Howdy, folks. It's Glenn with the Cactus Atlas
about to explore the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum right outside of Tucson, Arizona.
This is not the first visit that I've paid here at this museum.
In fact, if you go back far enough into the Cactus Atlas back catalog
you'll see a trip from a few years ago when we came here and filmed it for the
very first time and I've been here a couple other times since then
and this place is awesome.
I'm really happy to share it and to bring this to you in beautiful 4K.
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I think we're just going to start off walking off into the desert trails that take you out
amongst all these beautiful cacti.
All sorts here. We're right outside of Saguaro National Park too, by the way,
so it should be no surprise that this place is teeming with saguaro cacti. Very pretty.
This is a really cool museum.
Think of it as kind of a zoo. Think of it as kind of a botanical garden.
A natural history museum. They even have like a small aquarium here
and much more than that so there's a lot of variety and a lot of stuff to come and see
but the star of the show is the Sonoran desert.
The plants the animals, that inhabit this wonderful place.
Look at this. Some beautiful flowers. I'm hoping to see more.
It's early February so I don't think we're going to be seeing a crazy amount of flowers but already...
This is absolutely beautiful. Look at that. I don't know what kind of flowers these are but...
Right now I'm on top of the viewing area for some of the cats that inhabit the area.
Bobcats for example. They have an ocelot.
I think we might go downstairs to see if we can catch a glimpse because
I don't see our
furry feline friends right now.
It is freezing out here and really windy.
Oh, there it is. You see it?
It's actually behind all that brush walking towards the back of the rocks.
They have, like, a viewing area downstairs here where you can get underground
and see these guys from ground level so let's head down there
and get out of this really cold wind. It is freezing in Tucson this morning.
It was in the 30s when I arrived.
It's in the 40s already but my fingers have lost all their feeling.
Ah, nice reprieve from that cold wind.
Oh, look at this. I don't remember this. I wonder if that's a little sleeping area for our friends.
Let's take a peek.
He was - he or she - was way back there and you can't actually...
This is actually a worse view than what we were seeing out there but
maybe after the sun comes up these guys will be sunning themselves or something.
Look at this.
A little fox.
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I don't know if that's a two-way mirror but look at that cutie.
[Laughter]
It doesn't want me to film it I don't think. Look.
Hey.
I don't think it can see through here. [Laughter]
That's an amazing encounter though. Look at that.
I wish the glare wasn't so bad on the window.
That's a good way to start things off.
That's a really cute fox. Gray fox if I didn't already say.
I hear things moving around in the bushes here. I'm like whoa what's going on?
We'll come back here later and see if we can see the bobcat and some other
things but for now I'm gonna just head off into the sun and warm up.
There's this trail here that I really like.
They say it's about a half-hour long. It's the Desert Loop Trail
and it just goes through a really beautiful section of the Sonoran Desert
and they have some animals here and there so let's go warm up and get some sun.
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I was here actually just a week ago.
I visited Saguaro National Park West and we really featured the stars of the show,
the saguaro cacti and the Sonoran Desert.
I think here today my focus is to try to find some of the critters that live here in the desert.
We'll kind of maybe we'll prioritize them today outside of my cactus garden exploration.
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We're searching for an animal called the javelina. They're wild peccaries.
Oftentimes mistaken as wild pigs because that's what they really look like.
They have tusks. They're hairy and they blend into the surroundings perfectly.
You wouldn't believe how many times in Arizona, I've been, like,
walking around, even in neighborhoods, and been feet away from them without even knowing it.
Wouldn't you know it there's one of them right there. You see that?
I think it hears my voice and it's coming this way maybe.
Maybe it thinks I'm here to feed it.
Actually, there's two of them right there.
I didn't even see the big one and there's three. I think i woke them up.
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It's a really cool sight when you first come to Phoenix if you've never been here
and you encounter these things.
They're everywhere by the way.
You'll see them in neighborhoods walking down the street at dusk.
In your yard ripping up all your little succulents and making a gosh darn mess.
Getting into the trash. They're awesome.
I do like them. I think they're cool but for those of us that live here
in the Phoenix or Tucson area, some of us don't look favorably upon them
when they come into our yards and trash them.
So anyway that's the javelina.
Something special here in the Sonoran Desert.
Something a lot of people from Arizona didn't realize we have in droves here
all over the Sonoran Desert.
Ironically I didn't see any of this when we went to Saguaro National Park but
if you ever wonder what's inside of one of those, there you go.
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Here's the coyote habitat and I think I saw one
coming this way maybe. Yeah, there it is. See?
Starting to think there's only a couple. A pair in here.
I've only seen two and they're definitely interested in...
They were interested in me.
I think they thought that maybe I was bringing them breakfast.
There's a keeper kind of cleaning up their poo
walking on the inside and it didn't seem to pay them any mind.
You can see it's just kind of casually strolling here.
I'm Glenn with the almost world-famous Cactus Atlas
You guys are on YouTube.
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Here's one of the things I always worry about coming across on my
many hikes in the desert.
Western Diamondback and I was about to say oh they probably don't have it out.
It's cold but it's in its borrow back there.
Might be very hard to see with the glass reflecting like that.
