Mike in the Wild

I had never witnessed a wild turkey in Prescott until last summer while I was on a run.  It was a first-time encounter, and one I couldn't repeat when I drove back to the same spot with my camera two hours later.  Before that, the closest I'd gotten to the possibility of seeing any of the birds was when I ran into two hunters with bows and arrows and who were on the lookout for turkeys on Spruce Mountain ten miles away.  However this year it's a completely different story with numerous turkey sightings not only in my neighborhood but in my own yard.  It was while running along Javelina Trail above nearby Camp Emmanuel Pines that I saw my first flock this year.  I counted at least three adults and around a dozen juveniles.  A couple of weeks later I encountered a similarly-sized flock two miles away and much lower on the trail.  After recounting the experience to a neighbor a little while later, she soon observed a completely different flock on her stre...

I could never say I had ever seen an albatross until my last visit to Kauai a month ago.  On my previous trip four years ago I hadn't even looked for them; before that particular visit, I was always there out of their season.  But this time I stumbled upon the birds in a development crowded with homes, condos, and resorts.  It turned out you don't need to be on a ship at sea to witness an albatross in the wild. There are more than a dozen species of albatrosses.  The wandering albatross is the largest seabird in the world, with a wingspan up to eleven and a half feet.  But the one I encountered on Kauai, the Laysan, was much smaller; the species' wingspan is not even seven feet.  In fact another local visiting seabird, the magnificent frigatebird, is slightly larger.   I paused to look at two birds soaring overhead when I was touring Princeville in Kauai, a densely developed resort community atop a peninsula on the Hawaiian island's north shore....

I was more excited about snorkeling at Ke'e Beach than anywhere else on my recent visit to Kauai.  Of the renowned sites on the Hawaiian island's north shore, it was the only one I'd not managed to visit on my two previous trips starting in 2020.  I might have only ever snorkeled there once before, thirty years ago on my very first trip to anywhere in Hawaii, and I remembered almost nothing about it.    Luckily two weeks before my latest arrival, I secured a mandatory reservation for entrance to the site, part of Ha'ena State Park, along with a remote parking spot and a shuttle between the sites, all for forty dollars.  However I was surprised to learn that the other travelers on my shuttle weren't going to the park's famous beach, Ke'e, but instead were setting out for a completely different adventure: a hike along the Kalalau Trail.   The trail hugs Kauai's remote and spectacular Napali coastline, a remote palisade of volcanic cliffs that tower over ...

The hotel outside Chichen Itza epitomized the entire region in a way.  Mayaland Hotel was indeed within the home of the Maya, but it was closed indefinitely.   Until the Covid pandemic shuttered the adjacent entrance to the archaeology park, Mayaland was just a short walk away for overnight tourists.  Now, like the ancient city and towering temples it looked out upon, its best days were most likely behind it.    The Maya are an indigenous people that have inhabited southeast Mexico and northern Central America for millennia.  Their pre-Hispanic civilization was renowned for its large cities and towering temples that remain today as archaeological sites in various states of excavation, preservation, and reconstruction.  While these cities each have their own unique histories, all the Maya ultimately shared the same fate at the hands of sixteenth century Spanish invaders and missionaries: conquest and subjugation.  Nevertheless the people ...

Visiting cenotes while traveling through the Yucatán Peninsula was never high on my priority list.  Birdwatching, exploring Mayan archaeological sites, snorkeling, beachcombing, and cervezas at sunset were the activities that most excited me as I planned my six-day road trip in Mexico.  But on the route from Playa del Carmen to Chichen Itza, there were more than a dozen cenotes on the map, all advertised with prominent signs on the road as I soon discovered.  So before setting out in the car, my husband and I picked two cenotes to check out: Chichikan and Ik Kil.   Ik Kil cenote near Chichen Itza. Cenotes are sinkholes in the limestone earth that have filled with fresh water from rain and the region's natural aquifer.  Rivers on the Yucatán Peninsula only flow underground, and the cenotes are often glimpses at, and entrances to, these waterways.  The idea of swimming or tubing in this cold water had never appealed to me, especially in a dark, creepy ca...

It wasn't long ago that I wrote about olive-throated parakeets on my visit to Belize.  There wasn't actually much to report except that while on a visit to a Mayan pyramid, I watched several fly overhead, failing miserably to capture any photographs of them.  Well, I'm happy to write that on my return to the Yucatán Peninsula two months later, I had much better luck.   The two trips to the region were markedly different.  The first, in February, was merely a short stop on a cruise where I booked an excursion that comprised a bus trip to the Altun Ha archaeological complex and a return by boat down the Belize River.  It was a fantastic journey filled with lots of spectacular wildlife sightings, but no parrot pictures during my short shoreside stay.  The second visit in April  was an actual six-day land vacation where I flew in and out of Cancun and rented a car to explore a wide swath of Mexico's Yucatán. This latest trip began with two nights at t...