Pronghorn
Neither deer nor antelope, the pronghorn pairs extraordinary eyesight and speed with horns that shed their outer sheath.
Arizona, United States: places and wildlife — page 2
Browse the published Explore collection for Arizona, United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Common Raven
Heavy bill, shaggy throat, and wedge-shaped tail separate the raven from crows as it works cliffs, tundra, forests, and towns.
Hermit Thrush
Spotted breast, plain face, and a reddish tail contrasting with a browner back identify the thrush behind one of Vermont’s clearest woodland songs.
Osprey
Dark eye stripe, kinked long wings, and reversible outer toes identify the fish specialist nesting beside Oregon waters.
Anna’s Hummingbird
The male’s iridescent crown and throat can flash rose-magenta or vanish to black as light and angle change.
Largemouth Bass
A jaw extending behind the eye, deep body, and dark side stripe separate largemouth bass from their smaller-mouthed relatives.
Bluegill
A deep compressed body, dark ear flap, and blue-green cheek identify a widespread sunfish that rewards close looking.
Monarch Butterfly
Orange wings with heavy black veins identify a migrant whose caterpillars can eat only milkweeds and whose journey outlasts any one summer adult.
Common Green Darner
Large size, bright green thorax, and a dark bull’s-eye on the forehead help identify a darner capable of continental movement.
Black Swallowtail
Paired rows of yellow spots and an orange-centered hindwing eye distinguish a butterfly whose striped caterpillar feeds on carrots’ wild relatives.
California Poppy
Silky orange cups, four petals, and finely divided blue-green leaves make California’s state flower recognizable well beyond mass-bloom photographs.
Big Sagebrush
Three-toothed wedge leaves, silvery foliage, and a resinous scent identify a shrub that shelters far more life than its muted color suggests.
Douglas-fir
Three-pointed bracts protruding from each cone scale make Douglas-fir recognizable even when its immense crown is far overhead.
Northern Mockingbird
Arkansas’s state bird patrols open neighborhood territories, flashing white wings and stitching other birds’ sounds into long improvised songs.
Texas Horned Lizard
The familiar “horny toad” is a specialized ant-eating lizard whose camouflage, road use, and need for open ground make casual sightings increasingly memorable.
Mountain Plover
Look first for sandy plover with a white forehead and thin black forecrown in breeding plumage, then confirm it in shortgrass prairie, prairie-dog colonies, and sparsely vegetated fields. Those two clues make Mountain Plover much easier to identify responsibly in Colorado.
Colorado Chipmunk
Look first for large chipmunk with dark facial stripes and warm ochre sides, then confirm it in rocky foothills, canyon walls, and open woodland in the central southwest. Those two clues make Colorado Chipmunk much easier to identify responsibly in Colorado.
Colorado Hairstreak
Look first for purple wings with broad dark margins and orange spots near the hindwing tails, then confirm it in gambel oak woodland and scrub in colorado and the four corners region. Those two clues make Colorado Hairstreak much easier to identify responsibly in Colorado.
Colorado Blue Spruce
Look first for stiff sharp four-sided needles and gray-brown furrowed bark, then confirm it in cool stream valleys and moist mountain slopes in the central and southern rockies. Those two clues make Colorado Blue Spruce much easier to identify responsibly in Colorado.
Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine
Look first for needles in bundles of five dotted with white resin flecks, then confirm it in wind-exposed high-elevation slopes of colorado, new mexico, and arizona. Those two clues make Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine much easier to identify responsibly in Colorado.
Sego Lily
Utah’s state flower rises sparsely from dry ground, each cup-shaped bloom carrying a purple eye and a yellow, hairy band that guides pollinators inward.
Virgin River Chub
A native chub built for the Virgin River’s warm floods survives in a system transformed by water diversion, invasive fish, and development.
Utah Juniper
This slow-growing native forms much of Utah’s pinyon-juniper woodland, surviving heat, cold, and lean soils through scale leaves and extensive roots.
California Gull
Utah’s state bird is an inland gull whose vast Great Salt Lake gatherings connect nesting islands, farm fields, wetlands, and migration routes.
