Category: Arizona

Ringtail and Genet

Small-spotted genet, Genetta genetta and Ringtail, Bassaricus astutus

I am fascinated by the way environments shape animals that have different lineages. Two animals that fit this look-alike-but-different description are Ringtails in the Americas and Genets in Africa.

Here are pictures of these two look-alikes. Both the ringtail and the genet are deft, busy nocturnal creatures with pointy noses and big eyes. Their ringed tails are as long as their bodies. They are both about the size of a small cat. There are some differences: Ringtails have white around their eyes, brown fur, while the genet has spots all over its body.

The ringtail and the genet behave similarly. By night they run up and down trees hunting for small prey: fruit, insects, lizards, birds and rodents. By day they hide in holes or brush. Both slinky creatures are hyper alert, adept at keeping out of the way of their main predators that include snakes, owls, and big cats.

Their way of life demands the ability to see well in the dark, to climb, balance, snatch and be willing to eat most anything. These qualities mean a compact body, short legs, big eyes, a sensitive nose and ears, plus a long balancing tail. Ringtails and genets are mostly solitary animals, mate briefly and the young stay with mom for a short time until they can hunt for themselves.

Ringtails and genets look alike and act alike but their most recent common ancestor was 60 million years ago, when the “cat-like” carnivores (Feliformia) separated from the “dog-like” Caniformia. From the latter stock evolved the Procyonids in the Americas. The Procyonids today include ringtails, racoons, coatis and kinkajous. About 10 million years ago, ringtails and raccoons diverged from one another. That means they separated longer ago than humans did from chimpanzees. The ringtail is Arizona’s state mammal and lives in many parts of the desert, places we can glimpse and appreciate them.

The genets are part of a group called the Viverrids that evolved from Feliformia stock in the Old World. They include genets, civets, and linsangs – all mysterious scented creatures that are among the most poorly known carnivores. The similarities between ringtails and genets are due to adaptation to similar environments. This is called convergent evolution and is fairly common in nature. Examples include hummingbirds in the Americas and the similar but different lineage of sunbirds in Africa. Also sharks, a fish, contrasted with a dolphin, a mammal, but both streamlined swimmers. Even plants converge in appearance when they have to cope with similar habitats. Consider the spiny desert cacti of the Americas and the spiny euphorbias of Africa. Very different genetic backgrounds but both groups needing to conserve water and protect themselves from animals in hot climates.

Ringtail exploring my mining cabin, Feather River CA, 1966

Ringtails introduced themselves to me when I was a young placer gold miner in the mountains of California. When they visited our camp, hardened miner types melted in their presence. We loved to lure them in, feed and play with them, but left them wild and free. I got hooked on these creatures, called Bassaricus astutus.

Later when I went to Africa, I was struck by the similar genet, Genetta genetta, who also came into buildings to be fed, yet remaining wild and free too. Ringtails and genets are my “totem” animals. I identify with them. I too am a visitor to the modern busy world. I feed and play here but long to escape back to the wild.

The author with a genet at Ndutu Safari Lodge, Tanzania, 1987

A friend who ran a lodge in the southern Serengeti where genets were abundant gave me the nickname Genetta. It fits me better than Bassaricus. My Genetta name reminds me of both these graceful convergent creatures of the two different continents that have shaped me.

Tags Africa, Arizona, cacomixtle, California, carnivora, genet, procyonidae, ringtail, viverrridae

Arizona Evolution Safari

Hawk or Buzzard?

Red-tailed Hawk in Tucson, Arizona (left) and Augur Buzzard in Ngorongoro, Tanzania (right)

I dread meeting this bird on safari. I try to distract my clients’ attention:

“Er….Everybody, look at that hartebeest on the left”It’s a beautiful hawk about 2ft tall, who often perches on top of a tree displaying his pure white breast to the morning sun. Try as I will to ignore him, someone always spots him.

“What’s that big hawk on the right, Dave?”

“(sigh)…It’s an Augur Buzzard”.

“A what? An Ogre Bustard?”

