Backyard Birds

Hooded Oriole, male

Male Hooded Oriole © 2012 Bo Mackison

I put two hummingbird feeders at the edge of the arroyo and attracted hummingbirds and a few other birds interested in a quick sweet treat. This male Hooded Oriole breeds in the Southwestern states and eastern Mexico. It migrates through Mexico to its winter home in southern Mexico.

It’s named for the orange hood on the male. It once nested in the desert trees in the riparian oases, but is now just as commonly seen in backyards.

Broad billed Hummingbird, male

Broad-billed Hummingbird © 2012 Bo Mackison

Ah, here’s one of the 5 or 6 types of hummingbirds I saw this spring. This is the Broad-billed Hummingbird — its bill is red, turning black at the tip. The Broad-billed Hummingbird’s northern territory is in southern Arizona. It is only here for a visit. Most Broad-bills live year round in Mexico.

Anna's Hummingbird female, spread wings

Female Anna's Hummingbird © 2012 Bo Mackison

This medium-sized hummingbird, still tiny compared to other birds, is never still. I thought I was lucky to catch this female in mid-landing. The male is a handsome fellow, with an iridescent bright pink throat, but he was even speedier than the female.

Acrobat

Acrobatic Gila Woodpecker

And this guy, the Gila Woodpecker, is my most frequent visitor, though I’d prefer he not slurp up all the sugar-water I make for the hummingbirds. I did a search and found that woodpeckers are “tolerated” guests at hummingbird feeders from the east coast to the west. Actually, they make such an effort to get footing on the tiny rim meant for hummingbirds, that they are among the more entertaining birds. Noisy, too!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona for a few more days before she migrates to her summer home in the Midwest.

Mesquite in Bloom

Mesquite in Bloom

Mesquite in Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

The more you actively look, the more the action will become intuitive and natural, subconscious and effortless. With practice your eye will be intuitively and subconsciously drawn to light and the light will be drawn to your eye. ~ Wayne Rowe

In Arizona, the trees stand bare branched much of the winter. As the spring warms and a bit of rain falls, the mesquite gets a few leaves, as if a film of green gauze was twisted about the branches.

And then suddenly, almost as if a mystical being tapped all the trees with a magical wand, the trees burst forth in bright yellow. The flowers are almost like yellow fuzz, and when the southwestern winds start to blow, the yellow bits are blown from the branches and seem to dance along the sidewalks and streets.

Magical mesquites?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona . . . and enjoying the dance of the yellow mesquite.

Blossoms on a Saguaro

Three Blooms on a Saguaro

Three Blooms on a Saguaro © 2012 Bo Mackison

The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. ~ Chinese Proverb

These are the first blooms on a saguaro cactus I have ever seen. What a thrill!

As I drive and walk through the Saguaro forests in the Sonoran Desert I am on the look out for saguaro blooms. I’ve seen a few cactus with their heads covered with a few buds, and a couple that have a mop of buds like the saguaro in the photograph.  But I have only seen two that actually had a flower in bloom — and this one had three!

These three blossoms will start to shrivel and fade as evening approaches. Other blossoms will bloom in the night and those flowers will last for much of tomorrow. A saguaro flower only lives one day – but what beauty it offers in that single day!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until the end of April. She is so happy that the flowering season for cacti — hedgehogs, prickly pear, cholla, and finally saguaro — is showing peeks of color in the desert.

Desert Agave in Bloom

Agave with Yellow Blooms

Agave with Yellow Blooms


This lovely agave, known as the Desert Agave, is also sometimes called the “century plant”. It may have seemed like a century between flowerings to the ones who originally named it, but in practice it flowers after 8 – 20 years. Although all the flowering plants die, the plants also send out offshoots of non-flowering rosettes that remain alive, ready to flower in another year. The leaves of the rosettes are armed with stiff terminal spines, not to be fooled with, though hummingbirds seem quite attracted to the flowers.

The Desert Agave is one of the more drought-tolerant of the more than 130 species of agave found in north America. It typically grows on gravely earth from south-eastern California and south-western Arizona to Baja, California and northern regions of the state of Sonora, Mexico.

The core of the plant was baked in rock-lined pits by desert-dwelling Indians to form a nutritious energy-rich staple food. Baked agave is still available in Mexican markets. I’d love to taste it.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She is grateful for the opportunity to see the diversity and beauty of the Sonoran Desert and its amazing plants.

Beauty Surrounds Us

It is easy to miss the details when looking at the whole. We admire the forest, but don’t see the trees, or we do notice a tree, but never examine the pattern of its bark or the intricacies of its flower.

I’ve been admiring the great stalks of flowers branching out from the many yuccas and agaves in bloom for many weeks, and just first thought to take a close up look at one of its flowers.

Spanish Bayonet Macro

Sotolillo Blossoms in Macro © 2012 Bo Mackison

And when I finally did get a closer look – wow. Thousands of tiny white flowers on this sotolillo, white tinges with shades of purple, petals closing together, as if harboring a secret.

Spring pops up in the desert in the most unlikely of places, but when I began in earnest to go on a “spring hunt” looking for bits of spring, I realized that the season of new life surrounds me. Beauty of a different sort, perhaps, but beauty nonetheless.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona.