Mike in the Wild

A day at sea is an ideal way to observe the wide variety of wildlife that lives much of its life at the ocean's surface, where salt water meets air.  Of course only a small percentage of fish species regularly breaks through this barrier: the flying fish is one.  Meanwhile hundreds of varieties of birds know how to dive underwater hunting for food.  And many mammals like whales and seals thrive in this zone, as they spend all or significant periods of their lives swimming through the seas. So whether your interest is in birding or whale watching, a plethora of tour companies offer an itinerary that will satisfy your curiosity about these surface-visiting animals.  Hornblower Cruises, for one, offers a three-and-a-half hour winter trip twice a day out of San Diego for sightings of gray whales as they migrate between Alaska and Baja.  I wasn't disappointed on my sunny, mid-January trip when the staff pointed out eight individual southbound gray whales, incl...

It is well known that many whales migrate great distances from feeding grounds in cold waters closer to the poles to breeding grounds in the warmer waters of the tropics.  Some species like the humpback whale range throughout all the oceans and seas of the world while others like the gray whale have a much smaller range.   But all these species have the same story of near extinction due to over-hunting and then, more recently, some recovery thanks to a global effort to stop the slaughter. However the Atlantic populations of the gray whale were indeed hunted to extinction over two hundred years ago when mankind coveted its blubber for lamp oil and its baleen for corsets.  But the species survived in the Pacific with a small group hanging on near Russia, and a much larger one, with over twenty thousand individuals today, persevering on North America's western coast.  It was several individuals in this latter population that I recently had a chance to see on...

It's the sqawks that get my attention in Phoenix.  And the peeps in Prescott.  Every so often it's the rattle or drumming in both places.  But once in a while I hear the long laugh of a bird from high in a tree.  They're all the calls of woodpeckers, but it's only the ladder-backed woodpecker that sounds like he's in this fit of laughter. While it's the acorn and hairy woodpeckers I see in Prescott, it's the Gila woodpecker and gilded flickers that I usually see in and around Phoenix.  But the ladder-backed appears in both locations:  cool mountain forests in the summer and mild deserts in the winter.  But the species is not migratory like me; instead it's much more tolerant of extremes in climate and will put up with both snow and blistering heat. It was on a chilly desert morning last weekend when I heard the distinctive cackle of the ladder-backed woodpecker in my Phoenix neighborhood.  I quickly identified two males high in a pine tree, wh...

Almost everyone in the Phoenix area has heard of Pinnacle Peak, and many of us would recognize the distinctive granite mountain either in a picture or if we saw it on the distant horizon in North Scottsdale.  But for many years a restaurant in its shadow went by the same name and was probably the more popular of the two namesakes; there was certainly a period of time when more people dined on steaks at Pinnacle Peak Patio than hiked at Pinnacle Peak Park. But the cowboy restaurant closed almost five years ago and its property was redeveloped for housing and commercial uses.  In fact much of the surrounding pristine Sonoran Desert landscape that was half the draw of driving a dozen miles for barbecue chow has been replaced by homes, resorts, golf courses, shopping centers and business parks.  But in the midst of this suburban explosion Pinnacle Peak Park preserves 150 acres around the rocky spire that beacons all nature lovers to appreciate the beauty of the area. Near ...

The new year has greeted Phoenix with chilly overnight temperatures that seem to make my backyard nectar feeder even more important to my neighborhood's hummingbirds.  As usual, a male Anna's has established control over his territory and is chasing other hungry hummers away.  Nevertheless, with persistence and guile, other birds are getting their own sips in at the feeder even if only for a brief moment.   At dusk, interestingly, the male's defenses must either be overwhelmed or they just call it a night as I've seen up to five or six birds at one time filling the eight spaces at the feeder.  It's the only time I see a mix of males, females and juveniles in such close proximity. While the Anna's hummingbird is the dominant species in my area of Phoenix, the Costa's has become a regular visitor to my yard during the winter.  This variety of the bird probably breeds further west and north along the Colorado River and in southern California during warme...