Its terrestrial mammals include the diminutive Carmen Mountains whitetail, whose bucks have a basketlike set of antlers not much larger than the span of a man's hands with thumbs locked together. Much larger mule deer roam the canyons and flats. On a late summer trip I saw an abundance of both whitewing and mourning doves, blue quail, pyrrhuloxia, canyon and cactus wrens. One morning a prairie falcon landed on a wire across the front porch of my cabin and watched the eggs cooking before gliding off in search of his own breakfast. This is a wild place.
Golden eagles visit the peaks.
Photographer Wyman Meinzer and Al Real have seen numerous mountain lion sign, and there probably are black bears. This is a wild place where visitors have a sense they could become part of the food chain. The array of plants in this northernmost part of the Chihuahuan Desert will change future visitors' definition of desert. Tucked away in a corner of a ranch building, Real has a botanical cabinet filled with plant specimens collected on the Mesquite Ranch by Barton Warnock, renowned botanist from Sul Ross University in Alpine. The hundreds of specimens record the season when collected, where collected, altitude and other information that will give botanists a leg-up when developing a resource management plan for the Chinati Mountains State Natural Area.