Moominmama Enjoys Music and Art

In which Moominmama goes on a guided bird walk and learns about the artistry of the Salado cliff dwellers...

Moominmama awakes each morning to an orchestra of birds. The funniest of the lot are the male Gambel's quail, which have a dark plume on the top of their heads. It bobs when they peck at the ground or hustle over to the nearest bush. They also make some strange bird calls, one that sounds like a tired squeaky toy, and another to the beat of "Chi-CA-go" as if you'd stepped on and off aforementioned squeaky toy.

When I went on a guided bird walk one morning, I had a chance to ask what the quail bird calls were about. Vera, our guide, said they were basically announcing their presence. She also taught us various mnemonic devices for remembering bird calls. Like the owl that hoots: "Are you awake? Me too."

Walking to the bath house not long after, I spotted a quail on the limb of a bush, issuing its one-note toot. I imitated -- and that quail took off in a big hurry! I suspect now those squeaky-toy toots are a territorial signal! 

The sounds surprise me every morning as my wake-up call, but they are one of dozens of songs, probably hundreds, outside my trailer. Arizona, according to Vera, has the third largest diversity of birds after Texas and California. One of my favorites is the curved-bill thrasher, which has a lovely complex and cheerful birdsong.

Combine the curved-bill thrasher with all the mockingbirds, sparrows and finches, and every morning is a new concert! (Photos here are from online sources not my own.)

Moominmama is learning to use her binoculars to spot the birds, which aren't so hard to find because the tall saguaros are a common vantage point for serenading the rest of us below. 

The Gila woodpecker is one of the birds that drills out nests inside the saguaros. Not only do they raise their own young there, but since they make a new nest every year, many other birds, including owls, use the second-hand nests.

Vera brought with her a nest removed from a dead saguaro to show us what they look like (the open end at the top would normally appear as a hole on the side of the Saguaro, and the tube would drop down into the center of the cactus, between its ribs).

The shape is created by the cactus as it responds to the woodpecker's removal of its plant tissue. The cactus walls off the injury to protect itself and in the process creates this sheltered tube for bird eggs or baby birds.

Besides bird watching, Moominmama paid a visit to one of the cliff dwellings that make up the Tonto National Monument near the Salt River. 

These may also be a fine example of beneficial co-existance because the Salado people who lived there demonstrate the skills of both Pueblo cliff builders in the north and the irrigation techniques of the early Hohokam to the south. (Salado is taken from the Spanish word for salt, the name of the river). It's unclear whether the Salado were descendants of one or another of these people, more likely a creative blend of the two.

Because they were creative! The cliff dwelling was largely intact when it was discovered by white explorers and settlers in the 1880s. At that time, the rooms were full of decorated pottery shards, intricate basketwork, grinding stones for corn and other signs of culture.

Between the 1880s and the time this area won protection as a national monument, immense damage was done including walls breached, artifacts taken and roofs torn down in this two-story structure that housed an estimated 40 people. 

Interesting to me was that neither this cliff dwelling nor others nearby had ceremonial "kivas" that were common in Mesa Verde and some of the other Ancestral Pueblo communities. The Salado were using many of the same building techniques but had not brought the Pueblo culture with them in its entirety.

And like the Hohokam, they created irrigation ditches to get water to their crops, which included not just corn but cotton! The Salado created remarkable lace-like fabrics out of cotton and traded widely.

They also used multiple colors and patterns in their pottery, like this one at left. And it appears the designs they pioneered soon spread to other communities.

This was apparently one of the benefits of being located along the Salt River where it meets the Tonto River. Other objects found in the area included items that came from as far away as modern-day Mexico. But living at a crossroads of different peoples may also be one of the reasons the Salado took to the cliffs. No weapons were found in the cliff dwelling, but there are lookout holes in various spots suggesting a defensive stance.

I asked the guide how on earth the cliff dwellers grew food and collected water for 40 people, then traveled up and down the one ladder that provided original access the lower cliff dwelling. And he suggested the Salado's artistic expertise may have enabled them to trade for basic necessities. They may have been one of the first artisan classes in the Americas.

These cliff dwelling are actually relatively recent, built starting around the 1300s and abandoned by the mid-1400s. It appears they were only fully occupied for about 100 years. 

I leave you with another piece of surprising artwork, this one entirely natural. This is called the Wave Cave for obvious reasons, and visitors sometimes pose inside the wave as if on a surfboard. This was a fun hike, one of many rocky trails in the volcano-made Superstition Mountains!