Mike in the Wild

Like no other colors, red and green define the year-end holiday season.  Pine trees and evergreen branches adorned with big, bright red bows best represent the omnipresent color scheme.  Indeed it's everywhere, from the Christmas trees in our living rooms to the garland hanging from street lamps in our crowded parking lots.  And don't forget poinsettias, the colorful, tropical potted plants that even before Thanksgiving crowd our supermarket shelves screaming, "I'm the best gift for everyone!" My Phoenix garden is trying to show its holiday spirit in a couple of ways, especially through my firestick plants.  Normally the euphorbia - an ornamental landscape succulent native to Africa - is colored Kelly green, but during the coldest times of year, its branches glow red.  At the moment, one of my bougainvillea plants - a torch glow variety - is sporting clusters of tight, magenta leaves.  Inside my house, a Christmas cactus bloomed two weeks ago and is now starting t

The last time I sailed into Cabo San Lucas, a humpback whale breached several hundred yards off the port side of my cruise ship, the Majestic Princess.  I was sitting on my stateroom's balcony as the local pilot chaperoned us into the scenic bay and the whale leapt out of the sea and splashed back down spectacularly.  It was February, prime season to view the long-distance traveling behemoths in the area. On my November return to Baja California Sur, this time on the Discovery Princess, I didn't see any whales.  However, shortly before the sail into Bahia Cabo San Lucas, I observed an equally fascinating yet much smaller creature from my starboard balcony: a lone northern fulmar. It wasn't my first time identifying the seabird; I had succeeded at that on an October cruise off the coast of Washington State.  In fact, on that occasion, I observed three or four of them, swooping and gliding with stiff wings off the rear of the ship, occasionally diving under water.  They were