“No. A-U-G-U-R as in prophecy. Buzzard as in hawk”

“Oh, so he’s a scavenger then?”

“Noooo!…Let me explain….”

“Hey! Is that a lion?”

“No, it’s a hartebeest.”

“Are we nearly there yet?….”

Back in the day, the Europeans were familiar with large brown hawks sailing on broad wings over hill and farmland, searching for rabbits and rodents. The Romans called them buteo, which morphed through Old French buson or buison to Anglo-Norman buisart and hence to buzzard. Buzzards were known to be predators who rarely scavenged; the familiar carrion-eaters were black or red kites around the cities, and vultures in southern Europe.

When European naturalists explored Africa, they found their familiar Common Buzzard on winter migration, and met similar native species which they named Mountain Buzzard, Jackal Buzzard, and, ugh, Augur Buzzard. “Why augur?” I would like to ask Herr Ruppell (1836) who named it. It’s not from “auger”, which is a kind of drill, and this is not a boring bird. An Augur in Roman times was a kind of prophet or soothsayer, who interpreted the intentions of the gods from natural signs such as the movement (or entrails) of birds.

The Europeans who settled the New World were more taxonomically confused. They took the ‘buzzard concept’ and applied it to a large black soaring scavenger, a.k.a. Turkey Vulture. The closest relative of the European buzzard was named, quite accurately, Red-tailed Hawk.

So the Red-tailed Hawk which occasionally soars over our saguaros in Arizona is the ecological equivalent of the Augur Buzzard in Ngorongoro and Serengeti. They are virtually the same bird, with brick-red tails and keen dark eyes.

“Just think of it as an African red-tailed hawk”, I tell my confused American tourists.

Left: Red-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis, right: Augur Buzzard, Buteo augur

Tags Africa, buzzard, hawk, raptor, usa, vulture

Arizona Safari Tucson

Balloons

Colorful, floating, flying, festive and fun. I love balloons. The little ones you blow up evoke happy images of celebrations and the hot air ones that lift you high to soar over landscapes can pull you physically into a higher realm. Today I saw a hot air balloon making its way across the Tucson valley, framed by our iconic saguaros. It reminded me of the thrill of seeing the land from on high.

Recently both of us had a chance to climb into the big baskets and fly over Serengeti. Jeannette got a ride over the kopjes and plains where animals collect around the Seronera river. David got to float over the southern plains covered with vast herds. It was a rare treat to view one of our favorite landscapes aloft. The bubbly champagne breakfast can lift your spirits even higher!

Aerial view of balloon over wildebeest, Serengeti Plain — Balloon over wildebeest, Serengeti Plain

Aerial view of wildebeest and balloon shadow on Serengeti Plain — Wildebeest and balloon shadow, Serengeti Plain

Aerial view of wildebeest herd — Wildebeest herd on Serengeti Plain as seen from balloon

Tags Arizona, aviation, balloon, flying, Serengeti

Arizona Safari

Thirsty Giants: Baobab and Saguaro

Post author By David
Post date January 6, 2015
3 Comments on Thirsty Giants: Baobab and Saguaro

Photo of baobab and saguaro plants, with insets showing their flowers — Baobab (left) and its flower (top centre); saguaro (right) and its flower (bottom centre).

We have been privileged to share years of our lives with both baobabs and saguaros, giant plants that dominate their dry landscapes. The baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) is one of the icons of Africa, with its vast swollen trunk and smooth bark. To St-Exupery’s Little Prince, baobabs were a metaphor for something bad which must be nipped in the bud before it takes over your little planet. In reality, they are magnificent beings which offer bountiful gifts. Their trunks, often hollow, can house bees, barn owls or even people. Their tender leaves are good to eat. Their fleshy white flowers bloom at dusk and offer rich nectar to the bats that pollinate them. Their fruits are useful woody gourds containing nutritious nuts wrapped in a frothy packing rich in Vitamin C, a popular snack for people and wild animals. Their fibrous juicy trunks are used to make string, but are useless as timber. More useful alive than dead, over much of their range they are the only native trees left standing, and they may live for over a thousand years. They are respected and revered; the Tanzanians say “Kila shetani ana mbuyu yake” – every spirit has its own baobab tree.

