Mike in the Wild

We're lucky to have in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan sprawl a world-class desert plant museum and education center.  The Desert Botanical Garden's collections of cacti, succulents, trees and plants from all the globe's arid regions are arranged in a multitude of beautiful landscapes, habitats and gardens.  Unsurprisingly, the desert flora attracts a multitude of critters that include many birds, both resident and migratory. But the park of course makes money and needs to attract the people that spend it.  So the garden also has restaurants, shops, art galleries and regular events like the holiday season's Las Noces de las Luminarias when luminaria bags, strings of lights and live bands overtake the peace and calm you might associate with the grounds.  And over at least the last ten years there have been frequent but temporary art installations that have placed contemporary sculptures and lights throughout the desert landscape. As a wildlife and nature lo...

The most common woodpecker in Arizona's deserts is probably the Gila woodpecker.  From a distance he's sometimes confused with the gilded flicker, especially from behind, because they each have a black latticed pattern on their backs.  But the Gila is much smaller and has a plainer front, lacking the black-speckled torso and black chest plate of the gilded.  Also, the Gila male sports a red cap versus the gilded's red mustache as their sex's distinguishing feature. One thing the pair share is an attraction to my backyard's hummingbird feeder.  They each cling to it like they do the bark of tall trees and palms, and slurp the sugar water with their long, skinny tongues.  So for this edition of the blog, I'd like to welcome the Gila woodpecker to my periodic posts on lucky backyard birding.  Remember that sometimes a look outside your window is all you need to experience another adventure in the wild. Male Gila woodpecker, above, and female gilder flick...

One of my original inspirations for the "Mike in the Wild" blog was to have a vehicle by which I could easily share photos with friends.  Since my favorite subjects were birds and nature, I came up with a name that captured the essence of my material - an individual and his personal experience in the outdoors.  While I've been fortunate to visit numerous parks and wilderness areas, I'm always amazed at how much my backyard and the view outside my window remind me I'm already in the wild. To that point, just this week, I heard the tell-tale piercing caw of a flicker outside a sliding glass door while I busily typed on the computer.  Not the first time to hear it, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed in getting my camera.  Sure enough, when I peered out the window I saw a gilded flicker - this time a female - eyeing my yard's hummingbird feeder from a nearby hanging lamp.  She's a type of woodpecker and the largest bird in the neighborhood, so when she fi...