Miscellany

Things that fit nowhere else.


Thunderstorm Video (2.0MB clip)

Watch a Sonoran Desert monsoon thunderstorm. There is lightning at 1:20 and thunder 4 seconds later. It makes me yearn for the summer rain.

Filmed in late July 2003 looking out my window toward the west.

Bird Sounds (3.6MB clip)

Watch two native desert shrubs do nothing while you listen to desert birds.  The action begins with white-flowered Zinnia acerosa. Then I pan over to yellow-flower Encelia farinosa and back, pass a purple Opuntia violaceae var santarita, and finally come to rest on Mammillaria grahamii and a few other small cacti. The only sounds you hear are birds. How many different calls do you hear?

Filmed in my front yard at 11AM on a Thursday.

Bird Sounds (3.6MB clip)

Watch an Eriosyce senilis do nothing while you listen to desert birds. How many different calls do you hear?

Filmed in my front yard at midday.

 

 22 July 2007 (1.5MB PowerPoint slide show)

A typical day in the early phase of the Arizona Monsoon of 2007.

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Ferocactus wislizenii  3219 x 2429 pixels, 1.4MB (20% compression)

Full resolution, but cropped photo of Ferocactus wislizenii flowers, taken August 7, 2007.  Here, the native population produces flowers with colors in the range of yellow to salmon, orange, and red. This one grows in my front yard, and I put  it in the orange/red category.

 

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