Mike in the Wild

There may be no more entertaining way to see a wide variety of North American mammals up close than at Bearizona, northern Arizona's wildlife park.  Sprawling in a corner of the state's vast ponderosa pine tree forest, the site offers several ways to see many native animals like bobcats and black bears, along with several species of birds, through a drive-through safari, a meandering zoo, and scheduled performances starring its non-human residents.  Writing about my first visit initially tempts me to draw comparisons to a Disney cartoon as some of the critters are just so darn cute and approachable.  Isn't that black bear lazily sprawled in the dirt, with his outstretched leg resting on a tree trunk, Baloo from "Jungle Book?"  And that red fox in the zoo looks as adorable and happy as any of the frolicking canines in "The Fox and the Hound."  Are these animals going to cut loose and actually sing?  Well, almost.  I had to think of P. T. Barnum as w...

It's the surprises in birding that are often the most exciting: finding white pelicans wintering in Phoenix; snapping shots of rose-breasted grosbeaks as they make a quick stop in your yard during spring migration north; and, like I did this week, encountering a brand new bird, a roseate spoonbill, on  Watson Lake in Prescott, Arizona,  hundreds of miles from its normal range. Vagrants are not unusual in many species of birds. After all, they have the ability to fly, so they can often easily travel great distances if successful in finding food and the climate is agreeable.  But the spoonbill is a coastal bird, common in the United States along the Gulf of Mexico in Texas and Florida.  However the juvenile that showed up in central Arizona may have come from a closer location, somewhere along the Sea of Cortez or the western coast of Mexico where the bird is also a resident. Making the arduous journey inland and so far north may have been aided by summer monsoon s...

Nature doesn't always work like clockwork, but there are often easily predictable wildlife habits at specific times of the day.  I remember one late spring when an elf owl in Madera Canyon appeared nightly as she exited her nest very close to sunset, thrilling congregations of waiting birders.  Also at nightfall, but in the coldest part of Phoenix' winter, five or six hummingbirds regularly gathered at my home's feeder for a nutritious drink to sustain them while the overnight temperature plummeted close to freezing. Again at dusk, I was fortunate to observe at least one skunk visit my Prescott yard daily over a recent two-week period.  It wasn't the first time I've seen this nocturnal animal on my property, but the encounters stood out because of both their regularity and their frequency. Unfortunately I've mostly seen skunks as roadkill, where they join raccoons as the most easily recognizable victims on our busy roads.  Of course, it's the animals...

Any walk in the mountain forests across Arizona is usually accompanied by a cacophony of squawks from either a couple different species of jays or, more likely, from acorn woodpeckers.  These clown-like birds are not only noisy, but they're  especially animated in their interactions with each other or in their encounters with any interested humans. It's easy to get close to the acorn woodpecker; I regularly watch them munching the suet, grabbing the peanuts and slurping the water that I put out for the dozens of mountain and migratory birds that visit my Prescott yard.  As a result, I've seen up-close not only their glaring white eyes and their tuxedo-like body plumage, but also their intimate contact with each other and with other birds.   The woodpecker loves to angrily dive at Woodhouse's scrub jays that compete with them for the nuts I've vainly put out to attract Steller's jays.   Like a penguin, t hey waddle down branches as they leap to the ...