Golden Eagle
Utah’s state bird of prey is a powerful open-country eagle most often discovered as a dark, steady shape circling over cliffs and basins.
Greater Roadrunner
New Mexico’s state bird is a large ground-dwelling cuckoo: a fast, territorial hunter that rudders with its tail, flashes white wing patches, warms dark skin in the morning sun, and sounds nothing like a cartoon beep.
Two-needle Piñon Pine
New Mexico’s state tree is a small, slow-growing pine that builds vast woodlands with juniper, feeds birds, mammals, and people with unusually large seeds, and records drought visibly in its crown.
New Mexico Meadow Jumping Mouse
Built for leaps but dependent on saturated streamside vegetation, this rare subspecies must feed and reproduce quickly before an unusually long hibernation.
New Mexico Whiptail
New Mexico’s state reptile is an all-female species that reproduces without males, preserving a successful hybrid genome through cloned daughters.
New Mexico Ridge-nosed Rattlesnake
This small, beautifully marked rattlesnake survives in isolated pine-oak sky islands at New Mexico’s southwestern edge and across the nearby Mexican border.
Zuni Bluehead Sucker
A specialized bottom-feeding fish survives in fragments of the Zuni watershed, where dependable pools and connected clean stream habitat have become scarce.
Soaptree Yucca
Tall flower stalks and elevated leaf crowns mark a desert yucca whose reproduction depends on specialized moths that deliberately pollinate its flowers.
New Mexico Locust
This small native tree can turn burned mountain slopes pink with pea-like flowers, then stabilize soil through vigorous root sprouting and nitrogen-fixing partnerships.
Heard Museum
Twelve galleries connect historic and contemporary Indigenous art through named makers, living communities, materials, memory, and the difficult history of American Indian boarding schools.
Phoenix Art Museum
Latin American, Western American, Asian, European, contemporary, fashion, and photography collections reward a selective route through Arizona's largest art museum.
Musical Instrument Museum
More than 4,300 instruments become audible through location-triggered headsets, performance video, maker stories, artist galleries, conservation windows, and a room where visitors can play.
Museum of Northern Arizona
Geology, archaeology, ecology, fine art, and community knowledge meet in a museum founded to interpret the Colorado Plateau as a connected cultural and natural region.
Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West
Western art, saddles, maps, Hopi pottery, cowboy gear, and changing exhibitions examine how the American West was lived, marketed, collected, and repeatedly reinvented.
Arizona Science Center
Hands-on physics, weather, anatomy, engineering, digital modeling, and a five-story theater turn abstract systems into experiments visitors can manipulate and question.
Pima Air & Space Museum
Hundreds of aircraft fill six hangars and an immense desert field, connecting engineering, military history, commercial flight, restoration work, and the people who built and flew them.
Titan Missile Museum
The only publicly accessible Titan II launch complex retains its control room, cableways, silo, procedures, and unnerving logic of nuclear deterrence almost exactly where crews served.
Arizona State Museum
The nation’s largest public collection of Southwestern Indigenous pottery anchors exhibitions about archaeology, fiber, migration, technology, and the responsibilities of caring for cultural material.
Tucson Museum of Art
Modern and contemporary art, Latin American work, Western traditions, and pre-Columbian collections extend from a below-grade main building into historic adobe houses in Tucson’s Presidio district.
Amerind Museum
Indigenous arts, borderlands archaeology, research collections, and walking paths occupy a secluded campus among the sculpted granite boulders of southern Arizona’s Texas Canyon.
Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum
Ore, tools, photographs, labor stories, geology, and a landmark company office explain how copper built Bisbee—and how extraction shaped bodies, neighborhoods, politics, and the land.
Sharlot Hall Museum
Historic buildings, territorial politics, Indigenous and settler histories, transportation, ranching, mining, and domestic life fill an open-air campus in central Prescott.
Sigler Western Museum
Western art, ranch tools, reconstructed streets, saddles, minerals, and community history connect Wickenburg’s working landscape with the images artists made from it.
Center for Creative Photography
A major photographic archive is undertaking a multiyear collection-sustainability project: the main Center Galleries are closed while scheduled exhibitions continue in the Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery.