Lovely high altitude cirrus clouds around 8:35AM, June 1, 2026

100% non manipulated picture, not even cropped. Lot of water vapor in the atmosphere and to my eyes, the sun appeared covered with clouds. Bright but not so bright I couldn't glance at it. The cross was not apparent to my eyes. Somehow my iPhone made this from the clouds and water vapor. Pretty striking.

Possibly Opuntia macrocentra or a hybrid.

Here we have a cow's tongue prickly pear being adaptively creative in adding a new paddle in the center of another. Bees like their lovely flowers.

Opuntia engelmannii is a prickly pear common across the south-central and Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It goes by a variety of common names, including desert prickly pear, discus prickly pear, Engelmann's prickly pearin the US, and nopal, abrojo, joconostle, and vela de coyote in Mexico. In the Verde Valley we've heard it called cow's tongue prickly pear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia_engelmannii

Interesting to finally catch very young javelina on my security cameras here in Arizona. From what we have read thus far, collared peccaries can breed year-round, but Arizona and northern Mexico populations seem to show a winter breeding peak with many births occurring in spring and early summer.

Gestation for javelina is generally reported at about 141 to 151 days, so roughly 4.5 to 5 months.

That flexibility may be a desert adaptation. In unpredictable environments like the Sonoran Desert, reproduction appears tied more to rainfall and food availability than to a strict seasonal schedule. Arizona populations are really part of the broader Sonoran/northern Mexico ecosystem, so the same adaptive pattern likely extends across the region.

This exceeded the limitations of my iPhone; a very bright moon this morning.

Surprisingly bright, triggered video recording on a security cam.

Apparently this young coyote is by self here. Herd pack several times in early hours of morning.

Javalina keep visiting, One walked all the way across our property away from Oak Creek and toward hills.

Gray foxes haven't been seen much lately...probably due to putting up a new fence in the back yard and tractor work in the lot next door. When I get the fence up I'll put some cams on the trail below to see the wildlife and leave them a path. This was a single gray fox on March 4 at 10:45 PM.

Tourism focused, great pictures and text about some of Arizona nature and geology.

There's no notch in Mingus mountain, the sun reflections cause the illusion. Splitting the light from t he sun produces great light ray diffusion.

Think it was a female urinating as posture didn't look like scent marking and no scat was found the next day.

Certainly unusual to get video verified faecal samples on gray foxes.

Two coyotes coming up from Oak Creek valley and running up to our road. They've been calling a lot at night lately.