Mike in the Wild

I started the New Year with a new discovery in my birding adventure - a pair of male canvasbacks in Phoenix's Granada Park that have already spent at least a month there.  It turned out that regular January outings along all my neighborhood's lakes, ponds and canals guaranteed sightings of even more water fowl visiting the area this winter.   Mallards, American wigeons and ring-necked ducks are frequent and plentiful seasonal migrants to the desert's waterways.  Their group counts seem to number in the dozens or even hundreds depending on the size of the body of the water.   But other visitors seem to come in pairs like the canvasbacks I saw at the beginning of the month or even as individuals like the lone wood duck I observed in a flowing canal last weekend.   I was also excited to find a sort of harem of common mergansers - a single male with at least five females - on a Biltmore community lake.  At a second lake I saw a lone female ho...

I remember the first time I snorkeled almost 30 years ago at Trunk Bay on the Island of Saint John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Of all the beautiful and colorful fish living on the coral reefs, no species impressed me more than the parrotfish.  Its pastel shades of pinks, blues and greens seemed more fitting in an Easter basket than in an underwater habitat. While researching the identity of the several parrotfish I've since photographed on snorkeling trips in the Caribbean, in the Sea of Cortez and off Maui, I've discovered some fascinating facts about this group of fish that comprises almost a hundred unique species.   Most interestingly is they're not named after the parrot because of the vibrant colors they share with those tropical birds.  Rather it's because of their beak-like set of teeth.  The parrotfish's many teeth are tightly packed giving the appearance of a single, solid bill and allowing them to scrape algae from coral and rocks for...

Every stop on a Caribbean cruise is an opportunity to explore a new island's unique culture and history.   The region's human story began with native peoples settling the wide-flung archipelagos in pre-Colombian times and continued more recently with Europeans settling them with colonists and African slaves.  And today many of us are able to visit these tropical gems via a short stay off a ship or on a longer lucky vacation, adding our own cultural dynamic as modern tourists. But beyond the gift shops and tiki bars, resorts and restaurants, there is a natural history story on a geological timeline of continental shifts, volcanic eruptions and coral reef formations.  Before man's footprint altered the landscape, a wide range of unique flora and fauna evolved on these islands.  The underwater life that lives just offshore in the shallows might have been less permanently altered by the millennia-long encroachment by humans.  At least I'd like to think th...

I am not a thrill seeker.  I eschew zip lining; I'd rather hide in a blind in the same treetops to actually see the birds that others speedily glide past.  As a child I avoided roller coasters in favor of Ferris wheels where I could enjoy the scenery from a bird's eye view and at a very human pace.  So I'm wondering how I reached a point on my 55th birthday where I deliberately chose to swim with sharks.  Most of the Bahamas lie above the Tropic of Cancer but it still has a mild winter climate that is more tropical than temperate.  Nowhere is this more evident than out on the coral reefs that encircle the nation's more than seven hundred islands and cays.  Diving and snorkeling, not to mention sport fishing, are a mainstay of its important tourist economy.   So on a stop in Nassau on New Providence Island during my birthday cruise I was eager to snorkel on a teeming and picturesque reef. Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas offers fully escorted dives a...

After spotting a lone male wood duck at Granada Park last spring, I've enjoyed return visits in hopes of finding other surprise visitors.  Like many urban parks in the Phoenix area, Granada is home to man-made lakes that provide a year-round safe habitat for water fowl like mallards, ring-necked ducks, American coots and even a few domestic ducks that have escaped a fate on our dinner tables.  Besides the wood duck, I've spotted other migratory water fowl like common mergansers and goldeneyes at the site.  On a spontaneous visit this week I was excited to encounter two new birds in the park's lower pond, both male canvasbacks joining in the mix of ducks crowding a bank location where visitors regularly feed them.  They stood out because of their bright white backs and glowing red eyes, not to mention a certain wariness as they seemed to mostly linger on the flock's perimeter.  Apparently early English settlers considered the bird's color to be close to the hue...