenty of food in the irrigated meadows and fields, and a variety of shrubs provides good cover for them. Mule deer are also ruminants and you can go wear red near them without any problems, because they are also red-green colorblind.