Mysteries and Marvels at two Parks

Yesterday, my buddy Sue and I went birding at Catalina State Park, a nearby mountain Park with a lovely, short birding trail.

We saw (and heard) lots of birds, though couldn’t identify all of them. The biggest mystery was the almost frantic, constant song of either a mockingbird or a curve-billed thrasher. It sounded much like the thrasher I wrote about in an earlier post. We never did see the bird that was singing, though saw a thrasher fairly nearby.

We solved two other mysteries involving birdsong through judicious use of the iBird app, which I intend to write about in the future. It helped us identify a brown-crested flycatcher and helped confirm the song of the yelllow-rumped warbler.

Here are two of the beautiful wildflowers we saw at the state park, desert dandelion and Mariposa lily:

Today Sue and I roved at Tohono Chul Park. It was hot—mid-eighties going up to low nineties, but it was a fabulous day. In addition to the marvels of the year’s first trichocereus blooms:

 

The passionflowers were also beginning to open, and while squiring a bunch of preschoolers through the riparian area we saw a beautiful kingsnake:

(The preschoolers were awed.)

Finally, perhaps the highlight of a wonderful day, we saw another Bell’s Vireo nest, this one in an olive tree near the center of the Park. I believe the bird I photographed is adding some finishing touches to the inside before moving in:

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