D Nichols Photoblog: June 2025

June 2025: Staying Cool

It got hot this month in Albuquerque. At times, I considered escape to somewhere cooler, maybe a couple of days in Taos. But thinking about the extreme drought throughout New Mexico, it caused me sadness to imagine the carbon I would burn for this quick escape. It wouldn't buy more than a couple days respite, and would contribute to the very heat and dryness that I wanted to escape. Maybe next month I'll do something different, but for June, I decided to stick around and seek enjoyment and contentment where I am. The Sandias allowed some cooling relief without having to drive far. Also, with all the bird nesting activity in the trees behind my condo, there was plenty to observe right from my balcony. The highlight: A Pigeon nest.

In the six years I've lived in this 2nd floor apartment, there have been no pigeons in my "backyard." There's a nesting Ladderback family, Black-Chinned Hummingbirds, House Finches, House Sparrows, Say's Phoebe, Curve-Billled Thrasher, and the full complement of resident Doves. Last year, the backyard adventure was a Mourning Dove fledgling who landed on my balcony and needed a day to figure out how to fly away. I got to witness the parents' regular visits to the balcony for feeding. This year, for unknown reasons, the Rock Pigeons moved in to nest on the rooftops, much to the annoyance of the building owner and property manager. One pair nested in a crook of a tree at eye level from my balcony, maybe 50 feet away. I was moved to watch the attentive care with which both parents brooded over their offspring.

I first noticed this pigeon sitting on a nest of pine needles at the end of May. (Doves are known for minimalism in nest building.) Day in, day out, either this pigeon, or a 2nd larger one with a darker head, sat on the nest. At first, they sat low. As they began to sit higher, like this one, I suspected the eggs had hatched. Pigeons and Doves are altricial, very small and helpless at birth. I marveled at the patience of these parents brooding their young. I myself was quite impatient to see something different happening.

On June 10th, a nestling was finally large enough and mature enough to show itself. For at least a week, maybe more, this baby was growing quickly, low in the nest where I couldn't see her. The parents hovered officiously near by. Then one parent, I think the father by his larger size, came into the nest for a feeding.

I was able to get some video within those first few days. The first shows how the nestling pokes and prods at daddy to ask for feeding. The 2nd is a short clip from the actual feeding, which lasted more than two minutes on this occasion. (Warning: Pigeon crop feeding is not a pretty sight).

Three days later, pinfeathers had sprouted all over the nestling's body. (The colored pencil illustration above is from that day.) At times, I thought that I saw a 2nd baby, but was never sure of that. 8 days after the first sighting, the nestling had a lot more gray feathers, and was actively begging for a feeding before mom entered the nest (which she did shortly after I took this photo.)

This was the last day I saw the baby. For a couple of days, the parents were still hanging close, and at times seemed to be attending to something out of my sight just on the other side of the trunk. Maybe she had branched? A couple days later, no evidence of parents or child. So, perhaps a successful fledgling, perhaps not, and I'll never know.

Which leads me to this quote from Margaret Renkl, whose wonderful book The Comfort of Crows I read this month.

"To play close attention to the world is to exist in medias res. . . We can see some of the creatures we share our world with, or at least some evidence of their nearness, but we cannot know the full arc of their story. Every encounter in the outdoors is an episode with a cliffhanger ending.

In the wild, we see either the story's vulnerable beginning, or its territorial middle, or its heartbreaking end, but we almost never see more than one of these stages for an individual. . . We try to convince ourselves that only the happy ending is possible, that any tragedies we fail to witness are tragedies that never happened. That kind of ignorance is a gift we give ourselves because we are made so uneasy by uncertainty."

Woodpeckers in Cienega Picnic Grounds

On one of my visits to seek coolness in the Sandias, I encountered something I had never seen before. A Hairy Woodpecker was flying out from a tree and hovering for awhile in the air, like a Flycatcher, Yellow-Rumped Warbler, or Hummingbird. He did this twice, returning to the trees in between for more typical Woodpecker foraging behavior. I can only imagine he was trying to catch insects: no other purpose comes to mind. But why? If anyone else has observed this, I would really like to hear about it.

I ran into Laurel Ladwig out there, completing her Climate Watch survey. She pointed out a Sapsucker cavity in a tree by the parking area.

Shortly after seeing the cavity, I observed a Red-Naped Sapsucker male moving from tree to tree, closer and closer to the cavity. He eventually landed in front of the cavity. Another Sapsucker, presumably the female, emerged from the cavity, and he took her place. I supposed they were brooding eggs.

Two weeks later, I returned. Now the unmistakable sound of nestling begging emerged from the cavity. Both the male and female Sapsucker foraged nearby, frequently bringing food to the cavity. In the first photo below, you can see a tree filled with sapsucker holes, where I saw both parents foraging.

What else did I do to stay content and engaged in this heat?

There was my Sketchers group. A small group of us recently enjoyed a morning in the cool shade at Bike-In Coffee near Old Town.

And last Monday, I took the Railrunner up to Santa Fe with a couple friends from the bird survey for the Public Lands Rally. At the El Dorado Hotel, the Western Governor's Association was meeting with U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. In front of the hotel, we added our voices to the crowd chanting "Not for Sale." (This is as much bird-related as everything else here, for without protection of our public lands, the habitats of many creatures will suffer.)

Final Words

To close off this month, here are some pretty pictures of some of the beautiful creatures I encountered in my visits to the Sandias this month. May July bring monsoons and cooler weather.