Half a world away, in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northern Mexico, tall saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea) raise massive spiny arms to the sky. A mature saguaro may stand 40-60ft tall with more than 25 arms, and may weigh more than two tons, somehow supported on a base only a foot wide. Inside each stem or arm, a cylinder of vertical woody ribs provides support. The desert people, Tohono O’odham, venerate saguaros and see them as partly human. In spring the saguaros wear beautiful crowns of white flowers, also pollinated by bats. Just before the summer rains, the O’odham and the desert birds harvest their fruits, filled with tiny black seeds in sweet crimson pulp. When we moved to Arizona, one of our O’odham neighbors showed us how to make a long pole from the ribs of a dead saguaro, and knock down the abundant fruits from 30 feet above our heads.

Saguaros grow slowly, usually germinating in the shade of a paloverde or other ‘nurse tree’ where a bird dropped the seed. They may take 10 years to grow 1.5″ high, and can live for up to 200 years. Baobab seeds must be brutalized by passage through an elephant’s jaws and gut in order to germinate. Their seedlings seem to grow best amid dense thickets of other species, where browsing animals can’t reach their tender leaves.

Both saguaros and baobabs have extensive shallow roots, spreading sideways at least as far as the plant is high, and may have a deep tap-root too. When it rains, both plants can rapidly absorb water, then store it for a long time. To conserve water, their leaves are reduced. Saguaros have no leaves at all, photosynthesizing with their waxy green pleated stems. Baobabs produce leaves only during the rains, standing bare for much of the year – but if you scratch that gray or pinkish bark, you will find bright green chlorophyll just beneath it, proving that the “upside-down tree” is not as dead as it looks.

Hug a baobab’s vast trunk – it may take 20 of you to encircle it – and you may feel or hear the wind thrumming through its bare branches. But don’t try hugging the saguaro, just admire it from a distance.

Arizona

Covert Assassin

“Hermano, hermano!” shouted the crouching man, twenty yards up the canyon, aiming his handgun at us. Oddly, we felt no panic but wondered why he would point a weapon at a “brother”. We held still. A second man had his hand at his hip but soon relaxed and smiled at us. The gunman looked embarrassed and walked off behind the trees, to make some very important radio call. Trying to take it all in, we just sat on our log under the shady oak in a remote canyon near the Mexican border.

Officer Friendly came closer and apologized for mistaking us for illegal immigrants. We actually had to laugh; two more unlikely illegals would be hard to find. Officer Quickdraw joined in the apologies, revealing that they were border patrolmen new to the area. They went their way without even noticing the Covert Assassin.

The what? That was the inconspicuous trail camera attached to the oak tree behind us – its brand name probably designed to lure hunters to buy it. We were downloading its photos of deer, javelina, mountain lions, foxes and a turkey.

Have you ever walked in the woods and wondered what happens when no-one is there? What shy creatures prowl at night? A trail camera can tell you. It’s a weatherproof digital camera with a motion sensor. Anything moving in front of the camera gets photographed, day or night. In places where people don’t go, we can use a camera with a flash. On trails often used by people, our cameras use an infra-red lamp which shows only a faint red glow – certain kinds of nocturnal hiker might smash the camera if they realized it was there!

We monitor several cameras for Sky Island Alliance, an organization that studies and protects the wildlife of the ‘sky island’ mountain ranges scattered across the Southwest. To avoid becoming genetically isolated, animals must travel from one ‘island’ to another, across a ‘sea’ of farmland, desert and suburbia. Which routes do they use? SIA’s Wildlife Linkages volunteer program investigates this through direct tracking (subject of a future blog) and through the use of trail cameras.

Every month or two, we visit our cameras. Will they still be there? Will there be something rare like a jaguar or ocelot? Those spotted cats are the Holy Grail of animal trackers in Arizona, but so far we’ve not found any. However, our sightings of commoner animals add to knowledge about their daily and seasonal activity patterns.

