‘Tis the season to tour the Tucson parks for waterfowl, one of the best ways I know to while away a chilly November morning (well, chilly by Tucson standards, at least). Duck numbers have been notably low this fall so far, and diversity unimpressive, but that can’t spoil the fun of easy close-up views of [...]

I had just enough time after dropping Alison at Phoenix this morning to run past the golf course at Casa Grande to pay my respects to the only known Northern Jacana in the US. You’ll recall the furor this bird occasioned when its presence became known last fall: forty years ago, this species bred in [...]

We’d planned a day trip to the Gulf of California today, but waking to heavy rain, we decided to stay home instead. Late in the afternoon, the skies lightened a bit, so we went into Tucson for a walk around Reid Park.
The roses were even more beautiful after the rain.

And we agreed that this one [...]

The birds weren’t overwhelming, but the birding was great on the Santa Cruz Flats Saturday morning with Michael. We started out with the largest flock of Eurasian Collared-Doves I’d ever seen in Arizona, 260 birds perched on wires in Marana. It was a puzzling sight at first, but the nearly total absence of that species [...]

Finally, after five years in our house, I’ve seen a mammal that so many Tucson neighborhoods take for granted. When I pulled out of the long driveway onto the paved road this morning, a square face poked out of the shallow wash, and loped easily across the road into the vegetation on the other side. [...]