Getting to know our neighbors

 Our newest neighbors

For the last  week, Jim has been having to refill one of our 3 hummingbird feeders every day rather than every other day or so.  This one in particular hangs from a hook Jim rigged under the overhang of our backyard covered patio.  The feeder placed in a direct line of view from both our living room window and the back door.  We can watch hummingbirds come and go as they sip Jim's customized  blend of sugar and water, and sometimes a little something extra, like cranberry juice, Coke or Welch's grape juice.  The hummingbirds have become quite used to our comings and goings as well, and they no longer vanish as soon we come out the door, lounge on the patio or use the backyard in typical human fashion.  

Jim finally came to the conclusion that the only way that feeder was showing up empty every morning was that bats must be using the feeder at night.  So, last night, we waited until after dark for any sign of evening visitors to our strategically-placed-for in-door-viewing hummingbird feeder.  Sure enough, at about 8:30 PM a swarm of bats appeared out of no where and descended on the hummers' feeder.  With the lights off in the house and outdoors, too, and once our eyes adjusted to dark, we were able to see them fluttering about and taking turns, 3 or 4 at time, at the feeder.  At first, the only thing you noticed was the rocking back and forth of the feeder as though an undetectable breeze were rocking it.  Then, slowly you could make out the shadows of wings fluttering all over the covered patio and circling the feeder.  I could barely make out the shadows of the bats but every few seconds I would glimpse a dark shadow or flash of dim light reflected off a wing, more ghostly than actually seeing any of the bats in full flight.  That dim light glow was coming from the tiny solar lights used for illuminating deck stairs that Jim has rigged up under the 3 outdoor skylights  It was all pretty amazing.  

Leaf-nosed Bat
Mexican Long-nosed Bat
Bats in Arizona
Batty about Bats in AZ
Ask a biologist

Ya know, it's the little things.......

So, we've been out of work for a while now... and it has given me a chance to get to know and bond with my neighbors...


We have a dozen house finches, half dozen English sparrows, countless white winged doves, mourning doves, four ring-necked doves, two Inca doves, four thrashers (Jonathan is the most outgoing), three Sonoran Flickers (Harold, Brenda, and Sonny), four cactus wrens, an assortment of Anna's hummingbirds, the most 'in-your-face' of them being Gordon (back yard), and Grumpy (side courtyard)... a rabbit in the front yard, a couple occasional coyotes, a rattlesnake I've seen only once, recurring "Western Blind Snakes" which seem to like the living room, one Mexican Free-tail bat (Manuel Jesus Ramone Ortega) who rents the pied a terre over the back door from Sept thru October, an enormous Six-lined Race Runner lizard, three fence lizards, three yellow bellied fly catchers, and a squirrel whose legs are way too short for climbing trees... Yes, I know... I DO need to get a job...

The female hummingbirds are so gregarious, they will sometimes even drink from the feeder as I try to hang it back on the hook after re-filling it...

Here, Natalie's a bit camera shy...




Anyway, about a week ago, I noticed I was having to refill the backyard feeder every single day... it was bone dry whenever I checked it...  I went out cursing and ranting at Harold, the Sonoran Flicker who has a serious sweet tooth, and tends to be a sloppy eater because he's such a big galoot and hangs upside-down on the feeder, spilling the food out... but, he was cursing me out because... the feeder was dry... again.  Thursday, while I was grilling dinner, I refilled the feeder at about 6PM, long after Harold, Brenda and Sonny go home to their cactus next door... and, Friday morning... empty...

So, Saturday evening, I refilled the feeder again at 6PM... and, later that nigh, at 8:30, when I looked out the patio door window, the patio looked like the Reno Air Races... there were at least a dozen leaf-nosed bats racing around the oval track in my back patio as they waited for their turn at the feeder... I slowly opened the door and stepped out onto the patio to take some pix, and could actually hear their wings as they flapped by me, on some instances, no further than a couple feet from my head.  But, the camera wasn't cooperating, they didn't care for me being out there, and they all filtered-away.  However, twenty minutes later, a few returned, and I got a couple pix.  We'll try to get movies tonight, it's very surrealistic... literally a swarm of these things circling in the patio... it was like a scene from a movie.  Their wingspans are about 14 to 16 inches, these are fairly good-sized bats, not like the "little browns" most people are used to seeing, and their bodies are about the size of (God forbid) rats... but, keep in mind that the latest thinking is that bats are more closely related to primates, than rodents... and they DO have opposable thumbs, as well as a "linguistics gene" which is shared only by... humans...



JB




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's a Swamp Box?

Image
One thing you notice as soon as you start driving around Tucson is the many  beige-colored metal boxes  you see sitting on the roofs of houses all over town.   Some look pretty neglected and rusted out.   At first glance, you might mistake them for air conditioning units, and they are, sort of.   They are often referred to as “Swamp Boxes” by the locals.   A Swamp Box is what the heating and cooling industry calls an Evaporative Cooler.   It works much like a home humidifier.   The cooler contains a basin of water and a rotating drum with a foam pad.   Air is blown over the wet pad and into the house to produce cool moist air.   With an A/C unit, humidity is sucked out of the interior air in the cooling process, whereas with a swamp cooler humidity is blown into the interior air.   Since Tucson is a desert climate with very little humidity, for most of the warm season, an A/C unit is of little use.   The locals who have lived with their quirky swamp coolers since the 1960’s, like to
Read more

Desert Fruit

What distinguishes our Tucson home from all the rest in our post-WWII tract-home development are the two stately olive trees that grace our front yard. Our property is the only one in the neighborhood that retains its original curbside olive trees. When our development, and others just like it all over Tucson, were first built, its streets were lined with olive trees.  Over time, the trees died or were chopped down my homeowners who found the trees to be more of a nuisance than a distinctive shade tree.  The city of Tucson has since band the planting of fruit-bearing olive trees anywhere in the city.  Olive trees have a nasty habit of producing tremendous amounts of pollen and dropping huge numbers of olives all over sidewalks and streets. Believe me when I tell you that fallen olives will turn a sidewalk into a slippery purple-black mess. They are so bitter that the birds won't even eat them. People who come to the desert to get relief from their pollen allergies, have little appr
Read more

Figaro - Growing Figs in Tucson

Not long after settling into our new place in Tucson, I discovered a garden center just down the street that specialized in native plants.  Great!  I could now start learning how to identify and name all the local desert flora.  As I browsed the aisles and started noting names on the tags of the most interesting plants, I found my way over to the fruit tree section.  Just beyond the lemons, oranges, and grapefruit trees, I spotted an aisle of trees that looked surprisingly familiar. Could they be? Was it possible?  Was I really seeing rows of fig trees? Yes! They were truly fig trees. I had never expected to find fig trees growing in Tucson.  It was early September, and the figs were just beginning to ripen. Unfortunately, some trees were infested with fig beetles.  Fig beetles are gigantic iridescent purplish black things the size of a cockroach.  When they begin to feast on a fig, they swarm on that one precious fig until they are hanging from it like a bunch of deep purple grapes. 
Read more