"Coatimundi?" you ask? Yes, "coatimundi," as in the tropical racoon-relative.
(Click here for more info.)
But first, closer to home:
Ouch! Poor birdie...from the 'wingprint', I think it was a desert white-winged dove. As you can see, it's not as if our living-room window is even particularly clean...I wonder where the bird wanted to go...I found no carcass, so I think the dove recovered and flew away...
More birds, different time of day, outside the same window:
...for the past couple of weeks now, early to mid-morning, we've been having what my wife calls 'quail parties;' we've taken to throwing Paquito's 'leftovers' out the back door when we feed him each morning, and sure enough, a couple of hours later, local Gambel's quails show up to breakfast on parrotlet-seed-rejects in the mesquite shade...
...Far from home, now:
...Last weekend we drove over to San Diego--seven hours across the occasionally interesting and often booo-ring desert through Yuma, AZ and El Centro, CA...a quick trip to see some friends, and to wake up for a beach-run...ahh, the salt air...===========================
And now, to a decidedly ocean-free locale--Pima Canyon, just a few miles from where we live in Tucson:
In the over-two-years that we've lived here, I've driven by this canyon so many times, but from the main road you just don't notice the entrance...and since we live, now, near to Sabino Canyon, I'd never thought about going to the 'trouble' of driving a few miles to the western end of the Santa Catalina range, especially since it juts out between the built-up Catalina foothills and the suburbanly-sprawling Northwest side, where the towns of Oro valley and Marana continue to grow...
But yesterday, having the day off from work, I thought I'd check it out, and it turned out to be a great day-hike--once you drive up through the neo-Tuscan-'palaces' of the foothills and then hike between their 'no trespassing' signs protecting their infinity-edge pools, you finally end up in designated wilderness and the sounds of traffic disappear as the desert blends into riparian habitat. For southern Arizona, the canyon is 'lush,' thick with jojoba, cottonwoods, and unusually tall mesquite-trees...
And there is where I saw, for the first time in the wild in Arizona, a pair of coatimundis!
Forgive the boring photos; I was on my way out of the canyon and not expecting to see substantial wildlife...I turned a corner on the trail and heard a couple of 'squeets,' thinking it was birds in the creosote, when these guys trotted in front of me and up into some shrubby rocks. By the time I fumbled and got my camera ready, face-shots were impossible...but still! coatimundis! It made my morning...
(Here's a slightly better view of a coati:
This was my first coati-sighting ever, when my wife and I were in Tikal National Park in Guatemala a few years ago...)
Back to Pima Canyon. The seasonal creek has been dry for a couple of months now, but the cottonwoods are substantial--proof that enough groundwater exists in the canyon year-round, even if it doesn't flow on the surface.
If we get good snows this winter, the snowmelt will make the creek flow for a few weeks or months again...
Before I spotted the coatis, I saw this:
Amazing color, eh? This dried-out seed-pod contains 'desert coral beans,' poisonous but pretty...
Another fascinating seedpod is the doubly-wicked 'devil's claw:'
...and there are even signs of pre-columbian human habitation in Pima Canyon: about three miles in are these grinding-holes, metates, in the stones:
They were probably started by the Hohokam people, up to 1300 years ago--they most likely harvested mesquite pods in the canyon, and used the local stone to process the legumes into flour on site...
Coatis, seedpods, metates...a nice change of pace...
On the way back out, heading back to the trailhead parking lot in mid-afternoon--looking off to the suburban west; you can make out a golf course in the middle distance:
...and one of the uncommon 'cristate' crested saguaros--this one looks vaguely like it's doing a gang-hand-sign, no? (Maybe I spend too much time around urban teenagers at work...)
...and that's the latest...
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