Jun 29
I checked on the Arizona Queen of the Night this morning and there is only a very slight increase in the size of the flower buds. From the information I’ve been reading, it seems a little late for them to be blooming but this has been a strange year. Unfortunately, I have a couple of trips coming up so I will probably miss the event 🙁
Jun 26
While searching for a photo of the day in the desert this morning, I noticed this Hummingbird following me and I was sure I heard “I want to be on your blog today!” 🙂 He was flitting back and forth among the branches of this Desert Hackberry so it was impossible to keep focus so I did what photographers did before auto focus and that’s “pre-focus”. I just manually focused on the center branch tip and kept my finger on the shutter knowing he would fly into focus at some point. You never know what you’ll get but you won’t get anything if you don’t try, right? (Canon 60D, Sigma 18-250mm lens @ 250mm. ISO 200, 1000th sec at f/5.6)
Jun 22
Arizona Queen of the Night is our most illusive flowering cactus. The majority of the time, it looks like dead sticks so they are almost impossible to spot. During my many hikes and also while surveying flora in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve , I have found several specimens. It’s been extremely dry so a portion of this one has already become dehydrated but, as you can see, there are several buds so I’m hopeful. Although they start blooming at night, the flowers can last til early morning as evidenced by a friend who captured one during the early morning at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson.
CLICK HERE to watch a video from there.
Jun 8
Sunday’s hike took us past many of my favorite boulder faces including Frankenstone.
CLICK HERE to see more of my boulder faces.
Jun 7
Climbers Trails are meant for climbers but are also open to experienced hikers. Sometimes you can see the trail, sometimes not! (Superstitions on the Horizon)
Jun 6
With help from my favorite hiking partner, Chris, I finally made it to the highest point in the McDowell Mountains yesterday (4069ft). We started at 4:45am from the North Access and followed a climber’s trail through Mesquite Canyon, up over the 3 Svens, past Marcus Landslide and then up to East End. There’s a Geo cache hidden in the rocks up there with an “I made it” book and I was stoked to be able to add my name 🙂 Rather than go back the way we came, we then followed another climber’s route over to the Tom’s Thumb trail which took us back to the trail head. Four hours and a little more than 1500 ft elevation gain….it was awesome!
We saw deer and the remains of a deer which reminded us there are Mountain Lions up there but we didn’t see one (I was disappointed!). We did, however, see this guy which was pretty cool too. We had stopped to look at the view and after a few minutes, I did what a good photographer should always do and that is to turn around and shoot in the other direction too. This is what I saw. I was so excited I could hardly hold my camera still and wished I could have stayed to see him take off.
Sigma 18-250mm OS (perfect lens for long hikes), ISO 400, f/8, 1/640th sec.
May 14
I finally saw a Canyon Wren up close and personal yesterday! I was hiking in the north access area of the Preserve with several of my bird enthusiast friends and when we heard a Canyon Wren call (very distinctive!), one of the guys used an iPhone app to call back to him. They had conversation going for quite a while 🙂 P&S zoomed into 560mm equivalent. Grainy and not very sharp but I’m happy to have it!
May 6
There is nothing more exciting for this wanna-be botanist than to find a species I’ve never seen before. It doesn’t happen much anymore because I’m exploring in the Preserve so often but I was lucky this past Saturday. While looking for another species, I came across a Violet Snapdragon (Sairocarpus nuttallianus) growing right next to the one I had been looking for! Of course I had no idea what it was so I went to my main source, Steve Jones, and he came through as always. Thanks Steve! And thanks to Chris for helping me hike back up to get a better look yesterday. (It’s a very steep trail)
What look like hairs all over the plant are actually tiny tack-like glands. Very cool.
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