Mike in the Wild

My head danced with superlatives as I drove more than four hours to Portal for the weekend.   The small town lies in the extreme southwest corner of the state where the closest medical care is a roundabout sixty miles away in Douglas.   But more importantly, I was on my way to the largest of Arizona's sky islands, the Chiricahua Mountains.  Portal's surrounding skies are some of the darkest and  clearest in the region, offering stargazers a feast for the eyes.       Most interesting, Portal acts as the gateway to Cave Creek Canyon, home to some of Arizona's most diverse flora and fauna.  It's a pristine, mostly forested environment with rugged peaks towering over seasonal and perennial streams.   The bird life includes the blue-throated mountain gem, the largest nesting hummingbird in the United States. But it was another extraordinary bird that was on my mind during the long drive: the elegant trogon.  It's in a fami...

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...