I awoke to the sound of breaking glass coming from outside my bedroom window. Even though it was 12:30 AM, I grabbed a flashlight and headed outside in the direction of the noise, towards my neighbors' house. I knew they were out of town, and I would have wanted them to similarly keep an eye on my place while I traveled. When I reached the end of my driveway, I could see a pair of bright eyes across the street reflecting the beam of my flashlight. On a slope below where my neighbors kept their trash bins, a bear was staring directly at me. And then it turned, climbed up the slope, and sauntered away down the street. Just a few weeks later, I would have an entirely different bear story that occurred very much closer - not a hundred feet away but a mere six feet from my front door. My summer had begun several weeks earlier with lots of bear sightings in my Prescott neighborhood. There were stories of a big one that kept get...
The first of July is Rufous Hummingbird Day at my cabin in Prescott. Like most years, that was the day this summer when I saw the first one of the season perching in the alligator juniper tree adjacent to my deck. By the end of the week, that or some other male rufous had unsurprisingly supplanted a male Anna's as the new owner of my yard's hummingbird feeder. Anna's hummingbirds can reside year-round in Prescott, many surviving winter's sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms. To help them out during the arrival of the dominant rufouses, I installed a second sugar water feeder in my yard as soon I discovered the migrants. Alas within a few days, another male rufous took control of that supply of nectar also. Any Anna's imbibed only by daring occasional, furtive sips. Before the arrival of the rufous, I began spotting an occasional black-chinned hummingbird at the feeder. This bird is a summer visitor to the higher elevations of A...