At first daylight four or five redheaded turkey vultures stir in the cottonwoods where they have spent the night. They shrug their black shoulders and wait for the sun and the thermals to rise. An early blacktailed gnatcatcher chases a late moth, but the moth proves the better acrobat and makes it to safety in the thicket. Doves leave the ground with a flutter of white-barred wings and level off across the desert. By following the game trails to water, you can read the sign of nighttime visitors: The cloven-hoofed track of peccaries imprinted in the ooze, cigar-shaped coyote scat complete with fur, the flat-footed print of a striped skunk, and the larger cloven hoofprints of mule deer.
Desert amphibians? Leopard frogs live along the river and near ponds and springs.
Couch’s spadefoot toad evades drought by burrowing with specially adapted hind feet (bottom). When rains come, the toads move to the nearest puddle and mate. Their eggs hatch six times faster than those of garden toads and the tadpoles quadruple their birth weight by the second evening of life. With luck some mature before the puddle evaporates—and dig in to await another wet spell.
Soon it is full morning with flies biting, lizards scuttling, and butterflies feeding in jackass clover. By noonday a brisk breeze is shaking the cottonwood leaves, producing a sound like rushing water, and two ravens have come to croak in a little mesquite. Now they fly, with the sun striking silver from jet feathers. They circle the oasis, flapping and soaring, driving their shadows below them over the ground.
Here on a willow trunk is a life-and-death contest. Rubbed raw by the branch of a neighboring tree, the willow is exuding sap from a saucer-sized wound. Drawn to the sap, six butterflies stand on the damp spot peacefully feeding, slowly opening and closing their wings. All at once a mantidfly pounces from ambush and grabs at a butterfly with his clawed front legs. The butterfly leaps like a scared horse, and in reaction the whole group takes to the air. But in a moment they settle back down, roll out their tongues like party toys, and begin to sip. Another fierce lunge by the mantidfly, another scattering of butterflies. And all the time you can hear the tick-tick-tick of a beetle boring a burrow in the diseased wood.
As evening comes on, the doves come in from the desert, flying low along the line of seepage. The vultures return to roost, lazily circling the cottonwood’s crown. While it is still light the butterflies seek cover in the cottonwood leaves. As it gets dark the moths come out, and after them the bats, beep-beeping as they cut erratic patterns through the dusky air. Soon the breeze will die down, and the starlit night will throb with the long drawn trill of tree crickets. In the wee small hours there will be no sound, no breath of air or outward sign of life. Then suddenly along a sandy trail moves a blackness shaped like a high-backed child’s chair. It is a striped skunk, tail-high, come to take its turn at the waterhole.
