Saguaro Park in southeastern Arizona, near Tucson, offers a landscape unlike anything you’ll see elsewhere. The park hosts about a million visitors per year (in 2024, 946,000 people visited). Comprising more than 91,000 acres of land (143.3 square miles, the size of about 73,000 football fields), the park offers about 200 miles of trails for hiking, biking, and/or horseback riding. Trails range from flat to steep and mountainous, accommodating different levels of accessibility and challenge. For example, the paved Cactus Garden Trail winds a half mile through cactus gardens featuring interpretative signs and benches, while the Wasson Peak trail climbs 2,040 feet, offering staggering views of the mountain ranges.
The park is open year-round, with pedestrian and biker access 24 hours a day. You can pay a fee to drive through during certain daylight hours when the park is open to vehicles. Many prefer to visit the Sonoran Desert from about October through April, when daytime temperatures don’t exceed 60-70° F and rain is light. Summers (May through September) are hot, with temperatures often climbing above 100° F, punctuated by intense thunderstorms that cause flooding in low-lying areas. Still, the total rainfall for this desert park is less than 12 inches per year.
Birds at Higher Elevation
In the higher-elevation east side of the park, you may see other species of birds that depend on plants growing in somewhat cooler conditions. Mexican jays (Aphelocoma wollweberi) forage for pine nuts, acorns, and insects in the pine-oak woodlands. They have blue coloration like blue jays, but are bigger-bodied and lack the head crest. Listen for their nasal, high-pitched “weenk” sounds as they hang out in groups as large as 25 birds.