Yesterday, my cousin Tracy and my friend Nancy, wanted to show me the "wetlands." There is an oxymoron if ever I heard one, and my expectations were not very high. Then, Nancy parked and pointed to a dead tree. I glanced at the tree thinking, "Yep, this is about what I expected from the Sonora Desert Wetlands." My eyes traveled up, up, up, and there, in the very top of the tree were huge nests. Sitting in and around those nests, sentinels of the brood, were huge blue herons protecting their young.
Now, as God is my witness, I never thought herons nested in trees. I especially never thought they nested in dead trees in the desert, because in my part of the country, I see them sitting around playing chess by rivers and flood waters and such.
The herons were just the tip of the iceberg. They were beautiful, majestic! They let us take many photos, but if we wandered too close to their nesting tree, one of them would take flight, circle around, then go back to the same stance, eagle eyes (forgive the pun) trained on us.
As we walked further into the area, which we could do because someone is organized enough to have ordered a permit (it would have done no good for any of us to end up in the chain gang because we are really not very big women) the marshes with huge green reeds hid ducks and red-winged blackbirds, and further back, behind a fence our permit did not allow us to cross, a huge body of water where we could see all kinds of birds in their natural habitats. There were snowy egrets, ducks, herons, pelicans, and probably just about every species of common bird we know from our yards. It was breathtaking.
Every time I come to Phoenix, I think I probably have seen it all, but that's just not possible. I am already anticipating what the girls might have found to show me next time!
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