Mike in the Wild

No single place on Earth might be more associated with the Pleistocene than the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.  Naturally occurring asphalt has been seeping from the area's ground for tens of thousands of years, trapping and preserving all forms of ancient life in its sticky embrace.    At the end of the Ice Age, twelve thousand years ago, the flat coastal planes of Southern California were teeming with now extinct mega fauna like mammoths and giants sloths.  When the asphalt, mistakenly called tar, was excavated for commercial purposes starting in the 19th century, quarry men noticed numerous bones in the material.  Scientists eventually discovered that many of these bones were those of  Pleistocene behemoths.  The grounds are now preserved in a park-like setting with at least one working excavation site.  Asphalt still seeps from fissures and abandoned pits, while methane gas bubbles up from some of the more watery pools.  A museum wi...

One guarantee for good bird watching in your own yard is to place feeders there.  It seems like half of all the homes in the Phoenix area maintain sugar water-filled hummingbird feeders to attract the hyper-fast, iridescent Anna's variety.  Seeds will bring a plethora of house finches along with more colorful residents like northern cardinals.  Suet is popular with many birds including woodpeckers.  And migratory orioles are known to return to specific homes that put out orange or other fruit slices. But the absolute easiest and cheapest way to attract birds to your backyard is with simple landscaping.  I was reminded of this very recently when I noticed one of the desert's most common birds, the verdin, making frequent stops in a museum palo verde tree I planted over a year ago.  It seems fitting that a bird as associated with the Desert Southwest as the verdin would find good foraging in Arizona's official state tree.  Two varieties of the drough...

Spectacular.  There's no other word I can use to describe my first-time encounter with humpback whales. Any winter visit to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja California Peninsula usually guarantees a sighting of these visiting ocean giants.  Many come close enough to shore for resort vacationers to even catch a glimpse from the beach.  Deep sea fishermen and cruise ship passengers frequently see them from their respective decks.  And whale watching tour groups regularly bring tourists in close proximity.  But my own up-close encounter was from aboard a Zodiac boat on a return trip from a coral reef snorkeling excursion. The little craft's crew had given us hope that we might run into some of these whales as sightings had just started that late November week.  Humpback whales range all over the globe and generally follow a pattern of feeding during the summer in polar regions while mating and birthing their young in tropical and semitropical waters l...

While the bays around Cabo San Lucas in Baja California, Mexico are currently welcoming spectacular humpback whales for their annual winter visits, the coral reefs in the area have a colorful array of tropical fish in residence year-round.  Two reefs easy to reach either from nearby beaches or by a short boat ride from Cabo's harbor are Santa Maria Cove and Chileno Bay.  I chose the latter means of transport to visit these Sea of Cortez gems, taking a fast Zodiac boat tour organized by my cruise ship's tour desk. Each site has calm, shallow waters and most importantly vibrant and healthy coral reefs.  With less than an hour at each reef, I wasn't expecting to see the abundant and vast array of fish I witnessed.   Having learned to identify a number of individual species in Maui, I was excited to see some new and unique specimens in the same families.  And thanks to that experience, I was able to distinguish surgeonfish from filefish, and to find a first t...

Mexico's Baja California peninsula comprises two states, Baja California in the north and Baja California Sur in the south.  Close to the southernmost tip is Cabo San Lucas, a fishing village turned resort city and cruise destination.  The city serves as a base for both sports fisherman and whale watchers seeking their targets in the teeming tropical waters where the Pacific Ocean meets the Gulf of California.   The single most popular activity in the area is hiring a boat to explore the picturesque rocks that mark Baja California's land's end.  The most famous landmark in the area is El Arco or The Arch of Cabo San Lucas, a natural formation serving as a kind of window between the vast ocean and the smaller gulf.   While the underwater world offers adventurers unlimited attractions in the form of marlins, humpback whales and reef fish,  the native birds and seals rely on the same sea not for sport or sightseeing but for their meals and surviv...