Late May

One night I heard a crunching, rustling sound a little ways from my camp, and when I

checked it out I found an ironwood tree being killed by some type of beetle grub.

The first video clip shows some of the sawdust on the tree and on the ground around it.

• Sawdust.mov

Tne next clip shows some of the holes in the tree.

• Holes.mov

These two show some beetles on the tree; I'm not sure if they are the adult form or if

they are predators.

• Beetle 1.mov

• Beetle 2.mov

A couple of still pics

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I could hear the chewing sound from all over the entire tree; when I dug under the bark

with my knife where a hole was, I found the entire cambium layer replaced with sawdust.

Eventually I located some grubs. The first one squished before I could inspect it, but the

next one I extracted intact. Here's a few pics.

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Here's a compiled clip showing how the grub moves by rippling itself.

• Grub

A few nights later a pygmy owl came into my camp. The pics didn't come out real well,

but they show more than I could see at the time. The short clip is audio only of the sound

the owl made. My camera only captured the sound once, so I looped it 8 times. Turn up

your volume.

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• Owl sound.mov

The rainbow barrel cacti are flowering again. Here's several views of one near my camp.

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A little color variation here.

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Here's some yellow ones.

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Here's some pics of an unusually tall one. Yes, the hat is to keep the sun off of my freshly

shaven head.

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Most times, their characteristic lean towards the southwest will make them topple over

like this one going. The one behind it gone.

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A couple close ups of the gone one showing it's skeleton.

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Back to living ones; this one is just budding. My size 11 for scale.

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Here's a family scene.

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The biggest one's flowers.

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A different species of cholla is flowering now.

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This species grows rather tall. A typical individual.

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One day I heard some rustling in the brush near my camp and I saw a snake that had

caught an 8 inch lizard. In the 60 seconds it took me to get out my camera, the snake had

almost finished swallowing it. The first pic shows about an inch and a half of tail sticking

out of it's mouth. The second pic shows the snake's markings. My camera's auto-focus

caught on the twigs in the foreground, so the pics are crappy.

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I took a walk along the wash near my camp. Here's a couple of pics. It gets used as a

road by ATV riders.