Blog Archives

Fuzzy Spotted Bats and Big Brown Bats

10/29/2019

This fuzzy little guy is, I believe, a Spotted Bat (Euderma maculatum), as described in the Arizona Game and Fish Department's Facebook post.. The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum Spotted Bat Fact Sheet specifies exactly where his spots should be, but he kept his rump tucked away where I couldn't sneak a peek.

I love those tiny claws!

Play the video to watch him take a bath in the clay roof tiles over my porch. Toward the end you can hear him singing! Well, squeaking anyway.

He licked and scratched like this for an hour or more. Just like a cat! An outside cat, that's 20 times smaller than a house cat and flies better. But almost like a cat, which makes this practically a cat video, therefore bound for internet glory! Right?

How about this shot of his bath, where you can see the delicate curve of his ear, those beautiful tiny claws, and that teeny tiny, sharp little tooth.

By the way, they are insectivores, eating mostly moths. The Desert Museum says they tear off the wings and eat only the abdomen. And they DO NOT bite people. Unlike my cat, come to think of it.

They also don't get caught in long hair, as some myths say. Their sonar is much too good for that sort of mistake.

These Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus) liked to sleep in my front porch light fixture during daylight hours this past summer. When I wasn't flashing a camera at them.

The pictures above were all taken in September. Sadly, my bats couldn't hang around for Halloween. They've now flown off to their winter homes, maybe to the south, maybe in caves where they will hibernate.

This is the much-loved Giant Brown Bat (Isaacus Baertleinicus), also known within the family as The Giant Cousin. (Photo taken in the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum Bat Cave, where he was getting in a good listen.)

We had Big Brown Bats in Lake Hughes, California, too. My parents helped Isaac and I build bat houses to attract them. (Yes, the weirdness began generations ago!)

You can see one of our bat house creations on the upper right corner of the old stone house above. It took about three years, but we finally attracted a sweet little colony. I think they were Little Brown Myotis (Myotis lucifugus), but I couldn't swear to it.

Bat Conservation International has an AWESOME and FREE handbook on bats including instructions for building any number of elegant homes for these flying mammals. Check it out!

In case you thought hosting bats was all fun and games... here's the other end of it.

Hmmm. Maybe I should build them a home of their own away from mine.

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Turkey and Black Vultures

10/23/2019

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All of the pictures for this post were taken near Skull Valley, Arizona. Appropriate, no?

The red-headed fellow spreading his wings above is the more common Turkey Vulture.

The gentle-birds below, taking a bow and gazing out over the chaparral, are rarer Black Vultures. Actually, I think it's the same bird. Note the same fall Juniper Berries in the lower right of both photos.

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum website has a nice comparison of the two, noting, among other things, that while Black Vultures have no sense of smell, Turkey Vultures can detect a carcass up to a mile away! I can detect one a quarter of a mile away, but that's a different story.

The bright spot on the beak of the Turkey Vulture above might be mistaken for his eye. It's actually a hole that goes clear through the beak and helps to keep his nostrils clear when his head is plunged deep into a carcass. A bird's gotta eat and breathe!

Vultures get a bad rap for their table manners, but think what a mess the world would be if we didn't have cleanup crews. A calf died on the property about a year ago. (I'll spare you the photo.) I located it by smell, and so did the Turkey Vultures above. A flock of dozens took care of it in about a week, much to our relief.

Here are some soarers and perchers, just for fun. Actually, I wanted to show off Turtle Head rock there in the middle. It reminds me of Dr. Seuss's Yertle the Turtle, but I digress.

And for the grand finale, here is my sister at the Vulture Culture exhibit at the Desert Museum. Usually she's just a turkey, but here she's transformed herself into a great and wonderful Turkey Vulture! I didn't get a picture of her soaring.

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The Amazing Ambling Tarantula

10/16/2019

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In the spirit of Halloween, I offer the Amazing Ambling Tarantula. You might find this fellow a bit creepy, but read to the end for the real freak-fest.

These big, hairy arachnids give many people the shivers, but their bite is less painful than a bee sting. In fact, if you irritate a tarantula her first line of defense will likely be to launch a few itchy "urticating" hairs at you from her abdomen. A human too big to eat isn't worth the waste precious venom. Plus, they're pretty docile unless molested.

