Petey gets a Pleistocene moment in some man made wetlands near his home.
Sandhill Cranes have only been wintering over in the Sulphur Springs Valley for around 60 years, so we won’t be finding any million year old fossil remains as found in Nebraska near the Platte.
Ironically, the cranes winter over in the valley because of the intense agriculture giving them fields to glean during the day. Also, it helps to have the White Water Draw wetlands and the Willcox Playa giving them shallow water for loafing and roosting. Otherwise, they would certainly fly on by to another more exotic location.
The flat agricultural lands of the Sulphur Springs Valley hardly qualify as exotic, but those Sandhill cranes make them look quite beautiful.
I hope you’re getting some time away from your home and out into nature…out into the wild. It sure is easy to social distance...
Twenty-five or thirty years ago I learned the scientific name of this butterfly as Adelpha bredowii. Then the sister butterfly of the Arizona woodlands...
I’ve known barn owls since I was a kid in Kentucky and I always saw them in barns roosting or nesting up high in...
