April Nature Happenings

• Broad-tailed and Black-chinned Hummingbirds continue arriving. Be sure to have their feeders ready.
• Hummingbird activity can decrease significantly at feeders where there are lots of wildflowers blooming.
• Bullocks and Scott's Orioles arrive. Place your orange-colored nectar feeders out in the open to entice orioles to your yard.
• Oriole nectar recipe: Mix 4 parts water to one part table sugar. Orioles also like oranges, mealworms and grape jelly.
• Offer nesting materials (pieces of yarn or string) in suet cages for birds.
• Lucy's Warblers are nesting. It's not too late to place a new nest box in your yard for them.
• Gambel's quail begin pairing off to mate.
• Rattlers, gopher and long-nosed snakes begin making their presence known.
• Prickly pear cactus begin blooming.
• Hooded Orioles continue arriving for the summer and now beginning to mate.
• White flower buds begin appearing at the tops of saguaros - some actually blooming by the end of the month.
• Butterflies become much more common.
• Desert iguanas and lesser earless and western whiptail lizards begin mating now.
• Bobcats begin having their babies.
• Coati's begin mating.
• Raccoons begin giving birth to their young.
• Mating begins for grassland sparrow species including Cassin's, Grasshopper, Botteri's and Black-throated.