Desert Canyons in Late January

On each the last three days of January, 2010 I joined friends for hikes into three desert canyons of southeastern Arizona. The weather is often beautiful this time of year, and signs of spring are everywhere. This weekend, signs of the drought were quite obvious – lack of grasses, completely leafless shrubs which otherwise could have kept a few leaves over the winter, and almost no birds. Flocks of winter sparrows would have been typical, but even the resident Black-throated Sparrows were scarce.

1. Pima Canyon
On Friday the 29th I hiked Pima Canyon with my friend Beth. It's close to where I live and has a nice mix of Sonoran desert plants and birds. Here's a view from the 3/4 mile point before the trail drops to the creek.

Crissal Thrashers were singing at the 1.5-mile point, and a pair of Peregrine Falcons were making lots of noise on the cliffs above. Here is some sea-green crustose lichen on a rock in the shadier, moister parts of the canyon.

2. Mendoza Canyon
Then on the 30th, after a huge breakfast of lemon pancakes, eggs, and bacon, my friends Miranda, Barry, Gavin, Celina, and Mich came with me to Mendoza Canyon near Kitt Peak, southwest of Tucson. One has to drive through a little bit of King's Anvil Ranch and traverse a chunk of state trust land to get there, but during the hunting season they allow people to enter here. This lovely little canyon is most famous among rock climbers who want to scale the difficult Elephant Dome, but the vegetation is interesting, with some of the tallest, most tree-like Kidneywoods (Eysenhardtia orthocarpa) I've seen in Arizona.

We did a bit of our own rock climbing when Miranda spotted this rock arch (upper left).

 

This is Mich and I just before reaching the arch.

 Here is the whole group after the tough climb, enjoying the view.

There are also some ancient Native American petroglyphs here.

I paused to admire the extensive woody vines of Nissolia schottii, Schott's Yellowhood in the pea family. It's known only from Pima and Santa Cruz Counties in Arizona in the U.S. (also in Mexico).

 

Miranda was amazed at the pockets of greenery in this otherwise stark, dry landscape. Here is the fern Cheilanthes lindheimeri, Fairyswords, with some liverworts.

 And this fern is Pellaea truncata, Spiny Cliffbrake.

I spotted this Cactus Wren nest it the middle of a Sotol plant (they usually placed in a cholla cactus).

Miranda turned over a rock and surprised this gorgeous Clark's Spiny-Lizard. They are usually in the oak zone, so I was surprised to see one in this lower desert habitat.

Finally, we stumbled upon this carapace from a dead Desert Tortoise. I had seen a live one here on my last visit several years ago.

 3. West Silverbell Mountains

On the last day of January, I joined my friend Greg and two friends of his to explore in the West Silverbell Mountains to the northwest of Tucson (just west of Silverbell mine and the famous Ragged Top). I took lots of photos. This is looking to the north from the small peak that we climbed.

The cacti here are great. This is the LeConte's Barrel Cactus (Ferrocactus cylindraceus var. lecontei).

This is a young LeConte's Barrel Cactus.

This is apparently Engelmann's Hedgehog Cactus, Echinocereus engelmannii var. acicularis.

Teddy Bear Cholla, Cylindropuntia bigelovii.

Other plants I looked at included this unknown mallow. I'll have to come back in the monsoon to see it in bloom.

A Brittlebush, Encelia farinosa. The really dry season pruned it down to the thicker stems, which are now greening up at the tips to produce a gorgeous giant ball of yellow flowers when it blooms.

This is Arizona Spikemoss, Selaginella arizonica, also called "resurrection fern." It's a primitive spore-bearing plant that goes from brown, dry and crusty to a lush green in response to rain at any time of year.

The recent rains have resulted in the sprouting of annual wildflowers. It may be a brief and late bloom, but if we continue to get periodic winter rains over the next few weeks, it promises to be quite spectactular.

 

Here are Greg, Susan and Peter hiking in the desert.

The view to the northeast from the unnamed peak we climbed.

The view to the east, looking at the Silverbell Mountains.

A tiny Stripe-tailed Scorpion under a dried cow pie.

Here's some of the lusher Sonoran desert and giant Saguaro cacti – notice the Harris's Hawk and its nest.

Here's another Harris's Hawk nest nearby.

Even in remote places like this you find trash left behind by undocumented immigrants in search of a better life. To get here must have been a grueling trek, and many people die before they get this far. Here are a hat, a pack, and, most incongruous, a surprisingly unfaded copy of a Jehova's Witness pamphlet.

Snow in the Catalinas, Water in the Rillito

From the Rainlog.org data uploaded by members in my neighborhood, we've had almost exactly four inches of rain in the first six weeks of 2010. That's already more than half of what we received in all of 2009 (which was 7.14 inches).

