Last days in southeast AZ

April 1

No birds today.




(April Fool’s)

Well, I don’t know if I got anyone there. Sigh. We did see birds today—I admit it. And they were good ones too. The morning started off splendidly when we joined up with a birder who lives in the area and leads tours. He was doing recon for a group he was taking out the next day…and they wanted Black-capped Gnatcatchers, which have been known to nest near Patagonia Lake. The Birding Trail on the upstream side of the lake is so well-traversed by birders that the different low areas (known as “washes”) are numbered, for ease of reference. So we can say, for instance, that we tracked a pair of Black-capped Gnatcatchers near the saddle between washes 2 and 3. And people would know what we meant. Now, whether we’d want to share that secret…that might be another matter. The fact is, these birds acted completely unaware of our presence, as we followed along watching them forage in the mesquite for about 20 minutes. Just out walking the gnatcatchers, as our co-birder put it. If the two birds got separated, they would make a kitten-like buzz to locate each other (that’s how we originally knew we were in the right area). This bird is pretty similar to the Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher we see in New England, but after really looking at it for a while, you can tell that it’s very much its own thing. And these guys are about as rare as they come for regular breeding birds in the United States (down in Mexico, where most of their range lies, would be another story).
We wandered further up the creek today and saw mostly the same species as the day before.

After packing up and taking a refreshing dip in the freezing-cold lake, we headed out. Our camping destination was in Madera Canyon, but on the way we stopped at Kino Springs, a collection of wetlands and ponds on the property of a golf resort (stranger places have been birded). A highlight there was seeing our second new gnatcatcher of the day, the Black-tailed. This guy was easier to tell apart based on the black underside of his tail, and he’s not so rare. But we had somehow missed him up to that point, and it was really cool to see the two species on the same day. Also on the pond were a trio of Long-billed Dowitchers punching up the mud for invertebrate morsels and a lone male Cinnamon Teal, gleaming in the afternoon sun. In the top of a tall cottonwood, we saw a couple of huge stick nests fifteen feet apart. Suddenly, a Great Blue Heron flew in and landed on the left-hand nest, to share food with his mate who had been hiding from us inside. Later, we discovered a Great Horned Owl head sticking up from the other nest! Making use of the available real estate (last year’s heron home?). What a bizarre combination of bird species, nesting high above the golfers on identically formed nests.

April 2
Our campsite at Madera Canyon was adjacent to that of a strange man who kind of creeped us out, such that we left early, in a hurry, to eat breakfast and change clothes elsewhere. That is the story of how I ended up wearing pajama bottoms, sandals, and a puffy down jacket as my birding attire for the first part of the morning. We dawdled waiting for the sun to come up a little more over the canyon walls and made our way to the Santa Rita Lodge, famous for its hummingbird feeders. There we spent a little time observing the 10-20 Wild Turkeys cleaning up around the seed-feeders.

A few hummingbirds were starting to feed, but we decided to move on to the Madera Kubo, where a Flame-colored Tanager had been reported back early for the breeding season (in the past few years he has attempted to breed in the vicinity of this cottage feeder site, sometimes with a female Western Tanager rather than his own species). Our good luck continued, and we saw in quick succession a Scott’s Oriole, a Hooded Oriole, and then the Tanager, clear as day across the road. We followed him for a while, listening to his hoarse calls and pointing him out to the crowd of birders that began to form. This would be a life bird for most visitors, and there was a cool buzz about the place.

After some really nice looks at the Tanager, we headed for the trails. There was surprisingly little activity up there, probably due to the first overcast day we’d experienced in weeks. But we made do with a nice walk up and found a number of new treats on the way down. We tagged along with a guided walk on the way down, which helped with identifying three new flycatchers: the Greater Peewee, Western Wood-Peewee, and Cordilleran Flycatcher. The latter is distinguishable from its closest relative only by voice, so the help was appreciated. We also saw a beautiful Townsend’s Warbler, relative to the Black-Throated Green from home and the Golden-cheeked we saw in Texas. And in the parking lot at the end of the hike, I was doodling around after lunch and decided to put my binoculars on a Hutton’s Vireo singing his brains out, when a distinctive male Hepatic Tanager came and chased him off. That’s one way to “find” a new bird, I guess. I wish they all could be that easy.
We check for interesting things at the feeder sites and the famous Florida Wash (a glorified gravel trench) on the way out. But the afternoon lull seemed to have kicked in. So we headed into Tucson, discovering some icky traffic en route, and drove to our campsite in the Catalinas. And when I say “drove to,” the reader should understand that, as per usual, I mean “drove well past and eventually back to.” In this case, it turned out that the campgrounds up high (elevations in the 7,000-8,000 ft. range) were closed until the middle of the month, so we had to drive all the way back down the winding road to the basin to find a piece of turf to lie down on. Too tired to cook, we had cold canned ravioli and cold cocoa. As bad as that sounds, I was very happy with the experience.
Now we’re trying to figure out where we’re going after we leave Arizona. The next couple days we’ll be in the Tucson area, but after that…well, we have some general ideas, let’s put it that way.

Don

P.S. Our new policy (as of several posts ago) is for me to write the posts and Abby to edit and/or supplement, time permitting. So you can assume that’s the deal unless noted otherwise, since I’m probably going to stop signing each entry.