In the fall hoards of male tarantulas (which are smaller and lankier than the females) can sometimes be spotted marching out to find mates. The females, meanwhile, are safely tucked into burrows, waiting. I've not been lucky enough to witness this, but I've heard friends describe with awe. DesertUSA.com describes it in detail.

Like black widows, female tarantulas tend to eat their mates post-coitus, which hardly seems fair after all the work the boys have put into finding and wooing those girls. But this still isn't the creepiest part. Keep reading.

I'd never had the opportunity to hold a tarantula until I volunteered at the California Living Museum (CALM). As a docent, I was privileged to share Harriet with visitors. The children were often standoffish initially, but usually recognized Harriet's beauty in the end.

Adults were considerably harder to win over.

Okay. Here's the freaky part. Don't let this innocent-looking, Halloween-colored insect fool you. The Pepsis wasp or tarantula hawk is a devil in disguise. Here's her story:

The already-mated female wasp seeks out a tarantula and paralyzes him with a sting. The wasp then drags the spider to her den. (I've seen the dragging part and was too mortified to remember to take a picture! Perhaps you're feeling fortunate to not have to bear witness to that. Perhaps you're disappointed, in which case you can find a picture here.)

The wasp then lays her eggs in the still living spider, and buries him. Alive! When the eggs hatch the larvae have fresh, still living meat to feed on.

Now you may cringe.

It may also interest you to know that the tarantula hawk is considered to have one of the most painful stings, surpassed only by bullet ants. (Yeah, I never heard of bullet ants either.)

I told you the tarantulas are the good guys. Don't you agree now that you've heard the whole story?

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Kindly Gopher (or Bull) Snakes

10/9/2019

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Peek-a-boo!

I looked up from my writing, back in my old house in Lake Hughes, and this nosey fellow was peeking in the window checking my spelling, which is notoriously bad. So, I slipped outside for some pictures.

Although the intricate brown and yellow pattern of a gopher snake (also sometimes called a bull snake) can resemble the design on some rattlesnakes, the gopher snake is long, thin and elegant as compared to stockier rattlers. Two more things that really let you know you've got a harmless gopher snake: 1) No rattle. 2) That lovely narrow head.

Gopher snakes, kingsnakes and many others are not only beautiful, if you like that sort of thing, which I do, they also keep rodent populations down around your house. So be nice these good guys!

    As a senior in high school, I volunteered in the reptile room of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It was there that I was given a newly hatched gopher snake along with the training to care for him for the next 22 years.

   It was coming up on winter, and construction workers had accidentally unearthed him from hibernation, or more accurately, brumation. The reptile keeper told me he would die if released, and they had all the gopher snakes they could handle at the zoo.

   So, Mortimer "followed me home." Fortunately, my mother wasn't like most mothers. She took to Mortimer like she had to the various dogs, cats, rabbits, ducks, rooster, horses and every other critter my sister, father and I had brought home. Mortimer became part of the family.

   Years later my son loved him, too. Yeah, the poor kid never had a chance.

Mortimer made many friends over the years, sometimes at preschools and birthday parties, and was always well behaved. One little Swiss girl even kissed him, much to her father's amusement.

We have gopher snakes here in Prescott, too. Unfortunately, this little fellow who was hanging around the last few weeks, didn't make it. I think maybe he should have found a place to hole up for winter as the weather turned chillier.

He reminds me of Mortimer and what might have happened to him if we hadn't taken him in all those years ago. I'm so glad we did.

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Gray Foxes Revisited

10/2/2019

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I'm revisiting Gray Foxes because I feel so fortunate that they keep revisiting me! (My original Glorious Gray Fox post was back in August)

In early September we started seeing what looked like a mom and two pups about the size of large cats, barely smaller than the "mom." Gray Foxes breed from about February to March and have a 53-day gestation period, according to Vermont Fish and Wildlife, which I recognize is a far hop from Arizona, but this is a beautiful website!

Additionally, the site says the gray fox is "also known as the flying fox or tree fox because unlike most canids the gray fox has semi-retractable claws, which enable it to climb." If you want to see my foxes in trees, check out my August Gray Fox post. It's true. They climb like cats.