Like anyone else with sense, I love jacamars, and so I lingered over last November’s poor images of Paradise Jacamars when I was moving them to flickr tonight.

Quite a bird, as sharp at one end as at the other!
One of my photos, though, offered up a surprise–and a mystery.

In flagrant violation of Rule 2 for [...]

One of the species inexplicably missing from our desert yard is Greater Roadrunner. We’ve seen it as close as Pima Wash, which runs (and this time of year actually flows) just behind the house and crosses the road a scant quarter mile away; but the extravagant ground cuckoo has always avoided our yard, perhaps the [...]

We bought a new thistle feeder yesterday, and were happy to find it accepted by the Lesser Goldfinches right away.

Today, though, everybody else found it, and the goldfinches have been hanging around on the margins of avian society, waiting for their greedier cousins to take a breath.
It’s the ground feeders who profit most from the [...]

Looking into the Santa Catalinas across the driveway.

One of the great pleasures of summertime life in the desert is the frantic dash of the zebra-tailed lizards every time we open the door. Unlike the big spiny lizards, which tend to lumber noisily to shelter in the shade, the zebras skim at an incredible speed across the desert floor, then stop at a [...]