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Morning glories and ivy line many of the verdent lower paths of Madera Canyon.
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Much of the year water flows through Madera Canyon creating a desert oasis.
Madera Canyon
Nestled in the middle of the Santa Rita mountains in Southeast Arizona, Madera Canyon is renowned for its outstanding scenic beauty, diverse plant life, and recreation opportunities for hikers, birders, and nature lovers.
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Morning glories and ivy line many of the verdent lower paths of Madera Canyon.
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Much of the year water flows through Madera Canyon creating a desert oasis.
Higher than surrounding rainfall levels, spring fed streams and high canyon walls provide Madera Canyon with a moist, cool, and shady environment quite unusual in the desert Southwest. Water loving plants such as sycamores and cottonwoods line the banks of Madera Creek. Morning glories and ivy line the lower paths. The lush riparian environment provides the perfect habitat for more than 200 species of birds. Commonly seen are five to seven species of hummingbirds including the Broad-billed, Magnificent, Black-chinned, Costa's, Blue-throated, and Broad-tailed. Mexican Jays, Acorn Woodpeckers and Nuthatches are easy to spot. Rarer species including the Elegant Trogon, Arizona Woodpecker, and Yellow-eyed Junco appear enough to draw birders from all over the world. Hiking opportunities range from an easy walk, an invigorating 5 mile round trip hike to Josephine Saddle, or for the adventurous and fit hiker, a 10.8 mile round trip hike to Mt. Wrightson at an elevation of 9453 ft.
Birding In Madera Canyon
Because of its very nature, Madera Canyon is one of the best places on earth for bird watching. Not only is the canyon a Sky Island (see below), but it is a major stopping point on the North-South flyway between North & South America. Which means, if you're there at the right time you can see birds almost no one has or ever will see!
DIRECTIONS: Madera Canyon/Mt Wrightson is approximately 43 miles south of Tucson (35miles north of Mexico) in the Santa Rita Mountains. From Tucson, take I-19 south approximately 30 miles to the Continental Road exit (Exit 63). Turn east under the highway and follow the signs 13 miles to Madera Canyon.
For Mountain Vista Studios, LLC and for Mount Hopkins and the Harvard/Smithsonian Institution/Whipple Observatory, continue south on I-19 one more exit to Exit-56, east under the highway and follow Frontage Road, south 2 miles, then left on Elephant Head Road and follow the signs/directions.
Sky Islands
The higher than normal rainfall in Madera Canyon combined with natural springs and the isolated and sheltered topography of the canyon create a special biological niche know as a "Sky Island". The "sky islands" of Arizona and New Mexico in the southwestern United States form a unique complex of about 27 mountain ranges whose boundaries, at their lowest elevation, are desert scrub, grasslands, or oak woodlands. Since the last glaciation, these forested mountain ranges have become relatively isolated from each other. Expanding desert grasslands and desert scrub in the valleys ("the sea" between the sky islands) have limited genetic interchange between populations and created environments with high evolutionary potential. The resulting sky island ecosystems support many perennial streams in an arid climate, have a high number of endemic species, and harbor most game species as well as most threatened and endangered species in the Southwest. All of these mountain ranges have pine-oak woodland. The southwestern sky island "archipelago" is unique on the planet. It is the only sky-island complex extending from subtropical to temperate latitudes (compared to the Great Basin, the Venezuelan, and the African sky islands) with an exceptionally complex pattern of species of northern and southern origins. The "continents" that have been the main sources of species for the archipelago are the Sierra Madre of Mexico and the Rocky Mountains of the United States, although the flora has been influenced by the Californian, Sonoran, Intermountain, Cordil-leran, and Sierra Madrean Floristic Provinces (S. McLaughlin, University of Arizona, unpublished data).
Link to Sky Island Alliance:
http://www.skyislandalliance.org/
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