A week or so later I was over in Heber for the weekend and on the drive back to Flagstaff early on that subsequent Monday morning, I saw the porcupine up in a cottonwood visible from the Hwy. 77 bridge over the Little Colorado.
About Me
- Eric Hough
- I am a birder, naturalist, wildlife biologist, and now an interpretive ranger currently working for Maricopa County Parks and Recreation Department at the Hassayampa River Preserve near Wickenburg, Arizona. I spent the past several years following a career as a wildlife biologist and was a teaching assistant for a biology lab during grad school, with my education background consisting of an MS in Biology and BS in Forestry. I am an Arizona native and my past travels have taken me around most of the lower 48 United States, plus the state of Sonora in northwest Mexico. Before my current job I spent 1.5 years working as an environmental consultant in the Midwest based out of Kansas City (KS/MO), which gave me the opportunity to see a good portion of the Great Plains and Midwest region. My current travels are decidedly local, but I am hoping to travel abroad in the future when finances and work schedule allow. I am very content with my current career and happy to be doing a mix of environmental education and natural resource management at a wonderful desert oasis. I am looking forward to where this path takes me!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Porcupine
On November 13, 2010, my mom and I went birding in the morning over in Holbrook before I had to work on a class project. After birding our usual spots near the golf course in Holbrook, we went over to an abandoned lot along the Little Colorado River that has some riparian vegetation (cottonwoods, willows, tamarisk). Being midday by then there were virtually no birds, but a large brown clump up in a distant Russian-olive caught my eye. Thinking initially it was just a hawk, I trained by binoculars on it to find that it was way too wide-bodied to be a hawk and looked furry. We moved closer and, sure enough, it turned out to be a PORCUPINE! This was our first time seeing one alive in the wild (we only had previously seen them at the Phoenix Zoo and as roadkill). It was just napping in the tree when we came up to it, but we could see where it had been stripping the bark off the branches. Reading up on porcupines afterwords, apparently in winter bark makes up a large portion of their diet. Seeing a porcupine was way better than seeing any bird that day! Freaking cool!!! Here are some pics:
A week or so later I was over in Heber for the weekend and on the drive back to Flagstaff early on that subsequent Monday morning, I saw the porcupine up in a cottonwood visible from the Hwy. 77 bridge over the Little Colorado.
A week or so later I was over in Heber for the weekend and on the drive back to Flagstaff early on that subsequent Monday morning, I saw the porcupine up in a cottonwood visible from the Hwy. 77 bridge over the Little Colorado.
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