Here's a photo in the wake of the storm that passed through January 22-23, 2010. This is 3/4 of a mile from where I live in north-central Tucson. Note the water flowing in the usually dry Rillito River, and the low level of snow in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

This is exciting stuff for us. One might first think about the spring wildflowers, but from Tucson southward and eastward, those sorts of plants that respond to winter rains with a flush of spring growth and bloom are not a significant part of our plant diversity. Such winter rains have been so unpredictable over the past few millennia in this region that they have been selected against. Instead, we have a large number of perennial plants (shrubs and trees, especially) that while amazingly well adapted to a dry, hot climate, simply cannot survive on just 7 inches of rain a year. Our average is 12 inches – with those summer rains being the most predictable. The rain we've received these past 6 weeks will go a long way to providing for these shrubs – hopbush, acacias, jojoba, kidneywood, babybonnets, sumac, etc. – many of which died, and many others which were just barely hanging on in this past year's drought.

Costa Rica Between Christmas and New Years

I led a private tour for a family on vacation together in Costa Rica right after Christmas. As it turns out, this is a great time of year to travel in Costa Rica. You might think that hotels, restaurants, bus drivers, etc would be on vacation, but this is actually in the midst of their high season.

The family I was privileged to guide spanned three generations and included eight people from ages 10 to late 70's. The keenest birder was 14-year-old Gabriel, but everyone seemed to enjoy seeing birds, monkeys, and all manner of tropical nature. The birding and natural history this time of year was excellent.

We first had some birding on the hotel grounds in the Heredia suburb of Santo Domingo. We saw Rufous-naped Wren, Plain Wren, and Blue-crowned Motmot here, plus a couple nice butterflies such as this Crimson-patch Checkerspot, Chlosyne janais...

...and this Manis Satyr, Pedaliodes manis. This one seems to have adapted to the ornamental bamboos in the gardens.

We then drove to Tapantí National Park in mid- to upper-elevation cloud forests on the Caribbean slope, not far from Cartago. The cloud forests here are gorgeous.

In this cool, moist climate, a species of violet grows on the roadside.

This is a bromeliad in the genus Pitcairnia. (Thanks to my friend Brad Boyle for the ID.)

We then birded the Savegre River Valley, also known as San Gerardo de Dota, in the shadows of Cerro de la Muerte. Everyone got to see the fanciest bird of the region, this Resplendent Quetzal. A pair was actually visible in this fruiting Nectandra tree from within our rooms.

Here's the whole family looking at the quetzals. Even those who preferred horseback riding, zip lining, or reading enjoyed seeing this gorgeous bird.

From the same spot on the next morning we watched a pair of Emerald Toucanets.

This hummingbird had me quite puzzled. It mostly looked like a White-throated Mountain-gem, but with only a little tiny white spot in the center of the throat. The pale base to the mandible was also a bit odd. Perhaps it was only a juvenile (which I would have expected would look more like a female with a cinnamon ventral area), but since hybrids in hummingbirds aren't all that rare, I wondered if maybe one parent wasn't a Fiery-throated Hummingbird.

This odd little fungus growing in the Costa Rican Oak forest is in the genus Calostoma (thanks to Rosanne Healy for the ID).

Late in the sunny morning of our first day we tried to go to the high elevations of Cerro de la Muerte but were forced to the side of the highway for over a half hour as the Vuelta de Costa Rica international bicycle race took over the road.

On the morning we left the area, we did make it to the top, but the weather had changed significantly, with cold, blowing fog and mist in the Swallenochloa bamboo páramo. We still managed to find the Volcano Juncos.

The second half of the tour we spent in the Caribbean lowlands at Sueño Azul Resort including a walk in Braulio Carrillo National Park and a morning at La Selva Biological Station. At La Selva, we kept running into Black-throated Trogons.

This fungus is a Xylaria species, also known as dead man's fingers (thanks again to Rosanne Healy).

We saw several Strawberry Poison Frogs, Oophaga pumilio, at La Selva, but this one was near our rooms at Sueño Azul.

This leaf-footed bug was at La Selva.

The Black River Turtle, Rhinoclemmys funerea, at our resort.

It was a birdy day, and this Yellow-bellied Elaenia was one of our final additions to the day's list of 116 species.

This is a panoramic shot from the Sueño Azul grounds showing the volcanoes of Tenorio and Barva.

On our last day we had lunch at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, including a hike to one of the many spectacular waterfalls.

The feeders here were alive with action, and visitors included this Coppery-headed Emerald (formerly considered a Costa Rican endemic until it was recently found in Nicaragua)...

...and some Violet Sabrewings.