Ok, so if you have read all these posts about Arizona, by now you're probably thinking, "What about the poor child of these insane birdwatchers? Doesn't he get to have any fun?" The same thing dawned on us right about this time in our trip, so we decided to take Aiden to a local Tucson city park to play. Aiden loves slides. Luckily for him, this park had long slides, short slides, tunnel slides, and spiral slides. He was in heaven.
And then we took him birding again. Actually, it was more like a picnic on the top of Mount Lemmon in Tucson, with some accidental birding thrown in. We all piled in the minivan and forced acrophobe Andy drive up the steep, winding cliff-edge that is the road up Mt. Lemmon. You start at the base in saguaro cactus and climb through three completely different habitat zones before you reach the alpine area at the top. A large portion of the mountain burned in a huge wildfire in 2003, so the plants and animals are slowly regenerating and re-populating the area. We had a wonderful picnic lunch at the Loma Linda picnic area, where we also saw several new birds.
Grandma Chris and Aiden
Stellar's Jay at Loma Linda, Mt. Lemmon
View from near the top
Loma Linda picnic area
Yellow-Eyed Junco (a lifer)
Group photo after lunch
On our way back to the Dolans, we stopped at Agua Caliente Park. This is Carol's favorite city park, and it is really beautiful. Lots of open lawn and big date palms and wetland areas with flocks of waterfowl. Andy and I had never seen Ring-Necked Ducks or Wigeons that were this tame before! Aiden was practically petting them as he ran around shouting "Duck!" "Duck!" "Duck!" We've got him trained already...
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