Joe and Mary Ann's personal web site

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.

I dropped Mary Ann off at the eye doctor, and had about an hour to wait. It was near the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch (RPWR), so I decided to make a quick trip. This post has some photos.

I went to Boyce Thompson Arboretum (BTA) by myself on Thursday, June 18, and again on June 22 with Mark. I got there at about 7 AM the first trip, and 7:45 AM the second one, and spent about 4 hours each time.

Mary Ann and I took a day trip to the Pinal Mountains. It was nice and cool there, and not too long of a drive. We left at 7:00 AM and arrived at Sulfide del Rey campground at about 8:30. We stopped at a couple of places along the way on Forest Road 651 (after the dirt road started). There was a creek flowing across the road, and some birds, butterflies, and dragonflies. In general, there was a lot of water flowing in the springs and creeks this year.