Sonoran Desert Museum

26 May 2019

We're currently in Las Cruces, New Mexico, visiting one of my brothers.  But we had sort of a dust storm today, so that was a good opportunity to finish up blogging about our time in Arizona.  (It isn't great to run around in a dust storm, but, well, travel is all about experiencing everything, right?  So, I experienced some time walking around and then driving in a dust storm.)

So, Arizona.  Roughly the lower third of Arizona is part of the Sonoran Desert, which extends into the southeastern part of California, and down into Mexico.  The Sonoran Desert Museum portrays not only the plantlife of this desert, but as many animals as they can comfortably fit into the facility.  Here's the website for the museum: www.desertmuseum.org

I've wanted to visit this museum the entire time we've been in Tucson, and I'm really glad I waited until the saguaros were in bloom.  Not only did I experience the desert, the various cacti and succulents, and all the animals, I also got to see these fabulous flowers!  SO thrilling!!!

I spent about four or five hours here - there are plenty of water fountains to refill bottles or travel cups, numerous bathrooms, and several places to grab a bite to eat.  So definitely plan on spending at least half a day there.

The animals always are most fascinating to me, so these are the animals I met:  first, Pugsley, the barn owl.  He and his sister Wednesday (yes, really) live at the museum, and help keep the place free of mice and rats.  I don't know how large their enclosure is, but Pugsley was quite happy to be out and greeting guests.  He even posed for the camera.

Cruz, the mountain lion, wasn't quite as friendly.  In fact, he wouldn't even get up from his nap.  If you didn't know what to look for, and merely glanced in the enclosure, you'd miss him entirely.  His tail somewhat blends into the rocky cliffs, and his back paws could easily be mistaken for rocks on the ledge.  Cruz is a rescued mountain lion, who will live out his days at the museum, delighting visitors with, well, his tail and paws.  He's most likely seen in early mornings or late afternoons, when the air is cooler and nocturnal animals are either still up or waking up.  But it was still exciting to see him.

There was a female mule deer strategically placed not far from Cruz, presumably to keep him awake and interested.  Didn't work - and hopefully didn't worry the deer too much.  She certainly seemed peaceful, knowing the stone walls and fencing were keeping her safe.  The deer and mountain lion were both in the mountain woodlands habitat, one of the few green and shady sections of the museum.  (Ms Mule Deer was visited by various small lizards.)

A long-eared owl kept his/her eyes on everything, including me.  Owls definitely seemed interested in everything going on around them, watching intently.  Even when we humans were much to large to be prey.

The canidae were sort of grouped together, since they live in a similar habitat.  The Mexican wolf was napping, but he was beautiful.

The coyote was half napping, half keeping an eye on visitors.  He was napping under a palo verde tree (I'm pretty sure that's the tree).  

The signs had all kinds of interesting information about the coyotes, so here's some of the highlights:

"The coyote, symbol of the American West, gets its name from the ancient Aztec deity Coyotlinatuatl, whose followers dressed in coyote skins. "Coyote" appears in Native American legends as an evasive and puzzling character, playing the multiple roles of fool, trickster, and demi-god.

"In fact, the Navajo refer to the coyote as "God's dog." A versatile and seemingly indestructible animal, the coyote continues to impress us today with its outstanding survival skills.

"The coyote's scientific name, Canis latrans, means "barking dog."  Sometimes the coyote call has a special ventriloquistic quality that makes it sound right next to you one second, and a hundred years away the next.  At other times, the peal of barks and yips is so fast and furious that two or three coyotes sound like a dozen or more."

Interesting, no? 

The coyote's fencing was kept in place with saguaro cactus skeletons.  I don't know what else to call the dried out rib structure of the saguaros - very distinctive, still with their arms reaching out.  When saguaros die, the fleshy portion dries out and eventually rots away, leaving intertwined ribs in a sort of diamond pattern.  Really fascinating!

There was also a young grey fox, napping in a hollow.  He looked up to see who was talking to him, then went back to his nap.

In the cat house, there was room for a young ocelot who had just been brought to the museum, but who wasn't ready for his/her enclosure yet.

