September 6, 2020 Miller Canyon, Brown Canyon and Coronado National Memorial

We spent this day visiting some of the more interesting canyons in southeastern Arizona. Our first stop was Miller Canyon. One of our goals here was to see and photograph a white-eared hummingbird. Once again, we visited a "feeder station" set up by people who own property in Miller Canyon. The white eared hummingbird has been staying in this area for more than a month. While you might think it easy to get a photo of a hummingbird when they are attracted to feeders, typically there are at least 20-40 hummers racing around and battling it out for the nectar. And, if you don't want a "feeder" shot as we don't, you must have a lot of patience. Another challenge is typically the lighting is either too bright or too shady and you need a high shutter speed to keep up with these little guys. So it is never easy. That being said, we did get photos of the white-eared hummingbird. I also have seen and photographed rufous and Rivoli's hummingbirds in Arizona before but haven't posted them so I also spent time trying to get photos of them as well.

Once finished with the hummers, we went up the trail. As per usual, Chris went up ahead on the trail and I lagged behind. But it worked out great for me this time. I was standing in a rocky area looking around to see what interesting species I might find. Then I heard a nuthatch in the distance making a lot of noise. My first thought was "an owl" and sure enough I located a northern pygmy owl way, way up high and got a really bad photo of it. But it's the first time I didn't have another human point out a pygmy owl to me. Though we have these owls in California, I've never been able to find any here.

Next we went to Brown Canyon Ranch. This place is great for insects, reptiles and amphibians...and probably mammals too but that would probably be after dark, although we did find the skeletal remains of a large mammal. One of our best finds was a cool looking jumping spider which I've included here.

Finally we went to the Coronado National Memorial. I had never even heard of this place. While it honors Coronado, it is basically a wilderness area skirting the border of Mexico. Once again, the plant and animal life in this area is fairly unique. Unfortunately, it was quite late when we arrived and we were only able to spend a short time on one of the trails, checking out the local habitat.

One of the most surprising things we saw was right next to the parking area. There were these large showy flowers and we immediately thought they must be invasive. Right? Right. Well, amazingly enough I found that they are native to this area and are called pink-throated morning glories. One additional cool find was a rather large bright red beetle called a "reddish potato beetle". Unfortunately the light was so poor when I took the photo that the quality is not great.

We ended the day in the dark cruising the street for reptiles. Once again, we struck out...it seems to be a poor year for reptiles in the area.

Posted on September 15, 2020 04:13 AM by