"Meep-Meep"

We're still traveling around the Southwest. The food is enjoyable but not very interesting, so I haven't been writing about it. We had extremely classic Italian food for dinner (I mean meatballs and pasta), and last night we opted for sandwiches from a nearby Whole Foods, which we ate at the convenient picnic tables at our motel.

I thought I would put in just a few of my pictures from today's visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is a combined natural history museum and zoo, entirely devoted to local species of birds, animals, reptiles, plants, and whatever else there is. We saw, among others: a coati, wild pigs called javelinas, a tortoise, and a collection of local hummingbirds in a hummingbird house. The museum has recreated small outdoor areas representing the ecosystems of the desert, mountains, stream beds, and so on. The large outdoor museum/zoo attracts many wild visitors, as well as the captives.

The most exciting wild bird I saw today was this roadrunner... 

The roadrunner was desperately trying to get INTO the cage where a captive female lived. He kept calling to her -- "meep meep!" and going right up to the glass wall that kept them apart. Tragic love!

We have also seen a couple of coyotes -- one was crossing the road as we drove
away from the museum. Neither the real coyote nor the real roadrunner looks
all that much like their cartoon selves. We also saw a bunny (not Bugs).

To get back to the topic of food: here's a Gila Woodpecker sipping nectar from an agave blossom.