*This event was postponed from 11/07/25

Bill Gette, Founding Director of Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats Education Center in Newburyport, has traveled to Arizona many times to expore the state’s diverse habitats, view its extraordinary wildlife, and visit the area’s important historic sites.

Bill will start his presentation in Phoenix and show you many animals that not only survive, but actually thrive, in the city’s urban environment. In Tucson, he will take you to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum – an incredible botanical garden that hosts many species of desert plants and birds. Less than an hour farther south, Bill will take you into the Santa Rita Mountains, one of the most famous “sky islands” in southern Arizona. Madera Canyon with its lush forests of Gambel Oak, Alligator Juniper, and Ponderosa Pine stands in sharp contract to the deserts we explored earlier.

In the second part of his talk, Bill will take you north to the cliff dwellings at Montezuma’s Castle, the red rocks area around Sedona, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, the pueblo ruins at Wupatki National Monument, and then on to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Grand Canyon is spectacular with awe-inspiring views, geological formations that let one look back millions of years in the Earth’s history, and beautiful animals. Bill will conclude his talk with a visit to Navajo Bridge in northermost Arizona to view California Condors, a species once at the brink of extinction.

Registration is required.

This program is made possible by the generous donors to the Cary Library Foundation.