The Cerro Pelado fire that was threatening Los Alamos is mostly under
control now (71% contained as of Tuesday morning), and the county
has relaxed the "prepare to evacuate" status.
That's good, and not just for Los Alamos, because it means more
people who can fight the much larger Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon fire,
currently 26% contained and stretching over a huge 299,565 acres.
For those of us on the Pajarito Plateau, that means we're getting
views of enormous
pyrocumulus
clouds towering over the Sangre de Cristo mountains from Las Vegas
to just south of Taos.
I keep missing the opportunity for photos, but on Sunday night
I took a series of images and made this time-lapse movie.
It's the windy season, and the winds are crazy here. I'm pretty sure
I saw a house, some flying monkeys and a woman on a bicycle fly past
the window twenty minutes ago.
I'm not sure precisely how crazy — our weather station is only
showing a max of 18 mph, which mostly means there are too many trees
around it, but the weather station at TA54 just up the road is reading
26 right now, with a max of 48.3.
The cage that I built this spring to keep the deer away from the apple
tree (not that it ever flowers or fruits anyway) keeps wanting to slide
into the tree or topple over on top of it. I had to jump up twice
during dinner and run out to rescue it. So now it's tied to some big
rocks and, if those lose their grip, it's also tied to the fence.
This year's drought was fierce. We only had two substantial rainfalls
all summer. And here in piñon-juniper country, that means the
piñon trees were under heavy attack by piñon Ips bark beetles,
Ips confusus.
Piñon bark beetles are apparently around all the time, but
normally, the trees can fight them off by producing extra sap.
But when it gets dry, drought-stressed trees can't make enough sap,
the beetles proliferate, and trees start dying.
Bark beetles are apparently the biggest known killer of mature
piñon trees.
We're aware of this, and we water the piñons we can reach,
and cross our fingers for the ones that are farther from the house.
But this year we lost four trees -- all of them close enough to the
house that we'd been watering them every three or four weeks.
Sometimes it seems like yellow is the color of fall.
First, in late summer, a wide variety of sunflower appear:
at the house we get mostly the ones with the uninspiring name of
cowpen daisy (Verbesina encelioides). The flower is much
prettier than its name would suggest.
Then the snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae) and
chamisa (Ericameria nauseosa) take over,
with their carpets of tiny yellow flowers.
(More unfortunate names.
Chamisa has a mildly unpleasant smell when it's blooming,
which presumably explains its unfortunate scientific name;
I don't know why snakeweed is called that.)
Yesterday afternoon, I stepped out the back door and walked a few
steps along the rocky path when I noticed movement at my feet.
It was a hummingbird, hidden in the rocks, and I'd almost stepped on it.
Closer examination showed that the hummer was holding its left wing
out straight -- not a good sign. He might have flown into a window,
but there's no way to know for sure how this little guy got injured.
The first order of business was to get him off the path so
he wouldn't get stepped on.
*
This year, we've been lucky enough to have a chipmunk hanging around
our garden. I feed a lot of birdseed on the ground or a platform feeder:
most of the birds here seem to prefer ground-scattered seed to
hanging seed feeders. Sometimes the ground feeding backfires:
this year I'm buying seed at a furious rate because a flock of
about 25 mourning doves have discovered our yard. I thought I liked
mourning doves, which in recent years have seemed to be losing out to the
larger white-winged and Eurasian collared doves ... but 25 is really
too much of a good thing.
Where was I? Oh, yes, chipmunks. Usually they prefer the canyon's
edge, about a mile away; we get rock squirrels here, but no tree squirrels
and seldom chipmunks. So we were very happy when one took up residence
here earlier this spring and became a regular visitor to our seed station,
as well as running along the brick wall outside my office.
They keep telling us what a serious housing problem Los Alamos county has.
Especially low-income housing.
Well, I just saw it for myself, from the landlord's perspective.
I was awakened at six this morning by two tenants squabbling over
a low-rent apartment.
