A haven in the heat

The excessive heat doesn't bother me that much since I have an AC, but I sure worry about the trees. The cottonwood is shedding leaves like crazy. And I lavished so much water on it to get those leaves. I may just have to give up on having a cottonwood. A live one, anyway.

Because we had a good soaking rain in December, and then a late cool spring, the native vegetation isn't hurting bad yet, but I don't know how long these triple digit temps are going to last.

My Standing Cypress is standing tall.

And I saw my first Question Mark butterfly for the year. It's on Desert Tobacco (nicotiana trigonophylla).

Fledglings are everywhere. Also a lot of feeding nestlings going on. Here's an Ash-throated Flycatcher waiting impatiently for me to move away from its nestbox on the carport.

I even saw a couple of late migrants come to the water drip in the heat of the day (Wilson's Warbler, and Warbling Vireo).

A week ago after we banded hummingbirds here, we went to the Ervin's residence to band, three miles from here. (see post of May 26) While there, Kelly banded a female Lucifer with 14 gorget feathers. I saw it but neither of us got a photo. When I got back to CMO, that hummer was here. So I was obsessed with photographing it. I got a side shot that didn't show its gorget feathers, but finally today, the 7th day, I got one quick shot showing the feathers. YAY! I don't know what the record is. I asked Kelly and will update this post when I find out.

UPDATE: Kelly said 18 gorget feathers is the record. Here's a photo he took of the record holder at the Ervin's residence.