Coati - Camera Critter

Here are pictures of the coati we saw on our walk in Sabino Canyon on Monday. From a distance it looked like a monkey of some sort in the tree. The long tail is used for balancing, but it is non-prehensile.
We did the best we could photographing the animal with the bright sun behind it. We watched it for about a half hour. It seemed comfortable being observed by people standing on the paved road.
White-nosed Coatis belong to the raccoon family. The park ranger said this was probably an adult male because it was large and alone. Female and juvenile coatis are usually found in groups of 4 to 25.
We didn't hear any sounds coming from the coati. But they are known to communicate with chirps, snorts and grunts.


The long, slightly upturned snout is flexible, and can be rotated 60 degrees in any direction. Their ankles can rotate beyond 180 degrees.


It was eating these tiny orange berries from the Netleaf Hackberry tree.
Coatis live in wooded areas from southern Arizona and New Mexico, through Mexico and Costa Rica to Columbia.


Here's a short coati video without sound:


This is my first time participating in the Camera Critters meme for people who love animals. For more pictures of critters, please visit Camera Critters.

October Walk

Chris and I went for a walk in the canyon yesterday morning as it had just rained the night before.
Because of the rain, the accordion-like pleats of the saguaros had expanded, making the cacti look a little plumper than usual.
The leaves of the cottonwood trees along the creek were just starting to turn golden.

We saw a jack rabbit, a Harris's antelope squirrel and some of the usual birds like this cactus wren.

Even though the rain seemed to have cooled off the heat wave, not many visitors were in the park.
The recent rain wasn't enough for the creek to resume flowing.
We only saw pools of standing water here and there.
We didn't encounter any reptiles in the four hours we were at the canyon.
But there were a lot of these dark orange butterflies.
And, at the first bridge past mile two, there was a surprise up in a tree, that drew a small audience...
A coati! This was the first time Chris or I have seen one at the canyon. Coatis belong to the raccoon family. They're also known as Coatimundis, Brazilian aardvarks, hog-nosed coons, and snookum bears.
I'll put up more pictures of the coati in another post here.

Thimble Peak

Thimble Peak (on the left) stands between Sabino Canyon and Bear Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains. I've noticed that viewed from the track, the space between Thimble Peak and Blackett's Ridge (to its right) echos the inverted shape of Thimble Peak, more or less, depending on where I stand.

The first image is from the sunrise skywatch post on my Desert Colors blog. The second picture was taken twelve hours later. The cloud formation looks like a ghost of Thimble Peak.

I found some more pictures of Thimble Peak that I took earlier this year in various lighting and weather.

I'm fascinated by the colors of Thimble Peak and the negative space next to it. I plan snap a picture each time I go to the track over the next few months and post some of the results.

September Walk

Chris and I went for a walk in the canyon yesterday morning, the first time in weeks. Here's some of what we found.

It still feels like summer at the canyon.
The barrel cacti just have a few blooms left.
Ocotillo stems are covered with green leaves while the red blooms are long gone.
Teddy bear cholla spines glisten in the sunlight.
The orange sign says "Danger! High Mountain Lion Activity - Enter at your own risk." We've never seen a mountain lion but the rangers say new tracks are found each morning.
Most of the saguaros are bare, but one last fruit remains on this one.
Going over the hill...
The cottonwood leaves are still green.
The creek that flows down the hill from the road has receded to just a few small pools of standing water.
The hills look green even without much rain this monsoon season.
Many grasses have turned straw-colored.
This saguaro looks different from the others with so many arm buds on it.

It was a pretty good sized crowd of people at the canyon considering how hot it still is.

Happy Cactus Monday!

For more cactus themed posts, visit Teri's Painted Daisies.

Cactus Monday

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately...

to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach...

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...

and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived.”

~Henry David Thoreau

For more nature inspired cactus posts visit Teri's Painted Daisies.

Nectar Lovers

These are some of the birds spotted at my backyard feeder. For many weeks the only hummers observed had red bills, probably broad-billed hummingbirds. The first one below has a metal band around his left leg.
Lately we've seen hummers with dark bills, but I'm not sure what species they are.


This one that usually comes to the yard at dusk may be a Rufous. Blurry picture, but I think it's cute how he fans out his tail feathers.
Gila woodpeckers love to sip nectar out of the feeder.
And so do verdins. I love this acrobatic pose.
Only a few flowers are blooming in the yard right now. With bats emptying the hummingbird feeder at night, I try to remember to refill it each morning.

Cactus Monday - Shadows II

Happy Cactus Monday!

This week I experimented with "catching" shadows of plants on paper. It was fun to see how tilting the paper would change the shape of the shadow and it was challenging to keep myself and the camera out of the picture.
I cropped some of the pictures later:

But for most of these I left at least part of the plant in the picture with its shadow.


The next two cacti are both referred to as "jumping" cholla cactus. It is easy to tell the fuzzy Teddy bear apart from the chainfruit cholla just by the shadows.

This old cholla cactus skeleton looks like a dragon to me:


For a switch, here's the shadow of the paper on the cactus pad:
Naturally, after doing these experiments I kept noticing shadows everywhere. I posted more shadows that I found on my other blog, Desert Colors, if you'd like to take a peek.

To see other Cactus Monday posts, mosey on over the Teri's Painted Daisies. Have a great week. :)