Joe and Mary Ann's personal web site

Dave, Tom, Joe W., and I went to the Pinal Mountains on October 31, 2020 (Halloween). The primary purpose of the trip was for Dave and Joe W. to fly their drones and get aerial pictures and videos of the fall colors. Dave invited me, and I’m always happy to go to the mountains. Dave’s brother Tom also came. I brought my camera along, and have just a few pictures for this post.

This post covers the the third, and last, day of our southern Arizona trip, which was our visit to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (BANWR). This is a large refuge (117K acres) established in 1985. We went to the Cienega (aka Cienaga) in the town of Arivaca, which is a small part of the refuge. A Cienega is a wetlands area. Unfortunately, the wetlands are now dried up. This is, I think, due to many decades of groundwater pumping in southern Arizona, which relies on groundwater for almost all of its water supply. This is unlike the Phoenix area, which has a very large supply of surface water. Arivaca is still a nice spot, even though the water is no longer at the surface.

This post is for the second day of our Southern Arizona trip, when we went to California Gulch. The main attraction of California Gulch is that it is one of the few places in North America where you can find the Five-striped Sparrow. It is there year round, but most easily found in the spring, when it is active with nest building, raising chicks, and protecting its territory by singing. It has been reported in October, but not as often. We decided to check out the area, and try our luck with the Five-striped sparrow.

Mary Ann and I took a 3 day trip to southern Arizona. We went to Madera Canyon, California Gulch, and Arivaca. This post is for Madera Canyon.

This post is about attracting Lesser Goldfinches to our backyard feeder. Why do a post on the Lesser Goldfinch? After all, it’s a common bird and not very interesting, right? Some people don’t like finches, and view them as a nuisance bird, and can’t imagine trying to attract them. I’ve been trying to get the Lesser Goldfinch to show up at our feeder for a long time, and finally succeeded, so I thought I’d document how I was finally able to do it.

Mary Ann had the day off on Wednesday, so we decided to go up to the Pinal Mountains. I’ve been wanting to get up there before the summer birds leave, and I was worried that they would be gone by now. Some were gone, but we were fortunate to see some migrating warblers on this trip.

Three of the Slattery kids came for a visit in August. They are the 3 youngest children of Mary Ann’s sister, Jennifer. This post has some pictures from their visit. I included quite a few action shots of them in the pool, because the kids get a kick out of those pictures.

Mary Ann and I went to the Granite Reef Recreation Area on the Salt River on August 14, 2020. We’ve been having a spell of hotter and dryer than normal weather, so we went early for the cooler temperatures. The river was running low, due to the lack of rainfall. We got there at about 6:30, and left at around 9:00. It’s about a 20 minute drive from our house. We only had time to hike the west trail, as far as we could go, to where the ‘no trespassing’ signs are before the dam.

Mary Ann and I went to Wichita in July to attend Carly and Joey’s wedding. We stayed at Nancy’s (as usual). It was a beautiful wedding! I didn’t take any pictures, except on the last day, I took some in Nancy’s yard.

There was an Anna’s hummingbird in our Clementine tree that was roosting and not afraid of me. I went and got the camera, and he continued to roost. While I was there, I photographed some other birds. I also included a Giant Swallowtail from the backyard on 6/8/2020.