I was watering plants on my patio and unintentionally scared away the Mourning Dove hen.
These are her two eggs.
Shortly thereafter, she returned to her nest.
The eggs should hatch in about four more days.
Last year in late April, Mourning Doves made nests near my front door and on a plant stand on my patio. They came back this year a month earlier and made nests in the same places. I have pictures from last year that I never posted. This year I’d like to post the new pictures as I take them.
Last year, the bird in the front abandoned her nest not long after laying two eggs. The bird on the patio hatched two eggs, fed the chicks as they grew, and saw them off into adulthood. She or another Mourning Dove came back and reused the nest to hatch a brood of two more chicks. Somewhere there are four young birds who were born on my patio.
The habit of Mourning Doves is to make shallow platform nests made of twigs as you can see. The nests are high enough above the ground to be safe from predators. They are not very secure, though. It seems that a heavy storm wind could blow the nests away.
Nesting birds make messes, and they don’t clean up after themselves. There’s a lesson here.
When I visited my son in Miami during the summer of 2021, I visited my son’s barbecue restaurant in nearby Surfside.
Walking back to where my car was parked, I came across a good size lizard on the sidewalk. It didn’t seem scared of me at all. The lizards — much smaller — that we have near my Phoenix home are very skittish. As I approach them to take a picture, they’re gone. Some have appeared at my front doorstep. Again, “Nature at my doorstep.”
Incidentally, my son’s restaurant is not too far from the collapse of the Champlain Towers in June of 2021. My son gave out free sandwiches to first responders.
I found this dormant locust one cold November morning not more than two yards from my front door. It’s a beautiful specimen.
Apparently, the shutter of my point-and-shoot camera is fast enough to capture this photo of a bee in focus near an Arizona Poppy flower. The sun isn’t fully out, so the flower is only partially open.
Recently, I posted that I spotted two cows on a street in my part of town where I was walking. It was cute to see them. Of course, it was unexpected.
Now, Providentially, a news story came to my attention about some more cows on a residential street. Some thirty cows escaped from a slaughterhouse and stampeded into a residential neighborhood near Los Angeles.
ABC7 Los Angeles Eyewitness News reported the story:
PICO RIVERA, Calif. (KABC) — A herd of cows got loose and were running through a Pico Rivera neighborhood Tuesday night [June 23, 2021].
It is believed they got loose from a slaughterhouse in the area.
On my sunrise walk, I spotted two cows crossing a local town street walking away from a wash (dry riverbed) and then back again into the wash. Groundwater feeds lush greenery in the wash including grass, which the cows were munching on. Most likely they escaped from the nearby Indian reservation about two miles away where they raise cattle.
I only have pictures of one of the cows.
I called 9-1-1 and an officer came right away. He said that he was going to call folks on the reservation.
Although the cows were happily eating grass, I wasn’t going to be eating until I got home about half an hour later. And I wasn’t going to be eating grass.
I feel blessed to have had this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Amazingly, my camera caught a Hummingbird feeding on the flower of this Cereus Cactus. I Use a point-and-shoot camera, but apparently it has a fast shutter speed.
I feel grateful. It’s made my day.
I don’t believe that I’ve seen a Killdeer before now. According to one of my bird books, its call sounds like “kill-deer” whence the bird’s name.
See: Stan Tekiela, Birds of Arizona: Field Guide (Cambridge, Minnesota: Adventure Publications, 2003).
Birds mixed with visitors to Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden in an outdoor cafe garden. The first photo is of a Roadrunner. The second is of a Gambel’s Quail.
Roadrunners are quite comfortable around people. But ordinarily, the quail are skittish and readily run away. This quail learned to mingle with people who are a source of food crumbs.
Hot Tea with Sugar 