Checking the cameras is always a thrill, even without confused gunmen.

Here are some of the animals we’ve ‘captured’ on our cameras:

Female turkey walking — Female turkey. We’ve never seen or heard a turkey in our area but the camera finds one occasionally.

Two gray foxes watch a striped skunk — “Phewwww – smell something?” Striped skunk and gray foxes

4 javelinas walking in line — A javelina family group

Tags animals, Arizona, border patrol, borderlands, cameras, monitoring, photography, sky islands, wildlife

Arizona Safari

Meru & Kilimanjaro

Mt Meru (L) and Kilimanjaro (R) viewed from Moivaro near Arusha

I’m looking at two huge dormant volcanoes that grew out of the stretched and splitting rift valley floor. This is the view from above the house where I’m staying with friends just outside Arusha – known as the safari capital of Tanzania. Mt. Meru rises steeply above the city and Mt Kilmanjaro dominates the land 50 miles to the east.

These two mighty mountains impress me with their majesty and moods. We get to see them frequently because the international airport was built halfway between them in order to avoid their massive effect on wind and weather. We got to know these two while writing guidebooks about them for Tanzania National Parks years ago. In addition to their uplifting views and challenging climbs they shared secrets too, their shy wildlife like bushbucks and plume-tailed colobus monkeys, their forests, canyons, ponds, streams and falls of butterflies as well as water.

I’m especially fond of Mt. Meru, a blown out cone (similar to Mt. St. Helens) almost 15,000 ft high and very steep.

Here, Mt Meru looms in the distance with “parasitic cones” in the foreground. You can just make out the torn side at the right of the mountain in the picture.

Mt. Kilimanjaro is more bulky and going bald in the warming climate, its ice cap melting. Kili is Africa’s highest and the world’s highest free-standing mountain at 19,340 feet above sea level. Kili is actually composed of three cones – broad-shouldered Shira, the eroded peak of Mawenzi and indented top of Kibo with its crater and ice-fields.

I’m not a lover of hikes in high cold places. However, the plant and animal life on these rift valley mountains is abundant and extremely attractive. Here are some pictures to give you glimpses of life on the mountains.

A red balsam flower, Impatiens kilimanjari, endemic to the forests of Kilimanjaro

A Black-and-white Colobus monkey rests in a tree in Arusha National Park

Jeannette stands among Giant Senecio trees on Kilimanjaro

I’m in a Giant Senecio grove on Shira Plateau, Kilimanjaro. These relatives of groundsel and ragwort can live over 200 years.

Tags Arusha, East Africa, Great Rift Valley, Kilimanjaro, mountains, volcanoes

Arizona

Ruby Arizona

“Any fool can be uncomfortable in the bush,” explained Howard, as he prepared delicious margarita drinks. “Personally, I always travel with the necessities.” We presumed that meant not only his margarita mixing skills but his little coffee press among other things. Howard was indeed a world traveler – an American raised in Australia, a wildlife biologist in Tanzania, where we met him.

“Are you really moving to Tucson Arizona?” he asked us. “Yes, we’ve bought into an intentional community there.” “Well then” said Howard, “you must meet my parents and visit Ruby, our ghost town.” And thus with taste and ease he created a bridge between our Tanzanian past and our American future.

Not long after we landed in Arizona we met Howard’s parents and visited Ruby. Love at first sight; we were hooked.

Ruby is an abandoned mining area being reclaimed by wildlife. We can camp by a shriveled or full lake near the sand dunes of the former tailing piles. These days the ghosts of Ruby are silent at night. From our campfire we hear only the owls and poorwills and the songs of coyotes. The stars have the sky to themselves and it’s the silence, the beauty and the wildlife that has made Ruby ghost town so important to our own survival. Here we come to free our shuttered senses from the assaults of urban ugliness, traffic, phones and the internet. At Ruby we soak in the subtler pleasures of nature and experience, that joy that only fools comfortable in the bush can claim.

Photos – the beauty of Ruby

Tags Arizona, ghost town, Ruby Mines