Thunderbird Park: A Post-Rain Buzz

This morning I hit the trail to see if there was a noticeable difference since yesterday’s .08” of rain. I was ten minutes earlier arriving to the trail than Wednesday, it was a cool 71° and the sun was in full shine. I noticed right away there were more small sparrow-like birds singing a tune, hummingbirds flitting around, bees a buzzin’ and humans wandering by. There was a definite uptick in visitors. I took the same path, in the same amount of time but saw 85 people, 5 dogs, and 2 babies compared to 50 people two days ago. Is this because Fridays are generally more crowded than mid-week? Or because it was nearly ten degrees cooler than two days prior? Or because it rained yesterday? Or because all 85 people read my blog and wanted to see me? I think the first two are the more likely choices.

With all the extra flight activity I was wondering if there would be a greener groundcover, and there really wasn’t. The biggest change was the saguaros. Wednesday I was fascinated by looking at rocks and was looking for reptile activity but today the reptiles were replaced with the many flying, flitting, buzzing creatures – at least for the first hour of my hike. The reason I think is the saguaros. I bet they opened wide last night. And by mid-morning today many were still open, attracting those straggler bees while many more buds hinted they may open soon.

Other posts on Thunderbird Park:
http://www.outsideaz.com/2012/04/thunderbird-park-waiting-for-rain.html
http://www.outsideaz.com/2011/03/thunderbird-park-59th-ave-north-of-deer.html
http://www.outsideaz.com/2010/03/thunderbird-park-67th-ave-patrick-lane.html

Thunderbird Park: Waiting for Rain

It’s been awhile since I checked in on Thunderbird Park, so I decided to take the morning and see what’s changed.


In my previous post from March 2011 I hiked a loop made up of H-3 and H-1 trails. Today I decided to extend by hike by adding H-2 into my loop. It took me 2 hours to complete the extended loop. The photo of the flag at the bottom of this post came from the top of the H-2 trail.

It was a cloudy morning and about 77° so it was perfect Arizona hiking weather and the number of people, about 50, I met on the trail was consistent with last year, even though I hiked a longer loop. The trail seemed wider to me – I think it’s probably 3 ft or wider in many places. But anyway, I saw 50 people and 3 dogs in 120 minutes -- a person every 2.4 minutes.

I also saw a baby chuckwalla, circling hawks, and an imaginary snake (I was warned of one but never saw it). And different from last year, I noticed they’ve built a helicopter pad. I wonder if this is a result of the rescue performed in February 2012 or the one from
December 2011. 

When I compared my photos from today to prior years I noticed that today's showed a stark disparity between the hiking trails on the mountain and the developments below; you can clearly see which areas are being fed water and which are not. Last March my photos show that the ground cover on the mountain was definitely greener and more lush than it is today. Perhaps that’s the cycle of the desert – from March to April you lose the greenery. There are palo verdes which add some green but, boy, was there a contrast between the desert floor, the foliage, and the sky. What a difference a year and a month make.

 



The weather forecast calls for rain tonight so I plan to head back out on Friday to see how the desert responds.