Thursday, March 15, 2007

For the Birds

One of the places I've recently been to visit in my quest to get outdoors is the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It's has some great exhibits,and lets you get up close and personal with some of the desert creatures. While all the lizards and other reptiles appeared to still be hibernating, the river otters were putting up a great show, as were some of the other animals.

While watching the Collared Peccary browse on the shrubs in their enclosure, I spotted a brilliant red cardinal - even when I lived in the north, I don't think I ever saw a cardinal quite so brilliantly colored! Sadly, he wouldn't sit still for a photograph - but once we got into the aviary, I managed to get a pretty good one of a female cardinal.


In the same aviary, I managed to sneak up on a Dove and snap its photo...


There were plenty of other animal sightings, though it seemed this visit had me entranced with birds - I had an opportunity to watch a cactus wren in the process of building a nest (sadly, no photos as I didn't have the camera in hand at the time) and a tiny hummingbird nesting - I had never seen a hummingbird nest before! No photos of that as the camera refused to cooperate and kept focusing on things other than the bird in question.

If you ever find yourself in Arizona and are looking to learn a bit more about the Sonoran Desert, I recommend a visit!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How old is the Museum? I think that might have been where I went as a teenage when we visited my grandmother. As someone from the east coast I found the large cacti fascinating.

Anonymous said...

Ooh. My folks have cardinals and blue jays at home in CT, but we don't seem to have them down here in DC. Of course, we do get to see great blue herons with some frequency, so maybe I don't have the right to complain.

Why are doves so much more appealing than their cousin, the pigeon?

The museum was closed when I was out in Tucson two years ago, but if I get back, it's on the top of my list of places to visit!

Anonymous said...

We were in Tucson two(?) years ago and visited this museum as well as the Center for Creative Photography at UA, Saguaro National Park, Tucson Botanical Gardens, and Sabino Canyon. It had been a rainy winter, so the desert was in bloom, but the temps were barely breaking 60. We had a great time, found Tucson very easy to navigate, and would definitely recommend this as a winter destination.