On the Road……Near the Alamo Wash on Rosewood St.
Show on mapTucson is blessed with what the locals call “washes” essentially dry riverbeds that channel water during heavy rains. In New Mexico (where I went to high school) we called them “arroyos“. I think they are one and the same.
Theoretically these washes perform the function of habitat corridors in an otherwise highly fragmented urban landscape. I’m not familiar enough yet with the city’s urban ecology to know for certain, but I’ll bet bobcats, javelinas, and other assorted critters make use of these.
This particular wash, bisects the bikeway I use to get to work. It was a partly cloudy day so I stopped and made a few pictures.
The smaller feeders are generally called arroyos here – for instance if you follow that wash a few blocks south from there it intersects a smaller one that runs just south of 20th St. that is an arroyo. And yes, mostly coyotes run through these at night, but we see an occasional javalina or two, and my neighbor had a pen opened once and his ducks taken over a 5 ft wall and eaten in the arroyo by an unknown critter but certainly not the work of a coyote, we’re assuming a large cat.
Watch your pets at night.
Scott
27 Apr 11 at 11:33 am
Yes, you are more likely to see jackrabbits, lizards, quail, and coyotes in the urban washes / arroyos, maybe a javelina or two, very rarely or never a bobcat or other large cat, though. Look up, too, the hawks and vultures sometimes patrol them.
John Romeo Alpha
28 Apr 11 at 7:01 am
scott/ great information. thanks! i did see a coyote on the prowl early one morning.
john/ very cool. i wonder why the cats don’t patrol the arroyos? i’ve started noticing more hawks around too.
fridaycyclotouriste
1 May 11 at 9:45 pm
This is going to sound REALLY weird, but . . .
Your route includes going by a house very near where these photos were taken. It’s the house on the northwest corner of Alamo and Rosewood. There’s a rock in the front yard that (when viewed looking west, or from the intersection), reminds me of Bruno, the dog in “Triplets of Belleville.”
Alan
3 May 11 at 7:43 am
alan/ haha, that is really weird! but i love that you made the association. great movie, btw.
fridaycyclotouriste
3 May 11 at 9:39 pm