White Tanks and Water Ranch, January 5 and 7, 2019

Dave, Fr Charlie, and I went to the White Tank Mountain Regional Park (WTMRP) on January 7, 2019.  The White Tank Mountains are on the west side of the Phoenix metro area (aka ‘the Valley’), about a 50 minute drive from home. I’ve often wanted to go there, but I tend to stay over on the east side of the valley. Fr. Charlie now lives on the west side, so we decided to finally check out the White Tank Mountains. I should have gone a long time ago! It’s a beautiful place. It is very lush desert, with lots of desert plants. It’s a huge park with overnight camping areas, and over 40 miles of trails. We hiked the Waterfall Trail and the Black Rock Long Loop Trail, for a total of 3.5 miles. The Brittlebush is blooming early, and will bloom again. The poppies were just starting to come out, but should be very good this year in March and April.

I didn’t get many bird pictures, and, as usual, we saw more than we were able to photograph (e.g. Loggerhead Shrike, American Kestrel, Red-tailed Hawk, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Bewick’s Wren, Verdin, male White-crowned Sparrow, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, etc).

I included some saguaro photos. Saguaro (pronounced Sa-whar-o) cactus are the icon of the Arizona desert. I like photographing them because they are large, and unique, and each one has its own character with different numbers and sizes of ‘arms’. However, I don’t usually publish many pictures of them. There are lots of beautiful saguaros in the White Tanks, and I decided to include some.

On January 5th I went to the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch (RPWR) before sunrise to get some photographs of birds with the sunrise reflecting on the water. I got one by accident a while back (see here), and I really liked the effect, so I decided to try to get one on purpose 🙂.  I enjoyed being there and watching the sun come up, and the birds ‘wake up’. It was cold – about 37° when I got there. Unfortunately, the sun rises pretty quickly, and by the time I found a good spot, it was too late. I did include a shot that shows the idea, but I will go back and try again, now that I know where to go. I want to go soon while the sunrise still isn’t too early.