Desert Museum
Dec. 26th, 2005 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienToday, I went with friends to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, out to the west of Tucson. It's a fascinating place, part zoo, part botanical garden, concentrating mostly on the species that belong in the local environment. The drive out there is spectacular, over Gates Pass where the road winds through the mountains and the saguaro grow tall on the red-rock hillsides, and the weather was perfect.
We watched Harris's hawks free-flying, swooping low over the heads of the crowds and backwinging to land delicately on the tops of tall cacti, lured back by a docent with a supply of fresh-killed rabbit. Otters swam gleeful laps, one of them showing a decided preference for the backstroke, and a family of bighorn sheep burlesqued on a rocky ledge.
Hummingbirds zipped and chittered among the shrubs in their aviary; we discovered that the best way to see them was just to sit in a quiet corner and watch them dart by. Caught at the right angle of light, their feathers glow with irridescence, purple and red and green. One went by so close to my ear that I could hear the buzz of its wings. In the larger walk-through aviary, the ground was alive with tiny mice, scurrying among the slightly larger inca doves; cardinals and orioles hopped among the branches and a quail scurried across the path. It was warm enough that I had shed most of my layers early on, and it was pleasant to sit in there, on a stone bench in the shade, listening to the stream.
Agave seed heads stood black and dead against the sky, in an amazing variety of shapes; the mountains made a backdrop of hazy blue-grey outlines.
I even found a cactus flower!
I continue not to be very good at photographing live animals, but I'm rather pleased with the prairie dog and the ocelot.
We watched Harris's hawks free-flying, swooping low over the heads of the crowds and backwinging to land delicately on the tops of tall cacti, lured back by a docent with a supply of fresh-killed rabbit. Otters swam gleeful laps, one of them showing a decided preference for the backstroke, and a family of bighorn sheep burlesqued on a rocky ledge.
Hummingbirds zipped and chittered among the shrubs in their aviary; we discovered that the best way to see them was just to sit in a quiet corner and watch them dart by. Caught at the right angle of light, their feathers glow with irridescence, purple and red and green. One went by so close to my ear that I could hear the buzz of its wings. In the larger walk-through aviary, the ground was alive with tiny mice, scurrying among the slightly larger inca doves; cardinals and orioles hopped among the branches and a quail scurried across the path. It was warm enough that I had shed most of my layers early on, and it was pleasant to sit in there, on a stone bench in the shade, listening to the stream.
Agave seed heads stood black and dead against the sky, in an amazing variety of shapes; the mountains made a backdrop of hazy blue-grey outlines.
I even found a cactus flower!
I continue not to be very good at photographing live animals, but I'm rather pleased with the prairie dog and the ocelot.
