Mostly sunny with temperatures in the 50s in Tucson, Arizona.
After a very late night, we mercifully didn’t get off to an especially early start. We headed out around 10:00am, with our first destination being the botanical garden.
We spent a couple of hours there. It was interesting to see some of the plants, but I spent more time paying attention to the birds. These included Broad-billed Hummingbirds, a Northern Cardinal, thrashers, towhees, Verdin, and a Bewick’s Wren, among others.
I also spent a fair amount of time in the butterfly house. The heat and humidity took my breath away when I first stepped in. The humidity was too high to use my big camera (the lens fogged up), though that might have been handy at times. They had many species of butterflies, some quite striking.
Next stop was the Japanese garden. We learned that unlike most others around the United States which feature more walking gardens, these were set up to replicate family courtyard gardens. There were seven set up, each not especially large. They had a bench or chair to sit and observe. Though each was different, they typically included some element of rock, green plant, and water (in one case, a dry creek bed).
After lunch we went to West Saguaro National Park. Connor, Jonathan, and I walked a mile long trail. Considering how dry it is here, I’m impressed at how dense the vegetation is. So many kinds of cactus and other thorny plants.
As I do when travelling, I took pictures of things that caught my eye for one reason or another. I certainly wasn’t trying to maximize my species count.
The sun was setting on our drive back to the house.
We spent the evening at dinner visiting with Frank from Austria. He’s someone I’ve virtually known for a few years based on group zoom calls we were both on. I enjoyed meeting him and the conversation we had. Even Rowan thought the conversation was interesting (which is quite rare, in my experience).
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
