I have just returned from eight days in one of my favorite places in the whole wide world—the Sonoran Desert in southeastern Arizona. Ya, I know what you are thinking. What they heck was I thinking going to the desert in the US in the middle of summer? Well, it’s actually not as bad as you might think. I do this every year. In fact it is by far the most wildlife rich areas I have ever seen even in all the sun baked heat.

First of all it’s the monsoon season in the desert which means each afternoon in the peak of the oppressive heat, clouds build up and thunderstorms break out all over the place which helps to cool things down. Although rain has been nearly non-existent this year, the clouds did help to cool things down even without the associated rain.

I spent my early mornings before the day got too hot photographing hummingbirds. There were up to 8 species of hummers congregating at nectar feeders. I stopped into a friend’s house that keeps track of how many hummingbirds she is feeding each and every day during the migration. By measuring exactly how much nectar (sugar water) the hummers are consuming each day she is able to calculate how many hummingbirds she had visiting her feeders. On the day that I visited she had 1416 hummers that drank 8.18 quarts of nectar in one day. That was the highest count of hummers during the fall migration she has ever seen in the ten years of monitoring. Her feeders were swarming with hummingbirds and I got several nice images showing the buzz of activity.

The middle of the day, which is the hottest, was spent moving from one location to another to get ready for the evening photo session. The evenings were spent setting up for night-time photography of bats and other small mammals. This year I tried to concentrate on photographing bats getting a drink of water from a small pond in the middle of the parched desert.

This involves setting up many flash units (some installed just inches over the waters surface) all connected to some amazingly complicated electronics. The image I was after was bats taking a drink of water. After a feeding on a huge variety of insects the bats need to wash it all down with a drink of water. The bats would fly down and skim the surface of a small pond and grab a quick drink. Using an inferred beam of light the bats themselves would trigger the flash and camera capturing the drinking action. I got several nice images of this behavior.

However, none of this compared to something that happened on evening. I was working on photograph a southern Grasshopper Mouse (Onychomys torridus). These are small compact mice with short tails that make a living by eating, as you guessed, grasshoppers and other insects. They are the most carnivorous (insectivorous) of all the mice.

But this was not the cool part. The grasshopper mouse is well known to stand on their hind legs, throw their heads back and howl like a wolf. Well, not exactly like a wolf. They sound more like a mouse but I think you get the idea. Both the male and female do this behavior.

About two years ago I was in the desert working on photographing grasshopper mice again when I thought I saw one stand up, throw it’s head back and howl. What I heard was an extremely high pitched, thin whistle but I wasn’t positive. Last week while trying to photograph one I had my back turned to the mouse. I suddenly heard a very high pitched, thin whistle that almost hurts your years. Immediately I remember the sound from two years ago. I spun around and there was this grasshopper mouse. As I watched he would scamper over to a small rock, climb on top, throw his head back and give his mouse-like wolf howl. I spent the next several hours photographing him/her howling. Head back and mouth open. You can’t image how thrilled I was to finally see and photograph something that I had read about but had never actually seen or even known anyone who had seen it.

What role this howling accomplished I don’t know. But as a naturalist and wildlife photographer every encounter that is documented in pictures and experiences adds to the over all body of scientific knowledge.

I wrapped up my adventure in the desert with many hours of hummingbird photography and headed for home completely exhausted from lack of sleep and way too much fun. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photography wildlife. He can be contacted via his web page at www.naturesmart.com