There was a bobcat, however, who was copying the mountain lion, just sleeping in a small cave on a high up ledge.  A bit of a paw, a bit of a tail, maybe a little bit of leg were visible.  Again, camouflaged in the cliff.  And that was it.  Big cats, like their domestic feline cousins, like to sleep during the heat of the day, and hunt all night.

The javalinas, the Sonoran wild boar, were also sleeping in shady spots, mostly under bridges along the desert loop trail.  These animals can be rather nasty when defending their young, and are pretty ugly looking even when sleeping.  I'm glad I've never met one in the wild!!!

A few big-horned sheep stayed at the top of their cliff, in the shade, looking very regal.  At least they were awake!  I have no idea how they managed to climb that cliff, but that's what these sheep do, finding tiny footholds for their little feet.

Those were all the mammals that I saw.  There were birds and lizards everywhere.  I skipped the reptile exhibit.  But I did see a long skinny black snake slither across a trail - mostly likely a racer snake, which are very thin and long, and yes, they move quite quickly.  Perfectly harmless snake, but a bit startling when one is keeping an eye out for any rattlesnakes or coral snakes, both venomous.  (I didn't see any.)

And I also skipped the insects - we saw plenty of scorpions, tarantulas, and giant centipedes in our years on St. Thomas!!!

There were hummingbirds everywhere!  I didn't manage to capture a decent photo of any of them - even at rest, the pause in motion is so brief that it isn't enough time to focus the camera.  So I just enjoyed the fleeting glimpses of flittering green or ruby or irridescent black.

I spent time just sitting in the aviary, so that the birds would become accustomed to me and thus ignore me.  SO many wonderful birds!!!  Several cardinals, in their brilliant red and red-edged brown.  A bobwhite quail, barely visible with his brown and beige spots, standing on the gravel and sand.  A family of quail, chasing each other back and forth over the rocks, with their little single feather headpiece bobbing away.  Some kind of grosbeak, a yellow-orange with black and white ticked wings.  Colorful ducks squabbling amongst themselves.  Mourning doves and ground doves cooing in the background.

And one dove who decided I needed to see his mating dance, I'm not quite sure why.  (I so obviously do NOT look like a bird!)

It was peaceful, cool, relaxing, and wonderful to sit among the birds.

I even found a few cactus wrens sitting on top of saguaros, and staying still long enough to be photographed!  Plus a few birds pecking holes in the saguaros to make their nests!  It turns out the holes the birds make are rather large inside the saguaro - and the cactus creates sorts of a scar tissue around the hole inside, making a tough dry surface for the walls of the birds' nests.  The birds only use the nest for the year they make them, but other birds will come and build nests in old abandoned nests in the saguaros.

Which brings me to the saguaro flowers - you can see how gorgeous they are!  They start as large green apostrophes on the tips of the saguaros, grow larger and larger, and eventually burst open into huge white flowers with a pale yellow-orange-peach circle surrounding the center!!!  Bees buzz around, hummingbirds drink the nectar, and the flowers just suddenly pop open day after day after day!

With the saguaros already looking vaguely human, the flowers make them seem like crowned or wreathed figures offering more flowers to us as we wander by!!!

They really are magnificent, and I tried taking photos of nearly every saguaro in bloom.  I won't bore you with all of the photos, just a small fraction of all of the photos.

After the flowers wilt, and they seem to only last a day or so, the flower core grows into the fruit.  I have no idea what they taste like, but the indigenous people, the Tohono O'odham, knock the fruit off the cacti to make jams, wine, and other sweets.

Before I leave you with just photos, I wanted to mention that there were all kinds of other flowering cacti at the museum, all colorful and lovely.  It really is incredible to see the beautiful blossoms coming out of plants that are almost colorless, and that barely look alive!

Also, toward the end there's a collection of photos of a mural, tile pieces on the wall, that were in the tunnel under the otters' and beavers' habitat.  Wonderful mural!

So, enjoy the photos, and definitely visit the Sonoran Desert Museum!  Oh, a map to show the various deserts in the US Southwest, and how far they reach into Mexico: