On our most recent visit to Arizona, we spent less time than usual out in the Sonoran desert, but did have one good afternoon at Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. (Most of these photos are actually from Bear Canyon, not Sabino proper, so we'll have to get back there next time.)
March offers plenty of wildflowers, including sneezeweed, poppy, and desert mallow...
Quite a few herps about as well: ribbon snake, Great Plains toad (
we've met before), and western fence lizard.
Most of the birds we saw were desert specialties: phainopepla (yes, that's a baby silky in the nest), Gambel's quail, and roadrunner...
...others decidedly not.
The only mammals about were a cottontail seeking shade and an Ellie seeking sun.
As usual, the landscape is dominated by saguaro and the eternally blue sky...
But the big draw on this warm afternoon, for us as well as the mallards, was Bear Creek itself, the irresistible lure of steady cool water in the desert.
If you haven't heard from me in a while, you might want to give me a call, since my contact list got wiped out—I went much deeper than this—but a wade in Bear Creek was worth a cell phone...