April 13
Good Evening
We were down in Canmore and Calgary for Easter. I got some interesting shots Burt for now. I will continue to send images from Tucson.
We hired a birding guide to take us bowling in the Madera Canyon one night. It was a beautiful clear night with the moon shining brightly. We found three different species of owls and were able to photograph 2. We saw the third fly by quickly. We photographed the Whiskered Screech Owl and the Elf Owl. We didn’t get the Western Screech Owl. It is interesting that the Western Screech Owl lives in the desert and about a kilometer up the canyon. Above that elevation, they are replaced by the Whiskered Screech Owl.
The Whiskered Screech owls are mainly found in Mexico and only show up in the US in the "Madrean Sky Islands”. These are the Sierra Madras Mountain in northern Mexico and South-eastern Arizona. They are called “sky islands” because they have entirely different habitat, flora and fauna than the surrounding desert. They are not a continuously mountain range, but individual mountain clusters rising up out of the desert.
I also included some other interesting birds.
Stay Well !
