by Walt Anderson To truly develop a sense of place, you need to listen to the conversations going on out there. You can learn to read between the lines, to marvel at the very existence of these ancient rocks that formed deep beneath the ground and now stand revealed to experience the seasons of wind,…

by Walt Anderson Today’s Among Friends features one of the most fascinating of the migrant birds to visit the area, the White-faced Ibis. It comes through the Buenos Aires Refuge on migration, stopping by standing water areas such as Aguirre Lake, Grebe Pond, and Arivaca Cienega. Of course, drought years greatly reduce suitable habitat on…

by Walt Anderson Beginning birders sometimes despair at the diversity and relatively subtle color patterns of sparrows, though some are obvious: White-crowned, Black-throated, and Lark Sparrows are strikingly marked and fairly easy to identify. Juncos are actually sparrows, but the racial variation among them can be tricky at first. Towhees are a group of large…

by Walt Anderson I’ve always been fascinated by hedgehogs, but since the mammal is not native to Arizona, I can’t write a column on them. So I decided to get Cereus—Echinocereus, that is—the spiny hedgehog cacti that are found in various species all over the state. A rose by any name . . . well,…

by Walt Anderson The Great Horned Owl, justifiably called the “Tiger of the Night,” is found throughout North America and more than half of South America. In Arizona, it occurs from as low as 27’ near Yuma to 9800’ in the White Mountains, avoiding only the densest of forests and the most open of habitats.…

by Walt Anderson As Easter approaches, the abundant purveyors of consumption have been targeting buyers with all sorts of items, many of them associated with the Easter Bunny. How this mythical creature got associated with the Biblical Easter holiday seems like a stretch to me. And I hate to burst any balloons, but the Easter…

by Walt Anderson My recent post on Wood Ducks featured one of the most beautiful of the waterfowl, though the entire family has many devoted fans, except perhaps the golfers who hate geese on the fairways. In contrast to the popular Anatidae, the Rallidae (rails, coots, gallinules) may be the Rodney Dangerfields of the water…

by Walt Anderson OK, I admit it. I’m a Duck Fan (Go Oregon!). But when it comes down to choosing favorites, the colorful, extravagant Wood Duck ranks right up there. These beautiful birds are not common in Arizona; in fact, the Breeding Bird Atlas published in 2005 only had nesting records from Yavapai County, specifically…

by Ricardo Small Several transplanted Pima pineapple cacti are in the cactus garden at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge Visitors’ Center. This species was classified “endangered” almost 30 years ago (September 23, 1993). The yellow flowers are beautiful. Distribution in Arizona is limited to portions of Pima & Santa Cruz Counties. Its habitat is…

by Walt Anderson A visitor to most Arizona marshes such as at Arivaca Cienega in early March is often greeted with a rich, vibrant chorus of sounds like a warming-up orchestra consisting of violins and flutes but no deep brass. The instrumentalists are indeed warming up, psyching themselves for their upcoming journeys, short or long,…