After exploring Paton Center for Hummingbirds early in the morning we make our way to the Sonoita Creek Preserve to use our week pass for one more day. Today we are one of the few visiting and the volunteer recognizes us instantly and gives us pointers on what to explore. However all goes out the window when at the first intersection we see a coatimundi in one direction! This is really unexpected and a nice surprise for us as we haven’t seen a coati for a couple years.
Even nicer is that this coati doesn’t seem to notice us or to care and comes towards us for quite some time until finally deciding that maybe it is best to avoid the two people taking lots of photos of him walking. But for certain a highlight for us!
After this unexpected encounter we continue on our planned hike reaching the other end of the railroad trail with another abandoned bridge pillar marking the end of the trail through the preserve. From here we descend on the river trail watching squirrels walking the tightrope above us with the grace of acrobats.
We decided on the river walk as we assume this is the best place to see birds and animals at this time of the day. Also it has more trees that can protect us from the direct of the sun.
And we choose correctly, while we do not see any tanagers like the previous day we get great views of Bewick’s Wrens and Bearless Tyrannulets just singing or foraging close to us.
The trail is quite beautiful with lots of shade that is enjoyed also by the wildlife including a couple of Inca doves. We really enjoy seeing them, we haven’t seen Inca doves for quite some time even though they are relatively common.
We then spend some time picnicking near the creek and watching the water while looking for birds. However time passes inexorably and soon we have to return towards the car as we have one more stop planned today.
We decide to loop back through another trail we haven’t explored thoroughly the previous day. For this we have to cross through the central meadows finding again a few Coues deer on the other side of the meadow.
On the other side we follow the spring trail through some beautiful forest enjoyed also by a pair of cardinals that seem to be quite unafraid when we pass by.
Here we are not quite sure how the trails connect so we are happy when we can see the visitor center and take the direct trail towards the visitor center reaching it at the time we needed to also reach the other preserve we want to visit later today, Ramsey Canyon Preserve.
