Natural History

Located at an elevation of 7500 feet, the Randall Davey Audubon Center & Sanctuary encompasses 135 acres of intriguing landscapes and wildlife. Bounded by thousands of acres of National Forest and Santa Fe River Watershed land, the Center property provides safe habitat in which plants and animals thrive. Ranging from common to rare, approximately 130 species of birds can be found in or over the various ecosystems of this sanctuary. Nocturnal predators such as coyote, gray fox, bobcat, and long-tailed weasels roam the grounds searching out prey such as gopher, cottontail rabbit, and deer mouse. Hundreds of plant species grow in the different ecosystems providing food and shelter for insects, birds, mammals, and reptiles.

• Randall Davey Audubon Center Bird List
• Santa Fe Canyon Mammal List
• Santa Fe Canyon Plant List

A Walk through the Sanctuary’s Ecosystems
The main loop trail runs primarily through dry piñon-juniper woodland that consists of piñon pine, and Rocky Mountain and one-seed junipers, with a scattering of cholla, prickly pear, yucca, chamisa, mullein, grama grasses, and other flowering plants. Juniper mistletoe grows abundantly on the junipers parasitizing the trees for their water, but providing lots of berries for bluebirds in the winter. Gopher tunnels run under the soil, and harvest ant mounds are visible here and there. Flocks of bushtits fly about feeding on the seeds of the grasses and chamisa, and spotted towhees can be heard “mewing” to each other from under the pines.

As one moves up in elevation toward Bear Canyon the tall ponderosa pine begins to appear providing food and shelter for red squirrels, pygmy nuthatches, and Stellar’s jays. On the east side of the trail loop, the Nichols Reservoir dam can be seen off in the distance with a new osprey nesting platform situated nearby.

If you hike up the side trail into narrow Bear Canyon, you will encounter an intermittent riparian area with willows growing along the edges. This is a wonderful place to look for butterflies, bathing American robins, and a migrating warbler or two. Mixed forest of Ponderosa Pine, fir and spruce covers the steep canyon slopes. Douglas fir, white fir, and Engelmann spruce are usually found at higher elevations, but the cool shade of the canyon provides the proper conditions for their growth. As one hikes up into the canyon, Gambel’s oak and limber pine will also be found mixed in with the firs and spruces. Colorful lichens cover the granite rocks that provide nooks and crannies for lizards and spiders to hide.

Fed by water from an acequia, the grounds around the visitor center and the historic home of Randall Davey have been used for over a hundred years to grow crops, flower gardens, and fruit trees. Now the cherries, apple, pear and apricot trees feed wildlife rather than people. Birds flock to the feeders in all seasons, butterflies and hummingbirds nectar at the flowers, and black bear, mule deer, and gray fox gorge on the autumn fruit. If you are lucky you will spot a least chipmunk scampering up the wall of the artist's home, or a rock squirrel diving through the hole in the cellar door.

Across the road from the Randall Davey property flows the Santa Fe River creating a riparian area commonly known as Two-Mile and currently owned by The Nature Conservancy. Until 1993, when an old dam was breached, this part of the Santa Fe Canyon was underwater. Two-mile Reservoir was one of three reservoirs in the Santa Fe canyon that provided water to downstream residents. The other two, Nichols and McClure are still in existence further up the river canyon, but are off-limits to the general public. Willows, cottonwoods, box elder maple, and the invasive Siberian elm grow along the river in Two Mile and provide habitat for nesting red-winged blackbirds, canyon towhees, and warbling vireos. When the coyotes howl and yip and cry, it is from this riparian zone that the sound travels.