Mike in the Wild

"There's a nesting pair of trogons on South Fork Road, just before you cross the bridge, on the left side of the road.  The trunk of the sycamore tree they chose seems awfully thin, but they're there."  These were the exact details the earnest staff at Cave Creek Ranch, my weekend's lodging, gave me when I set off for the hunt.  I had driven over four hours to Cave Creek Canyon in southeastern Arizona because the area is famous in the summer for its elegant trogons.  In addition, a pair apparently nests in that very specific area - if not that exact tree! - every year.  So why would I have any doubts? Well I might have suspected the advice was too good to be true when, the afternoon before I set off on my quest, another guest at the lodge told me he was unsuccessful in his own search that day.  "Yeah, I spent a lot of time looking, but nothing."  I left early the next morning undaunted nonetheless, visions of this neotropical bird dancing in my head....

I remember each time I've ever seen a coati - or coatimundi - in the wild.  F or close to thirty years i t's been an easy number to recollect: one.  At least that's where the count languished until this past weekend, when my lifetime sightings dramatically increased to three!    This relative of the raccoon is not nearly as common as that masked cousin which ranges over most of North America.  The coati is far-ranging himself, but throughout Latin America; the only areas in the United States where he resides are in Arizona and New Mexico.  He has been spotted as far north as Spur Cross Ranch, north of Phoenix, but the species is more often seen in the southern Arizona sky islands, where Sierra Madre habitat thrives high above surrounding desert environments.   My long-ago first sighting was in Chiricahua National Monument in the far southeastern corner of the Grand Canyon State.  I was camping in the park and was on a shuttle bus that too...