Gobble Gobble

Enter the Days of the Wild Turkey

I was chillin’ chillin’, mindin’ my business this afternoon, chatting with some friends on our regular zoom, when I looked outside and saw this in the backyard!!!!! What the what!!!!???

That, my friends, is a gigantic wild turkey. Gobble gobble. Look how beautiful it is with all those amazing feathers! I have no idea what it was doing in my backyard. I imagine it doesn’t know what it was doing in my backyard either. Where were its other turkey friends? I hope this turkey isn’t out wandering the world alone. Just as quickly as it arrived, it was gone, off on more turkey adventures, no doubt.

I have been getting tons of hummingbirds in the yard lately. Unfortunately for picture taking, the feeder is in a shady spot with a lot of backlighting. I don’t get great photos of them because it’s just not sunny enough to capture their iridescence. I took a photo of one that was resting on a branch, and it’s one of my common visitors, the Broad Billed Hummingbird.

I also get a lot of hummingbirds that I have no idea how to identify. The backlighting issue coupled with the fact that they are fast and I have limited hummingbird practice all mean I could be getting the most rare hummingbirds ever, but I wouldn’t know it.

I have had some other interesting wildlife sightings lately, including a skunk in the backyard, a Black Tailed Rattlesnake in Madera Canyon, and lots of pretty butterflies at the Tumacacori Mission. The rattlesnake was a pretty green color, almost like the Mohave Rattlesnake, which is what I thought it was at first. The Black Tailed Rattlesnake is apparently the most docile of all the rattlesnakes, but I didn’t test that theory. Rattlesnakes are best seen from the safety of your car when they are not also in the car with you but far away on the road living their best snake life.

I also just finished a great book about a woman’s journey as she started birding. Field Notes From An Unintentional Birder by Julia Zarankin is one of those books that I will keep on my bird book bookshelf for a long time, and yes, I have a bird book bookshelf. Doesn’t everyone have a bookshelf dedicated to books about birds and birding?

I could relate to a lot of what she wrote as she talked about struggles to learn birds and bird calls and also her excitement at seeing all the birds. I was also interested to learn about some of the cool places she has traveled to see birds. It got me to start my own Google doc on “Places I Want To Go Birding.” One of the places she went birding, all the way from Toronto, was right here in my county. I live in a famous birding area, and all these amazing birds live right outside my door! I’m super lucky.

I’m going with some friends to the Gallery Show for the illustrations of my friend Alejandro’s book at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum on Friday. The show is called Desert Fables. Illustrations from The Neotenic Queen, and it will run from September 1 (when the opening reception happens) through October 29 at the Baldwin Gallery at the Desert Museum.

Alejandro wrote a book of short stories about desert animals called THE NEOTENIC QUEEN: Tales of Sex and Survival in the Sonoran Desert. It’s a great book made even greater because Alejandro worked with a nature artist and illustrator, Rachel Ivanyi, to have watercolor paintings made for each story. Rachel teaches art classes at the Desert Museum and is an amazing artist. Truly. Her paintings are soooo good. The gallery will have her original paintings on display along with her sketches and notes as she worked on this individual paintings. Both Alejandro and Rachel will be there on Friday to talk about the book and the paintings. If you’re in Tucson over the next couple of months, I highly recommend checking out the show.

After that, I’ll hang out with a good friend from Phoenix on Sunday at the Oh La La Ventana Canyon Resort. It should be a nice getaway.

That’s pretty much the news from here. Giant wild turkey, good bird reading, cool animals and books and paintings, and hopefully some rain and cooler temperatures this week. What do you guys have planned for the Labor Day weekend?