Odds and Ends From This Summer

Usually when I think of Roadrunners I imagine them running on the ground as their name implies. Occasionally I’ll see them on some vegetation, perhaps low in a tree. It was a surprise to find a Roadrunner at the top of a very tall tree snag in the Santa Cruz Flats. It could probably see for miles from that spot.

It looked like it was the King of the World, surveying its Kingdom from on high.

Just recently I was driving along a farm road when it was well over 100° and we saw this Sonoran Gopher Snake crossing the road. It might have been returning from some water in a nearby irrigation ditch. In any case we hopped out of the truck quickly to try to get some photos before it moved off the road.

The Gopher Snake was quick but I did manage to get one decent photo of it.

House Sparrows are one of the most common birds in the world. The males have a prominent black bib. I think this bird is an adult male but in a non-breeding plumage. During the fall molt, the House Sparrow loses and slowly replaces all of his feathers, including those black bib feathers. The new bib feathers grow in with pale tips that hide the black underneath. Those pale outer tips will fade and wear away during the winter to reveal the dark black bib just in time for the springtime breeding season.

Earlier this summer I saw this male Ladder-backed Woodpecker at Agua Nueva Park, across from Sweetwater Wetlands. This species always seems to look for food deliberately on the back side of a tree trunk if it thinks you are looking at it. It might be my imagination, but that made this moment so nice. It was a great look at this bird in search of breakfast.

I was talking with a neighbor the other day when we heard a Common Raven calling. That wasn’t unusual but when we looked for it, we saw that the Common Raven was being chased by a Cooper’s Hawk.

This chase continued across the sky with neither of the birds getting a clear advantage over the other. The Hawk kept pace with the Raven, occasionally closing in on it. And the Raven never tried evasive maneuvers and was just flying as fast as it could towards the Catalina Mountains.

They came low across the horizon and in front of trees one street over and then disappeared from view. The Cooper’s soon reappeared and flew back towards where we had originally spotted a second Cooper’s Hawk. About ten minutes later, a Common Raven flew back south behind us. Whether it was the same bird or not, we didn’t know, but I’d like to believe it was.

Those were some special moments from this summer.