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Arizona Wild Bird Photos
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Saguaro Continued.
Many times while in the desert photographing, people will come up to me and say, "aren't those the most beautiful red cactus blooms you have ever seen?" I'll say, oh, where, and they will point to a Saguaro. Then I will have to stop and explain what I am about to show you.
From a distance these do look some what like blooms, but they are not.
This is the seed pod that forms after the bloom closes up.
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A closer look shows there is no flower here. Yet, I have people swear it was the cactus's bloom.
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Now we can get a closer look.
In the upper photo you can see that the left one still has its spent flower bloom still attached to its seed pod.
The lower image is a rear view of the top image.
Each one of these seed pods contains over 2000 seeds.
When visiting Arizona you can buy jellies, and in some cases, so I have heard, wine, made from the pulp of these seed pods.
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We almost forgot about pollinating.
How do suposes these cactus blooms get polenaized?
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One way is, many birds love to eat the polen. These happen to be Gila Woodpeckers.
Gile is pronoused [ HEE-LA ]
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The Mexican Long Nose Bat also helps.
They arrive here from Mexico just in time when cactuses start blooming.
I have photos of the Bats, and of the flower. I do not have a photo of the two together, even though I have seen this action,
so I put them together using a photoshop program that I have in my computer.
I will always tell you if and when I have to digitally mfg. a photo from one or more images in order to show an idea.
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