Arizona Wildlife
During the early evening of my 5th day in Arizona, I parked my car just before a bridge over South Fork Cave Creek a couple of miles from my lodging. I was looking for an Elegant Trogon, a spectacular Mexican bird that crosses the boarder into SE Arizona. Several had been seen fairly regularly near the bridge. As I walked onto the bridge, this black bear walked out from underneath it. It turned around to look at me, then wandered up the hillside and disappeared.
While I did not see the Elegant Trogon that night, I did see it the next morning and captured this photo.
On my trip, I saw a variety of animals including many deer such as this one.
In the Portal area, I came across a couple of Javelinas, a pig like species found in South America, Central America, Mexico and in the southwestern US.
Also in Portal, I saw this White-nosed Coati in a tree near the lodge where I was staying. It was getting ready to raid some bird feeders.
I did not spend much of any time photographing insects on the trip, but I did like this photo of a dragonfly I captured.
While I saw several different butterfly species, this is the only decent photo that I captured.
There were many different geckos and lizards scampering about throughout my trip. I believe this one is a Desert Spiny Lizard and was about 5” in body length.
Usually, I try to take some landscape photos while I am in a new location, but I ended up taking very few on this trip. This is one I took near Ramsey Canyon on the morning of my 4th day.
In the evening of my 5th day, my cell phone emergency alert went off. The phone was giving me a warning for a potentially severe dust storm. As I headed back towards my lodging, the dust storm was coming in, obscuring the nearby mountains.
I spent my last night in Tucson. After checking in, I headed to Sweetwater Wetlands to look for birds. I picked up one new life species, this Harris Hawk that I spotted in the distance just outside the park boundaries. However, the bigger surprise came just a few moments later.
Looking down from the hawk, I spotted this bobcat wandering down the pathway away from me.
That’s it for posts from my Arizona trip. I do not have anything planned in the short term, so it may be a couple of weeks before my next post. Cheers.