Saguaro Oasis

First, a footnote to Monday night's post. As it turns out, those aren't ordinary TREES covering the hills I saw from the air. They were most likely shrubby palo verdes and lots of saguaro cactus. Apparently, the Tuscon Range (one of four mountain ranges that surround the city) is known for its saguaro forests. It's so cool to see those strikingly columnar cacti sticking up along the surface of the hills and along the top ridge.



My two best bird photos of the day were a perched female hummingbird (not sure what species), and then a white-winged dove on a nest. Saw a few hummingbird species for the first time, including a Costa's that eluded my camera...all my pictures turned out blurry. It was fun to see the western travelers ooh and ahh at the cardinals we saw.





It was hot, but not as bad as I imagined it could be. And now we're heading south into higher elevations so it'll only get cooler. Today, we're off to Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita mountains. Then we drive to Nogales, a town on the Mexican-US border, for the night.