Mike in the Wild

Living in Arizona for many years, I've learned to avoid spending a lot of time outdoors in the state's vast deserts during the summer.  It seems that this forbiddingly hot season signals its arrival with the  blooms and subsequent fruit of the massive saguaro cactus in late May and early June.  And I've recently noticed that when I bravely venture back into hiking in the desert at the very end of September when temperatures finally start peaking at less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, another cactus known as the prickly pear has also bloomed and is still offering its own ripe fruit.   Native peoples have always relied on the bounty of the cactus as part of their survival in the arid conditions of the Southwest.  Not only eating the fruit, they also ate the cactus pad like modern Mexicans and other gourmets still do when they shop for nopales in the supermarket.    Needless to say, a wide variety of animal life also dine on this seasonal gift...

I have to admit that I didn't think I'd ever spend any time writing about toads or other amphibians calling Arizona home.  Of course I've seen frogs in some of the shallower ends of our ponds and lakes and I've noticed tadpoles in seasonal streams.  And I might have noticed toads jumping in a field on a camping trip to the White mountains many years ago.  But it's reptiles, another of the  animal kingdom's five most well-known classes of vertebrates, with their vast number of lizard, snake and turtle varieties that seem to thrive in and dominate this arid state.  In fact the common horny toad isn't even a toad, he's a horned lizard.  So even our amphibians are actually reptiles! Well it actually turns out that amphibians that includes all the true frogs, toads and salamanders are well represented by more than two dozen unique species in the Grand Canyon state.  And they don't all rely on the damned and managed lakes and waterways that provide most ...

Much has been rightfully written about the California condor and its close call with extinction last century.  With tremendous help it's making a comeback in Grand Canyon National Park.  Lucky visitors might just get a glimpse of this largest of North American birds soaring over the majestic landscape.  Since it's not a regular occurrence , most of us will have to settle on seeing more common birds if birding is high on our to-do list on a visit to the park. The south rim of the Grand Canyon rises to 7,000 feet in elevation, so its flat terrain hosts many of the trees you'd typically find in Arizona's mountain forests including pines, oaks and junipers.  As a result it shouldn't have been a surprise when I encountered many of the birds I've become accustomed to in similar environments like Flagstaff seventy-five miles away and Prescott over a hundred miles.   Whether you're sightseeing at the many viewpoints off the rim, setting up a tent in a camp...

Arizona is not especially known for its megafauna - very large animals that populate a given habitat.  Not since the extinction of large ground sloths in the late Pleistocene and the near extinction of bison across the continent in the 19th century have such big mammals roamed the state.  That is until 1913 when several score of elk were located to the state's White Mountains from Yellowstone.   Since then, the population of this massive deer has mushroomed to over 30,000, even with a yearly hunting season. The first time you see a male elk you might mistake him for a reindeer.  While the first time I got close to a female I thought she resembled a moose.  Of course others consider them big varieties of the common mule deer that roams the areas.  In any case most studies consider all of them cousins in a large family of even-towed ungulates known as the cervidae. The elk species has extended its range across the pine forests and meadows of the stat...

There's no simple way to write a short story about the Grand Canyon just as my weekend camping trip to its south rim confirmed there's no simple way to visit such a vast and complex national park.  The park protects a large corner of northwestern Arizona that's been eroded over millions of years by the Colorado River between present day Lake Powell in the northeast to Lake Meade in the southwest.   A mile deep, extending for more than a hundred miles in length and sometimes a dozen miles wide, the canyon's dimensions will overwhelm even the most jaded statistician when witnessed in person. Besides a geological story that's almost as old as Earth itself, the canyon is a tale of flora and fauna that have evolved and thrived at over 7,000 feet on its forested rims and of the contrasting life much lower in the deserts along the river.  Just as long as people have been on the continent, there's a millennia long account of natives, conquistadors, explorers, miners...

What stands out most on an early September hike in Prescott right now is the lush green landscape and the kaleidoscope of colors bursting from the endless varieties of blooming wildflowers.  The summer monsoon storms might have dumped close to fifteen inches of rain in the area, irrigating the parched landscape after an especially dry winter and dotting the green hillsides with red, violet and yellow flowers. Another striking sign of a seasonal change is the arrival of our rufous hummingbirds, making short stops across the state during their long migration from their breeding grounds in the Pacific Northwest to their winter homes in Latin America.   This past weekend I discovered a Townsend's warbler, another bird joining this tough-as-nails traveler on a similar journey.  Just as colorful as the abundant wildflowers, its bright yellow markings made it stand out like many of Prescott's more common warblers such as the yellow-rumped and Wilson's.   L...