The Disguising Canopy Of Grass

Out on the arid wash of the Arizona desert my appearance was assailed by shrill cries of ‘cry-baby, cry-baby—baby—babeee’. "Cry-baby yourself," I protested, noting the fast sprint of the noisy killdeer up riverward. Turning downstream, while the alarmist stopped with bead perilously a-jerk, I searched the beach, and then combed it carefully again. At the point of a gravel bar four light, clay-colored eggs, heavily splotched with dark sepia-brown, revealed the plover's ambitions. Only a stone's toss beyond the thin Cottonwood, spiny cane cactuses, leafless palo verde, and bulky bisnaga battled with the wasteland's suffocating drought. What secret enchantment of this glaring ribbon of sand, between parallel rows of fragile green, lured shore birds into the desert?

Where mesquite advanced from the Hassavampa's cottonwooded bank off into fiercely armed ranks of golden-spined jumping cholla, I dodged through the tangled thorn. Abruptly, with explosive thunder of wings, a desert or Gambel's quail burst from tall, withered grass stems at my feet. Before I could halt, I had stepped over a tiny "hut" of arched grasses. Turning, I carefully drew back the thatch of dead, weathered blades, and uncovered the quail's hidden treasure, a clutch of twenty speckled eggs. Quickly my camera recorded the creamy ovals, so variously dotted and clouded with lavender-brown. Scarcely had the upper layer been turned in the nest-hollow so as to present their different markings to a second film, when one egg stirred somewhat in the manner of an oversized jumping bean, and I stared fascinated at a circular crack widening from a new-made point in its shell.

After all those tedious weeks of incubation I had come at the magic moment of emergence of the baby quail! With astonishing alacrity they neatly uncapped the creamy eggs. Soon striped, fuzzy first-comers were intent upon exploration of the weedy maze beyond the nest rim, while the last damp youngsters clambered from encumbering shells. After many frustrations the lively twenty were gathered together in their grassy cradle. Hastily, with a fast flicker of the shutter, I snatched the picture, and then drew the disguising canopy of grass stems over the babes. Farther on came discovery of two pure-white eggs of a mourning dove. Negligently cradled on a thin twig-mat, the frail pair rested precariously on the creviced, roughbarked, horizontal arm of an alamo. Intriguing, this dissimilarity in nest protection, yet in keeping with countless other contrasts of a desert refuge.

By: davidbunch

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