Desert Creatures

All I need is a grocery store and a refrigerator and I'm good to go while traveling. 

But I forgot to pack my spork. And coffee stirrers make lousy spoons. They make lousy coffee stirrers too.

Casting about my hotel room for anything remotely spoonlike, I lit upon my hairbrush. 

Washed it, removed as much hair from it as possible and it made a dandy shovel for yogurt and strawberries. Mmm, snorfle, gulp, seeya. I had an adventure to get to!

Wherever I went in Arizona I carried my long lens. I found desert wildlife photography challenging, in a different way than, say, rainforest photography. There is plenty of light in the desert. But the contrast between light and shade are harsh and hard.

Early morning, of course, is best, because the animals are out and about and the light isn't so hard.

I found this beautiful desert cottontail waiting in the hotel parking lot after my hairy yogurt breakfast. 

All rabbits are beautiful, but these big-eared pale creatures are stunning.

The big ears help the animal radiate heat. You'll see a lot of animals with oversized ears in the desert. 

Halfway up Cathedral Rock, a canyon wren popped out for a moment, then popped back into the shadows. I loved to hear its cascading laughter ringing in the canyons.

 This medium-sized lizard was sunning on a rock. He let me get close enough to see that he'd had some kind of injury to his nose. But he was still workin' his blue belly. He got up on a rock and started doing herky jerky push-ups to show it off.

Yes, you're made of awesome.

Something drew his attention several yards away: an ant, lugging some kind of dead dobsonfly lookin' thing across the rock. He hustled down off his soapbox and nabbed it!

Pizza delivery! I'll take that. Thanks. Don't know if the ant deliverygirl was part of the meal or not. You can see a hint of his turquoise blue belly in this shot.

After poring over my old reptile guide, I think he's a Southwestern earless lizard Holbrookia texana scitula. 

 Me and Russell, coming back down the rock. We didn't climb that straight up and down part. Just the flanks, thanks. Photo by Barbara Samuelson.

More typical Sedona wildlife: a blonde woman talking about something (Vortex energy? Holistic health? Meditation? Goat farming? Antihistmines?)  while beating softly on a skin drum. She was being videotaped for something or other. It was getting hotter than the hinges by the time they packed it in. Yep, all the wildlife is out in the early morning.