Mike in the Wild

Legends fuel many of our dreams and, sometimes, even our actions.  The search for a fountain of youth drove Ponce de Leon to explore much of the present-day southeastern United States.  To the west, El Dorado, a city of gold, was in the fortune-lusting minds of numerous conquistadors.  As for me, just last week, I dreamt of a bay so dense with sea turtles that you could walk across it on the animals' backs. Honokeana Bay was my destination for the first three days of my latest Maui vacation.  It's one of a series of six consecutive bays that figure in the history of Maui, which oral legend recounts was a significant region in Pi'ilani's unification of the island four centuries ago.  To connect far-ranging communities, this successful king soon thereafter constructed a long road, a fragment of which still passes each of the coves on Lower Honoapi'ilani - literally in Hawaiian, bays acquired by Pi'ilani - Road.   Besides archaeological artifacts, place ...

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...

The flash of blue that crossed my path was just a bluebird; a male western bluebird to be exact.  He wouldn't have been a disappointment on most walks in the Prescott area except for the fact that I had set out on that early June morning in search of blue grosbeaks.  It wasn't the first time I ventured into Watson Woods in search of that long distance migrant only to have my hopes dashed. Many varieties of cardinals nest in the woods across northern Arizona during the summer.  They fly hundreds, maybe even thousands, of miles from their wintering grounds in Central America and northern South America.  For several lucky months our forests are speckled with the bright and exotic colors of summer tanagers, western tanagers, black-headed grosbeaks, and blue grosbeaks.     The latter bird had made a brief appearance at my cabin's feeder just the day before my visit to the lush riparian habitat at Watson Woods.   He's a rare visitor, gracing m...

Yet again April showers didn't bring May flowers to Arizona, a place where rain falls mostly in the winter and summer months.  However the longer, hotter days of spring brought the blooms of plenty of drought-resistant plants like cacti and agave, sustenance for lots of wildlife.   While local wintering bird species have left to breed in northern climates, several others have remarkably just arrived in the desert to nest.  White-winged doves might be the most noticeable as they fill our yards and urbanscape, timing their visits in anticipation of ripening saguaro cactus fruit.  Cliff swallows are the most intrepid visitors due to their lengthy flights from as far away as Argentina.  It's hard to miss these swiftly darting birds as they feed on the multitude of insects above our canals and lakes. Along these same waterways, year-round residents like mallards have been raising their ducklings for more than a month.  Nearby on land, surviving on grasses, ...

We all know that the best laid plans often go awry, as says my rough paraphrase of Robert Burn's famous line.  However I'm happy to say that I was not disappointed when I set out to see a bald eagle in Glendale this week.  Within two minutes of parking my car on the dirt road ending at the southeast corner of the municipality's recharge ponds, I spied a white-headed bird of prey a couple of hundred yards away.  It was high atop a utility pole where I couldn't tell if it was an eagle or a much more common osprey.  After a few more minutes walking north along the dusty eastern pathway, I was able to confirm my wildest dream: it was was a bald eagle. While finding the symbol of our nation was the goal of my short outing, success was in no way guaranteed.  Yes, a nesting pair has regularly been identified in the area.  Yes, a desert variety of the raptor numbering in the hundreds populates the long waterways of Central Arizona throughout the year.  And yes...

The last time I wrote about Bullock's orioles was in a David and Goliath story.  A pair of the orioles was in a confrontation with two much bigger black hawks.  The orioles were vociferously protesting the birds of preys' attack on their nest.  In fact it was worse than that: the black hawks had stolen the nest and were most likely feasting on any eggs or nestlings inside it. Fortunately it was early in the orioles' nesting season, so they still had a chance at raising another brood that summer.  These birds migrate through Arizona every summer after wintering throughout Mexico.  The nest-plundering I described was in Page Springs near Sedona, so some Bullock's orioles remain in the state when they find good nesting habitat. However I suspect Phoenix and its surrounding desert are not a summer destination for the birds.  But plenty of the orioles pass through the parched Valley on their way north, as I was reminded on a visit to the Desert Botanical Garden ...

Almost four years to the exact date I lasted visited the gardens, I returned to Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior.  Pulling into the parking lot, I was immediately surprised by one big change: the name.  And later in the morning, I'd be even more surprised by several new bird discoveries.   The property is no longer a state park, having recently separated from a tripartite agreement with Arizona State Parks and the University of Arizona.  In addition, the garden has significantly expanded after absorbing the Wallace Desert Garden's entire collection of plants and trees.   In a Herculean effort spanning six years, thousands of specimens were successfully relocated from their North Scottsdale home to thirteen presumably undeveloped acres at the southern end of Boyce Thompson.  In addition, one-and-a-half miles of trails were added to the park's already extensive network of paths.  As a result there is an endless list of reasons a...