Our friend Mary Anne turned me on to the Merlin iPhone app, which records bird songs and calls and identifies them. I like to turn it on and leave it running while I walk the dogs, then check to see what birds it ID’d when we get back. The first photo, below, is a screengrab from our walk two mornings ago.
As we walked today I heard a beep. I fished the phone out of my pocket and saw it was a Merlin alert, letting me know it had ID’d a never-before-heard bird. I was looking forward to learning what it was, but when we got home there was no list … something, probably me and my fat fingers, had messed up and scrubbed the recording. I have learned, though, to identify some bird calls myself, like the weep-weep of the curved bill thrasher, a fairly common bird in our part of Tucson. I heard one close by today, looked around, and spotted it atop a saguaro in a neighbor’s yard. That’s it in the middle, plus a blow-up to show it a little better … it’s fuzzy but you can see its bill, which nails the ID.
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Two weeks ago Lulu, our black & tan dachshund, had her teeth cleaned and checked. They put her under and pulled several, poor girl, but she recovered quickly and doesn’t seem to miss them. Yesterday it was Fritzi’s turn, and she did better … she still has all her teeth, now squeaky clean, but she stayed groggy from the anesthesia all through the afternoon and evening. By this morning, though, she was her old self, frisky and ready for anything.
We had a nice walk around the hood. I know they hear the birds I record and are aware of their location, but they learned long ago birds can’t be caught so they don’t bark at them or try to chase them down … unless they’re ground birds, that is, like quail and roadrunners, and I have to keep a grip on the leash in case we flush any from the shiggy. No such sightings today, though, and on our way home we sat on the school bus stop bench for a peaceful minute … peaceful, that is, until kids started showing up for their ride.
Lulu and Fritzi, like Schatzi, Maxie, and Mister B before them, have also learned to give cactus a wide berth. Cholla cactus balls roll around on the ground, though, leaving a trail of detached, hard-to-see spines, and occasionally one of our girls will get one in a paw and start limping. A pocket comb will pull most cactus spines right out, and I try to remember to carry one with me on our walks. That’s bunny ears prickly pear in the middle photo, also called polka dot cactus … Micky Mouse cactus strikes me as a better name, or (bear with me here) Mouskette-ears. Supposedly its a bad one to tangle with, but I don’t mean to find out.
The girls love to bury their noses in a coyote bush, which is what they’re doing in the last photo. There are several clumps of coyote bush on our walking routes, and they stop to check out each and every one. There’s a resin on the leaves of this plant, which is what I think attracts dogs (and coyotes, I assume). They never nibble at the leaves, nor do they pee or poop by these plants … they just stick their snouts in and sniff away.
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I went a little overboard with the iPhone camera this morning, so here are some more dog-walking photos. In the first photo, my watch o’ the day, a Timex I keep on a NATO strap. Actually it’s the only watch I have on a NATO strap, and that’s because I’m still trying to get used to the look of a NATO on my wrist. NATO straps, as you might guess from the name, have a military heritage: the fabric strap loops under and through both sides of the watch, so even if the watch comes loose on one side or the other you won’t lose it in the trenches. I love the colors, but not the metal stays sticking out on either side of my wrist. Every time I put this watch on, which is about once a month, I’m like a dog wearing booties for the first time, tripping all over itself.
In the middle, just to keep things symmetrical, there’s our toothy girlies again, then me on the right, freshly beard-less and enjoying a mild winter morning. I always take a selfie on our walks, and a wristwatch shot too, but mostly I take photos of the dogs. Normally I post morning walk photos on Instagram, auto-copied to Facebook and Threads. Some of these photos were on those platforms earlier today, but I’ve been neglecting the blog so here they are again, all together in one post.
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Did he die yet? No? Sigh … stay fresh, cheese bags!