The Sonoran Desert and Its Wild Life October 26, 2013
It's funny. While traveling by train, I have been "landing", quite appreciative of the gracious invitations of various families: a flat bed to sleep in and a place to shop and cook, launder and shower, but without any expectations of the particular place. This has led to all kinds of lovely surprises. I just had 2 amazing days in the desert ecosystem around Tucson, Arizona, courtesy of my Servas hostess, also a Carol. So this blog is born of my love of this land and its creatures that I got to be close to.
I went hiking in Sabino Canyon the first day- a recreation area in the National Forest with great displays and a nature walk with all the desert plants labeled, plus miles of trails.
Then yesterday we went together to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. This museum is a mix of botanical garden, enclosed habitats and excellent educational information.
The Sonoran Desert is the only place the saguaro cacti grow, and I loved learning about them and their ecosystem. They don't start branching or flowering til they are about 70 years old, and the diameter of their shallow root systems is roughly equal to their height.
The prickly pear cacti are amazing, too. Carol treated me to some of the fruit, called "tuna", frozen and then juiced. It is brilliant magenta and somewhat reminiscent of pomegranate juice perhaps. When I learned that cochineal, a prized deep carmine dye that I knew about from spinning and weaving, comes from a small insect whose home is the prickly pear, I wondered if the cactus is pulling a particular mineral out of the desert soils that is the source of these intense colors????? Agave are important here too, and the ancient Hohokam desert people farmed them by aligning stones as "water bars" whose slight accumulation of the rain water was enough to improve the growth of the agave.
The desert ecosystem is amazing and fragile. Bats and butterflies pollinate and are critical. Over-harvest of the agave for alcohol is upsetting the delicate balances, as is habitat destruction for the saguaro and the bats. People are learning to intentionally provide housing for the bats when repairing the highway bridges they now use as caves….
In honor of my recent sighting of a mountain lion while driving near my north Idaho campground, I loved seeing the young male cougar at the Museum yesterday, learning that he was rescued as an orphan kit this spring from a backyard in San Jose, and getting a great picture of him!
Twice a day, falconers on the Museum staff offer free flight demonstrations of raptors. It was amazing to watch and to learn more about their training. To see them in flight as they are in the wild, but up close, was phenomenal. We saw a barn owl and Harris hawks. One of the staff noted that the owls are less "bright" than the hawks and slower to train as most of their brain capacity serves their incredible sight. The Harris hawks are unusual in hunting as collaborative families, somewhat like a pack of wolves on wing. All these raptors are housed at a distance and during the demonstration come zooming in out of the desert to the Museum site where multiple falconers direct their flight from spot to spot over observers' heads with strategic, sequential placement of food on various perch cacti and trees.
Here is the barn owl.
The Harris hawks have a hierarchy, with an alpha female leading. At the end of yesterday's flight, the handlers were heading out into the desert to find her. Perhaps they have radio transmitters to aid? (they had to go, so I didn't get to ask!) They said she is quite an accomplished huntress and had taken off after a rabbit. I loved that they were working with the ancestral in-bred characteristics of these birds and flying them free, with intermittent glitches like this unplanned rabbit chase. There were six of the birds working together yesterday. Here's a shot of 3 of them in the process, and a great portrait of one alone.
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now; there’s a power in me
To grasp and give shape to the world.
Without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
And they come toward me, to meet and be met.
And paint in gold, as if it were an icon
That could bless us
Though I’ll not know who among us
Will feel this blessing.”
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