Sonoran Desert Museum

This bee sculpture was part of a temporary exhibit of metal and glass sculptures

The Sonora Desert Museum is an outdoor museum showcasing the flora and fauna of the desert. Sort of a combined wildlife park and botanical garden.  Their animals are almost all injured animals from rehabilitation centre's.

We wound up going to the museum on the only day of the week that the raptor demonstration was not scheduled.  A big disappointment to us.

Instead we arrived just in time for a guided bird walk with just the two of us and our private guide, a retired schoolteacher from Colorado and New Mexico.  She showed us all the wild birds that hang out inside the park.  

Like this mourning dove.

This shrub is senicio, a colourful relative of common groundsel (Senicio vulgaris).

We also checked out the aviary.

Leo in the aviary

This is the only time we'll ever see the masked bobwhite, it is so critically endangered in the wild.

This chubby prairie dog is part of a captive breeding and reintroduction  program.  They are much skinnier in the wild where they eat less and exercise more.

Most of the wildlife were out catching the rays on this colder than average day.  Like the mountain lion,

and the desert fox.

This Mexican fox is also part of a reintroduction program.  It's more the size of a coyote tha a wolf.

Spot the coyote sleeping on a warm rock.

The signs said to look for the javelinas in the shade but today they were in a sunny spot all snuggled together  for warmth.

There are three javelina in this pile

We thought we'd skip the poisonous reptile talk because we'd seen it the last time we were here, but we're glad we decided to go.  They had a new lizard, the Mexican beaded lizard,

a relative to the gila monster, which lives in the Mexican part of the Sonoran desert.  When the handler took it out of the cage it snarled at her.  She says they are much feistier than the laid back gila monsters.

Last time they told us the typical poison victim is an 18-40 year old inebriated man. But this time they told us that statistic has been updated.  Now the typical victim is a retirement aged gardener.  Think about that before you retire to Arizona.

Today's Bird of the Day is this (wild) great horned owl, who has decided the desert museum is the ideal place to spend the winter.