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Palm Stubble
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

Up close, the trimmed fronds on the trunk of a palm tree have the look of a forest of strange monolithic structures.

Crossed Palms
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

Crossed fan palm tree fronds.

Agave #4
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

Layered shadows make this agave stand out.

Mr. Snuffleupagus Grows Up
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

Suppose Mr. Snuffleupagus grew up and developed a pair of elephant tusks–and of course took up wearing a prickly pear chapeau.

Hitchhiker
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

Not only was this saguaro cactus sporting an impressive crest, it also featured a hitchhiking prickly pear as well.

Disconnect
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

Bare Tree #95
Tombstone, Arizona
2023

I like the way the shadow branches line up with the actual branches on the tree hanging over the other side of the building like it was all one big tree.

Lonely Too Long
Tombstone, Arizona
2023

The Runner
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

The Cooper’s hawk in yesterdays POTD seemed to prefer the neighbor’s bird feeder in the front of the house we were staying at, while this similar looking sharp-shinned hawk spent it’s time lurking about our bird feeder in the back yard. (Note: I’m reasonably sure these were not the same bird and not of the same species. However, I’m somewhat less sure I’ve identified the correct species in both cases.) We never saw either bird actually successfully snag a song bird at the feeders, but we did see this one latch onto a finch at one point. After a brief wrestling match, the finch was able to escape and fly away.

I lived in Arizona for four years back in the 70s and I don’t remember ever having as much fun watching local birds back then as we did in just two months this year. Maybe bird watching is more of a “sport” for the old folks.

Fun With Birds
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

At the other end of the size spectrum of birds around the place we were staying in Arizona, is this Cooper’s Hawk. It was sitting in a tree above the neighbor’s birdfeeder when I was out in the driveway one morning. Presumably it was scoping out the small birds at the feeder for a quick breakfast. Not sure what kind of hawk it was, I used the great Merlin phone app to identify it’s call. The app will record the call and try and identify the bird and it also gives a number of recordings by others to listen to for comparison. Just for fun I started playing some of the calls of other Cooper’s Hawks while holding the phone up where this one might hear it. Boy did I get it’s attention, to the point that it eventually made several flying passes right above me trying to figure out where the hawk was that was calling out. That was really cool but I quit doing it pretty quickly for a couple of reasons. One, I thought what I was doing might be considered some sort of bird torment. But I also stopped because those claws looked pretty sharp up close and I didn’t want to see if it would decide to use them on me out of frustration or protection of territory.