Animal Communication

Sagebrush Singers

Wow, where did the summer go?  It seems like just yesterday I was waking up to some lovely dawn choruses and now many of the birds have already migrated south.  With breeding season over, even most of the resident birds have quieted down, so the steppe and woods surrounding my home are much quieter now. […]

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The moon rises over the Carson River

Strange sounds in the night

I recently returned from an 11-day road trip through central and southern Oregon.  I traveled from Steen’s Mountain in the east, across to the central Cascades, to the coast and then south until I ran out of Oregon, back to the Cascades in southern Oregon, and home via Mts. Shasta and Lassen.  It was more

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Thunderstorm at Quemado Lake

Last fall I moved from southeastern Arizona to northern Nevada.  As part of the move, I incorporated a recording excursion that included southern Arizona, western New Mexico, southern Colorado, southern Utah and eastern Nevada.  Part of the reason I chose that path was to stop by Quemado Lake in western New Mexico.  This is a

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El Lobo, part 3: surrounded by ghosts

In June of this year, I headed back to lobo (Mexican wolf) country in northern Arizona.  I drove up to a remote camping area near Escudilla Mountain, arriving on a cloudy and windy  afternoon.  On the way up to the camp site, I passed several elk cows with small calves at their heels.  I set up

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Milky way

Chasing night sounds

There are a lot of interesting sounds that are seldom heard except at night.  Not just bats and owls, but also a variety of insects: crickets, bush crickets, and beetles, to name a few.  The insects like warm nights, and so that’s also when you have more insect predators, like the bats. It’s been really

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Cactus deermouse

The cactus deermouse sings

Awhile back, I wrote a blog post about singing mice.  I’ve been wanting to learn more about this topic every since, but was stymied by the lack of mice in my yard.  This winter my veggie garden was overwhelmed by rodents that seemed determined to make sure I never got a taste of fresh broccoli. 

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Sounds of Autumn

Another autumn has rolled around, leaves are changing, days growing shorter, and temperatures are getting cooler.  Once again, the fall finds me in pursuit of autumn sounds, of which my favorite is the bugle of rutting bull elk.  A couple of years ago, I had a successful time recording elk at Quemado Lake in New

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Turkey Creek, Chiricahua Mountains

Turkey Creek

My kitchen remodeling effort is finally complete, so a couple of weeks ago I packed up the car with camping gear and headed to Turkey Creek.  It seems as if most of the mountain ranges in the southwest US have a “Turkey Creek.”  I imagine this says something about the ubiquity of wild turkeys at

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Sunset at Ashurst Lake

Midnight Callers

Although birds and humans dominate the diurnal soundscape, a good number of creatures call during the hours of darkness.  I was reminded of this on a trip in September, when I took another trip north to Carson City.  I spent the first night at Ashurst Lake, near Flagstaff, Arizona.  I pulled in to the campground

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American black bear

Chasing thunder, finding bears

Summer (2014) was a very weird summer.  Normally (whatever that means), the Mexican Monsoon rolls in during late June or early July, bringing daily afternoon thunderstorms to the mountains, which sometimes make it to the valleys.  This year, it seemed like the monsoon never really got going, but rather, what few thunderstorms we had were

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Alert Grackles

Bird Conversations

My last stop on my summer journey from Carson City to Tucson, after a brief stay in Pinetop, Arizona, was the San Francisco River in New Mexico.  There is a designated birding area south of Glenwood that provides a parking lot and access to the river. It was mid-day and sweltering when the dog and

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Mexican Long-tongued bat

Sugar Bats

Among the long list of interesting creatures that call southern Arizona home are a couple of species of nectar-feeding bats, the Mexican Long-tongued bat and the Lesser Long-nosed bat.  Unlike most bats that feed on insects, nectar-feeding bats feed on the nectar of large flowers of cacti.  They are well-known to most southern Arizonans that

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