a visit to the desert museum

A few weekends ago we headed down to Tucson hoping for more wildflowers and also to pay a visit to the animals at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum – I love visiting the desert museum – it’s part botanical garden and part zoo and I think it’s very well done.

Wildflower season was just getting going, and we managed to get a few shots of lovely desert flowers – the poppies were present especially in the entrance area.  There were a variety of different colored globe mallows blooming on the grounds – here’s a lovely pink specimen.

With the warming air temps, the lizards have started making an appearance on the grounds as well – this big chuckwalla was happily sunning himself in the bear enclosure while the bear was busy napping the afternoon away:

We also saw a number of birds of prey up close – though we didn’t manage to make it to the Raptor Free flight demo. While I found the birds of prey exciting, I was even more excited to manage to capture some hummingbird photos – one of my favorites was of this one, perched on its nest:

If you’ve never been to the Arizona Sonora desert museum, it’s definitely worth checking out – because it is outdoors, best times to go are spring and fall – I tend to prefer spring in favor of all the lovely blooms on the plants.