The Bird Whisperer: Escudilla Mountain

On August 23, 2010, my family and I went over to Escudilla Mountain in the White Mountains near Alpine. Escudilla is a massive mountain and on the southern side there is Terry Flat, a sprawling subalpine meadow and creeks with a loop road around it. This mountain features prominently in the chapter on Arizona and New Mexico in Aldo Leopold's famous book, "A Sand County Almanac" and was also the place where Arizona's last grizzly bear was killed in 1916. There are large groves of aspens around the mountain that grew back after a large fire in the 1950's, so the mountain has great fall colors in late September/early October. In the peak fall color period the mountain appears golden in the morning light when driving through Springerville. During this trip, the colors were found in the wildflowers though. In the afternoon we encountered some rain on Escudilla, but not as heavily as between Springerville and Show Low later on while driving home to Heber (that was blinding rain and hail, some of the hardest we've seen in Arizona). Before heading home we also stopped at Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area south of Springerville where we saw more sunflowers and lots of hummingbirds at the feeders there. The sunflowers in the whole area were amazing, with whole meadows covered with them in the volcanic fields west of Springerville. Below are some photos:

View looking towards New Mexico:

Here is the coolest flower we found on the mountain, a mariposa-lily; either Gunnison's (Calochortus gunnisonii) or doubting mariposa-lily (C. ambiguus). This was the first purple morph of a mariposa-lily I've seen in Arizona (all the others, like sego lily, have been white). We only found a small patch of the plants with this single flower in bloom. On the bottom petal, there is a caterpillar (don't know what kind).

blue flax (Linum lewisii or L. perenne):

harebell (Campanula rotundifolia):

spur gentian (Halenia recurva):

pleated gentian (Gentiana affinis):

New Mexico checkermallow (Sidalcea neomexicana):

orange gooseberry (Ribes pinetorum):

Utah honeysuckle (Lonicera utahensis):

Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum):

mushrooms (basidiocarps and ascocarps):

Eva at her favorite meadow on Escudilla Mountian. This was the first place my parents took her after we got her from the rescue agency. They said that the minute they opened the door she took off running full-tilt across the meadow (at first they thought she wouldn't come back!). She definitely loves this place.