It started when one of the ash-throated flycatchers, who just arrived this
week, landed on the railing outside the bedroom, making its typical
chip-chip-churrup call. But then it changed to a different
call, one I'd never heard before, a low and insistent repetitive trill.
But the nest box on that deck was already occupied by a pair of mountain
chickadees. The chickadees have been there more than a week and are
clearly not interested in vacating, even for a flycatcher twice their size.
They made their kissy-noise chickadee call right back at the flycatcher,
and the flycatcher eventually gave up and flew away.
Fortunately, unlike the county's problem, this one is relatively
easily solved. There's another nest box, which I think is still
unoccupied this year, just below the garden fence.
I guess, like the county, I should consider adding more subsidized housing.
I could have sworn I bought a third nest box when I bought those two,
and never got around to putting it up, But I can't find it now. I
guess it's time to buy or make another nest box or two.
It's a nice problem to have. When I first bought these birdhouses,
I didn't really expect I'd get any takers. But in the six years I've
had them, they've hosted at least one nest each year, sometimes two or
three. in addition to ash-throated flycatchers and mountain
chickadees, they've also Bewick's wrens also use them.
Although they're sold as bluebird boxes, I've never had a
bluebird use them; bluebirds fly over and sometimes stop for
a drink, but they don't hang around or breed. I know there are
skillions of bluebirds over in Pajarito Acres, only a few miles away,
but I'm not sure how to entice them to hang out here.
They're bug eaters and not interested in seed.
A few voices on the 'net suggest that commercial bluebird boxes
are designed for eastern bluebirds, and western bluebird boxes should
have a slightly larger hole. So far I've been too lazy to do anything
about that, but I do have woodworking tools, including a set of hole
saws and Forstner bits.
Maybe I'll put that on the to-do list for this week.
Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the chickadees and flycatchers.
One memorable sequence from Sir David Attenborough's stellar
Life of Birds documentary is that of a black egret (or black
heron -- I've seen both, but aside from color it looks remarkably like
the North American snowy and reddish egrets), "umbrella fishing".
I never thought I'd have a chance to see that in person.
But it turns out black herons aren't the only birds to do that.
This winter, we saw a grey-headed junco doing essentially the same thing
in our back yard!
This little junco performed its umbrella trick almost like the black heron
from Life of Birds, though it didn't hide its head underneath.
Still, it might some day: it was still perfecting its technique as we
watched over the course of a couple of weeks.
![[tree cage tied to fence]](https://shallowsky.com/blog/images/cerropelado/dsc02945.jpg)
![[Piñon Bark Beetles and larvae]](https://shallowsky.com/blog/images/barkbeetles/dsc02715c.jpg)
![[Cowpen daisies]](https://shallowsky.com/nature/fallcolor/img_0649T.jpg)
First, in late summer, a wide variety of sunflower appear:
at the house we get mostly the ones with the uninspiring name of
cowpen daisy (Verbesina encelioides). The flower is much
prettier than its name would suggest.
![[Snakeweed in bloom]](https://shallowsky.com/nature/fallcolor/img_4034T.jpg)
Then the snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae) and
chamisa (Ericameria nauseosa) take over,
with their carpets of tiny yellow flowers.
(More unfortunate names.
Chamisa has a mildly unpleasant smell when it's blooming,
which presumably explains its unfortunate scientific name;
I don't know why snakeweed is called that.)
![[Hummingbird with btoken wing]](http://shallowsky.com/hummers/hurthummer/dsc02290c1600.jpg)
![[Least chipmunk]](/nature/mammals/squirrels/dsc00303.jpg)
![[grey-headed junco, 'umbrella fishing']](https://shallowsky.com/Birds/Perching_Birds/?pic=grey-headed_junco-parasol.jpg)
![[RSS feed]](https://shallowsky.com/images/logos/rssicon-25x25.png){kind=small}
![[Twitter]](https://shallowsky.com/images/logos/twitter-bird-white-on-blue-25x25.png){kind=small}
![[envelope]](https://shallowsky.com/images/logos/envelope-25x25.png){kind=small}