That is a big snake.
There's a bird catching some sun.
I think it's a roadrunner, isn't it?
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For some of us that live here in the Sonoran Desert, this is the hall of nightmares.
There's a lot of stuff in here that you don't want to find in your house.
Scorpions, Black Widow spiders, centipedes.
Ugh, not cool.
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This is one of my favorite plants of the desert.
Now this is not native to the Sonoran Desert
but you gotta love a name of a plant that is boojum.
I believe these are endangered and they're indigenous to Mexico.
I think the Baja region of Mexico and they grow really slowly.
I think I read like two centimeters a year or something like that.
Now we're all looking to make a buck and we're all looking to do something good for the world.
I've read that these boojum grow so slow that, you know,
they're worth like a couple hundred dollars a square inch or something like that.
I probably got it a little bit wrong but regardless,
I was thinking about seeing if I could grow some of these in my
cactus garden that I'm designing at home.
At least one just to see what I can pull off. See if I can get it to survive.
I believe you can grow them in the Phoenix area.
The only thing I haven't figured out is... I mean they're really expensive to obtain I think so
before I do that I want to make sure I know exactly what I'm doing.
Another one of my favorite cactus - the Organ Pipe right here.
These are really healthy looking ones.
You won't find these natively in most of Arizona actually.
They're more common to Mexico but as some of you know
there's a little sliver of the United States right on the Mexican border
called Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument which we've been to in our show.
We have some videos in our back catalog about that but really cool cactus.
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I would say that's a pleasant start to the weekend on a Saturday morning.
Just walking in this very beautiful and quiet cactus garden
that I had completely to myself.
The early bird gets the worm once again.
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The next stop on our tour is life in a desert waterhole.
Just like that sign says.
So, yeah, stairs to underwater viewing. That's what we want.
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Alright, here we go.
This is a Colorado Pike Minnow.
That's what I think this is called.
Look at that.
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They seem interested in me.
They're all coming over here.
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They have a beaver den over here too.
We struck out with the otters.
We didn't with the beaver though. Look.
Oh my god. That is so plump and huge.
I don't think it's being disturbed.
It's sleeping.
It's face is covered up.
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If you've watched our channel for any amount of time we've seen plenty of these
on our journeys.
Out in the Mojave Desert.
Up in Nevada. Even in Arizona.
One of the most relaxing places here that I remember from last time as this aviary
that houses birds native to the Sonoran Desert like quail and other things
so let's get in there and see how many we can spot
and maybe take a quick breather and just relax.
As with tradition I always have to tell Amy at this point cue the relaxing music.
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Just like last time you find birds, like, hidden out of view
but if you look carefully you'll find them.
Those look like some kind of duck to me.
Howdy, ducks.
What are you guys doing back there? Hiding?
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Aviaries are so peaceful, aren't they?
One of my favorite things in life.
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I think my bench is vacant.
The bench that I like to just sit and meditate at for a little bit
here in the middle of this beautiful aviary with running water.
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The aviary. Once again one of my favorite things to see here.
One of the most peaceful places in Arizona I'd say.
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For the moment hang with me. We're going to stick with the bird theme.
Now beyond that aviary, there is one other thing from last time that I
remember that I think may have been my favorite moment.
Hopefully, today won't disappoint
because right around the corner here are some other birds
that I want to pay my respects to and say hello.
Well, there is an interesting sight. We got a hummingbird.
A very skittish hummingbird.
I don't know if it's gonna come back but I think it was
interested in these little orange flowers.
Speaking of hummingbirds that's precisely what I'm on the hunt for here.
Not really hunting them, of course.
Hunting them with a camera.
But we're not gonna eat hummingbirds on the show.
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Last time we were here one strategy that paid off was just sitting
and let them come to you.
I'm really having a hard time capturing them walking around.
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I noticed that some of the birds like to
return to the same branch that they were sitting on so if you just kind of
locate that, like that one we just saw back there,
and just wait they just seem to come right back.
They're starting to get more active now and you just hear every once in a while
right by your ear, you hear, like, whoosh. Fly right by you.
An interesting story I heard about this place is that back in the 90s
they renovated this and they tore out all of the like plants and things
to redo the exhibit.
When they put the hummingbirds back in here they noticed shortly after like their nests were,
like, crumbling apart and falling apart and they were stumped as to what was going on
but it turns out what was happening is that hummingbirds build their nest with spider webs
and it makes it stick together so
when they redid the habitat they removed all the spiders and there were no more spider webs
so their nests were falling apart
but they ended up putting spiders back in here and cobwebs so that rectified the situation
but I thought that was interesting.
I never knew that hummingbirds sed spider webs to build their nests.
That is one of my favorite things to do here.
I could spend half a day in there just doing that.
It's so much fun to try to photograph those guys and
once you find the right spot and one that's willing to participate with you
it becomes a really fun game.A
Alright, there you have it. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
Our second visit on this channel here.
Last time we were here we covered other exhibits we didn't see today.
So go check out that old video of ours in our back catalog if you haven't seen it
but other than that, I hope you enjoyed hanging out with us
on this Saturday morning and we'll see you next time.
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