Desert Boy and Henry Go for a Visit

It seems like Desert Boy, Henry, and I have had a lot of adventures lately. They haven't all had particularly happy endings, but as I look back at them I find myself chuckling, and perhaps tales of our wanderings in the desert will entertain you.

A few days ago, I decided to go for a bike ride because it was still cool in the morning and I needed some exercise. I have a bike seat for Desert Boy that is attached to the front of the bike, so he can see where we're going. He loves it. I also added one of the little squeeze bike horns that his hands are finally big enough to grab and squeeze, so as we started out of the driveway, he started honking the horn. All was good. But then Henry decided to come along. Henry usually stays in the yard, but this morning he didn't want to miss out on the fun. The only problem is that Henry didn't know how to run next to a bike, so he kept running ahead of us and getting slightly run over. After getting run over a couple times, he realized he better run by the side of the bike. I thought maybe it would work out, he would get extra exercise by keeping up with the bike and we would have a nice ride.

By this time we had crossed two cattle guards and were out on the pavement, which also happens to be the main road through town. A truck came from the opposite direction, and Henry decided it would be wonderful fun to start chasing it, so he darts out in the middle of the road. My heart started pumping fast as I wondered if our little puppy would survive his stupidity. He did, and I sighed a big sigh of relief and scolded him. We continued on, hoping that there wouldn't be any more traffic. But another came, and Henry ignored my commands and chased it. And then another.

By this point I decided we needed to get off the highway. So we pulled into the driveway of a friendly older neighbor. Her dog was in the yard, and I thought it would be fun to say hi to her and her dog. She says hi from her open kitchen window and then comes out in her nightgown. Just as she comes out I hear a hissing sound from the back tire of the bike. Rats, a flat tire. She says she has a pump, and I say great. But then I look at the tire closer and see green slime coming out from near the valve stem. It's probably a broken valve stem so I won't even be able to fix it. 

The neighbor offers to drive us back home, but I figure she's in her nightgown and we shouldn't disrupt her. I say no, I'll just walk back, we are less than a mile from home. She offers her bicycle, and I say yes. It has a flat tire, so after searching for and getting out two different extension cords and her bike pump, we finally find a combination that works and get the tire pumped up. I hear something beeping in her house and ask if she needs to go do something, but she doesn't remember. I figure that I will ride her bike back to the house, put the bike in the back of my truck, and be back in five minutes. But I have nowhere to put Desert Boy on the bike, so I ask her to watch him and tell her I will be back in five minutes. What can happen in five minutes? I peddle out of the driveway, Desert Boy starts crying, and Henry won't come with me. I realize that it might be a long five minutes for her, so I ride as fast as I can, hoping Desert Boy will stop crying soon.

When I get back to her house in my truck, I see that the sprinkler is on and Desert Boy is happily playing in it. No problem. But there's also a sweet smell in the air. The neighbor tells me that the beeping turns out to be the oven timer, but she had forgotten about it until the smoke alarm went off. She had been making hummingbird food and the sugar burned, filling her house with smoke and ruining her pan. She had opened all her doors and windows to try to get the smell out of the house. I apologized profusely, and then took out her bike to return it to the garage. She walked with me, and when we got back to Desert Boy, we found that he had walked over to the spigot for the sprinkler and had turned it on all the way, so the water was now sprinkling the inside of her house through the open window. I guess it would put out any fire. 

Desert Boy was sopping wet, so I grabbed him and told her we better be leaving before we caused any more destruction. When we stopped we had only wanted to wish her a good morning. Now she had a bike pump out, extension cords strung everywhere, a smelly house, a ruined pan, wet dining room curtains and carpet, and more excitement than she usually gets in a few days, all within a few minutes timespan. The phone rang, and she said it was the lady who checks up on her every morning. She was definitely going to have something to talk about that morning!

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?