Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum Archives

Last Updated: May 2, 2026

We’ve called the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum a desert oasis more than once over the years — and on this summer 2024 visit, that description felt more accurate than ever. No matter when you visit, the museum offers something that the surrounding Sonoran Desert doesn’t always provide in abundance in late June and July: reliable water, reliable shade, reliable green, and wildlife that stays active rather than retreating to burrows in the heat. This was our third dedicated visit in recent years — after spring 2018 and winter 2023 — and the museum continues to evolve, surprise, and reward. Some things were better than ever. Some were still recovering. All of it was worth the visit.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum grounds in summer 2024 showing the lush green desert oasis maintained year-round with water features and native Sonoran Desert plantings

Last Updated: May 3, 2026

The Raptor Free Flight presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona is the kind of program that makes you reorganize a Tucson stay around it. It’s an open-air demonstration in which Sonoran Desert raptors and other native birds — Harris’s hawks, crested caracaras, great horned owls, Chihuahuan ravens — fly completely untethered through a designated outdoor area, passing low over a seated audience on routes designed to reveal how each species actually hunts in the wild. There’s no glass between you and the bird; there’s no leash; there’s no enclosure overhead. Just open desert sky and a sequence of trained native raptors choosing their own flight paths. We first attended the Raptor Free Flight on an earlier Tucson stay, and Michael has been back repeatedly since — it remains one of the single best wildlife photography opportunities anywhere in the Southwest.

Crested caracara at the Raptor Free Flight presentation Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Tucson Arizona showing the distinctive black crest white throat and red orange facial skin photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: A Summer Desert Oasis

Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona