Overall, the news about the Horseshoe Two Fire is positive. Threat to the Portal area of the Chiricahua Mountains has lessened to the point that residents were allowed to return home this morning. We have all been unloading and unpacking! Wind has subsided greatly, aiding … Continue readingPortaleños Come Home
Today has been busy–apologies for the delay in posting! Like other friends who are having nightmares about the Horseshoe Two fire, I woke with a searing mental image of our house, engulfed in flames. That worry, fortunately, was far from reality. Last night’s very cool, … Continue readingWhat Today Brings
At tonight’s meeting with the Forest Service and firefighters from the Type 1 fire team, the Rodeo-Portal community learned the team’s current basic strategy for dealing with the Horseshoe Two fire. This fire is a handful, as many are proving to be across the West, … Continue readingThe First of Many Meetings
After thinking the fire was so far away, we got a midnight call to evacuate, at first said to be mandatory where we live a couple of miles from Portal. (Actually, Arizona does not have mandatory evacuations.) People in Portal proper received the same call … Continue readingHorseshoe 2 Report
In haste, as we just received a midnight call to evacuate. The flames are indeed visible from our house as the fire approaches the environs of Portal. Time to pack the computer!
Today a fire began in the Chiricahuas and quickly blew into a large burn. It apparently began in upper Horseshoe Canyon, close to the origin of last year’s Horseshoe Fire, and is being called Horseshoe 2. A Type 1 fire team has been dispatched and … Continue readingHorseshoe 2 Fire: Deja Vu
We’re seeing two races of Hermit Thrushes right now in the Chiricahuas, slipping quietly along the edges of trails. Hermit Thrush taxonomy is complicated and unresolved, with roughly 10 races. Whatever the finer divisions, they do resolve into three basic groups: the bright Eastern forms, … Continue readingHermit Thrushes
… Someone is watching us! Red-faced Warbler (Photos by Narca) Red-faced Warblers are truly stunning. They are arriving now in the Chiricahuas, although many of them are still foraging at low elevations or moving with big mixed flocks in the higher mountains. Soon they … Continue readingRed-faced Warblers
Last night, Dave Jasper and I joined Gerry, Peter, and their friends from the West Midland and West Sussex bird clubs in Britain, in search of two of the special owls of Cave Creek Canyon––the Whiskered Screech Owl (a denizen of Mexico’s oak-pine forests, which … Continue readingOwls, Tiny and Merely Small
The last couple of weeks have been very full, all days afield with friends and clients. A few days ago on the road to Barfoot Park, high in the Chiricahuas, a faint buzzing like an angry bee announced the presence of a tiny Twin-spotted Rattlesnake … Continue readingSnakes!