Another Mason Center Update

Kendall Kroesen, Habitats Program Manager

Turns out spring is pretty exciting at our new offices at the Mason Center! Some Tucson Audubon staff, including me, moved our offices up here in mid December. We survived some cold weather, and now are enjoying spring.
 

Desert globemallow

We observed the first lizards to emerge—including whiptails, zebra-tailed and spiny lizards. And now we’re seeing plants blossom and birds nest! A beautiful male Costa’s Hummingbird is coming to our feeders and doing its whirring territorial song and dizzying display flight.

Curve-billed thrashers are nesting in a big cholla cactus. Baby birds can be heard in a Lesser Goldfinch nest high in a palo verde. And a House Finch pair has a nest with three eggs in it, all hidden deftly in another cholla.

Thrasher nest

Female House Finch near nest
The beautiful passion flower trellised up the side of the house by the front door has three flowers, and seems to have many more unopened ones in store.

Passion flower
 
Spring has sprung. 

More information about the Mason Center is here: www.tucsonaudubon.org/masoncenter

Newly planted blue palo verde in old road
 
Little leaf cordia flower
 
Flowering verbena
 

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