by CKR
The piñon jays seem to have moved on. It may be that I disrupted their schedule, or they may be responding to their own imperatives.
Early yesterday morning I took down the feeders and upended the birdbath so that the piñons could be sprayed for bark beetles. I’m not fond of spraying, but I lost a number of piñons to beetles a few years back. I think that northern New Mexico has become overforested in the past half-century or so, and I’m pleased with the way my yard is now, but I do have some piñons I don’t want to lose. One of them is perfectly symmetrical and full, almost like those sheared Christmas trees, but naturally that way. It will lose some of that look as it survives a few more years, but it’s fun to have it now.
Even when the jays were here, the cleanup crew arrived in the late afternoon. There were about four young doves, both white-winged and mourning doves. Yesterday both types of adults were present, along with young. Neighborhood babysitting co-op?
And I didn’t think that rabbits ate grain, but this one comes back regularly.
The black-headed grosbeaks eat from the block and on the ground. For a while I saw only one, but yesterday I saw two together, probably this year’s young. A rufous-sided towhee is part of the crew, too, but moves fast.
The jays consumed a large birdseed block and a small one. I was afraid I would have to buy some more this week, but maybe not.
Monday night I missed an opportunity to photograph the development of a thunderstorm about twenty miles south. It didn’t look like much as it started, but evolved into a nice anvil-shape with a companion cloud. I’ll be more alert to an opportunity like that. Our rainy season may be starting.
I’ve finally managed to plant all the plants I bought this spring. I was waiting to plant some cactuses in an area that I plan to make a cactus-and-rock garden, the rocks coming from the five large boxes in the garage of New Mexico minerals and fossils. I found some nice large chunks with fluorite crystals (mostly blue to purplish) and one galena crystal, along with quartz and feldspar (whitish, uninteresting), and put them in the area as a starter, along with five cactuses. One of them was called, I think, a peter pan cactus, although I can’t find that designation for this kind of cactus, clearly an Opuntia, on the web. It has no obvious spines, but when I bought it, the salesperson warned me about the glochids, those little sharp hairs that opuntias have around their spines.
I tend to be careless about handling cactuses; I usually avoid bleeding, but I get in between the spines and figure that I can remove the glochids while I watch television. They weren’t kidding about those glochids; the longest I’ve ever had penetrate my fingers, and lots of them, although they’re not at all obvious on the plant. I was wearing gloves, which picked them up and transferred them to my fingers every time I put them on again after taking them off to remove the glochids. I’ve still got a couple that will have to fester or be removed by my needle surgery.
BTW, that Wikipedia article I linked to has a terrible photo; I don’t think it’s of an Opuntia, and most of the glochids I’ve seen don’t look like that. I’ll take a better photo one of these days; I have a Tuesday blog devoted to cactuses in mind.