Tag: My Mini Big Year: Confessions of a Rehatched Bird Nerd

My Arizona Birding 3

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By the morning, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll go after the Wren another day. Someone mentioned the San Pedro River and the great birding to be had there plus I can hit another famed spot — Whitewater Draw — on the way back. I grab an egg bun at a fast food restaurant and a coffee, gas up and head towards the San Pedro house and the San Pedro National Conservation Area.

Western Screech Owl, San Pedro House

It’s bit of a drive to San Pedro and after a hundred miles or so I’m thinking fondly about bacon and eggs. I find a breakfast place in Buena Vista, a pretty town that seems to have a fairly affluent population. Afterwards, I discover it’s not far north of the border check where officers stop cars looking for illegal immigrants. There are great gulfs in this world, of all sorts. In any case, that stop rewards me with a pair of Chihuahuan Ravens, a species I’d hoped to see on the trip, plus I got my breakfast.

San Pedro House is yet another birding mecca. The old farmhouse is pleasantly situated in a grove of cottonwoods. Gila woodpeckers, various Sparrows, Lesser Goldfinches, and Inca Doves are working the feeders around it. In the cottonwoods, a Western Screech Owl occupies a nest box — its head stuffed through the opening, closed eyed and sleeping in the sun. From the high branches, a Merlin scans the area.

Lark Sparrows, San Pedro

It’s warming up nicely. The well-used trail leads through scrubby grass and sagebrush. Pyrrhuloxia seem to be everywhere, as do Lark Sparrows, which are abundant on these flats. The trail leads to a noisy brook — the San Pedro River. Apparently, this valley is on the routes illegal migrants take when they come up from Mexico but I see no evidence of this. A Rufous-crowned Sparrow is a highlight.

I leave San Pedro early enough to be able to visit Whitewater Draw, another renowned south Arizona location. The sloughs here are filled with waterfowl and large flocks of Sandhill Cranes line their low, sloping banks. They are noisy critters, those Sandhills, and I’m glad I’m not tenting in the area — sleep would be well nigh impossible.

Sandhill Cranes, Whitewater Draw, Arizona

A fieldtrip to the Sulphur Springs Valley is my last with the Festival. This one is about raptors and I’m excited about it. The valley is known for its raptors but, for miles, we see not a one. And then our luck changes. Near, on and about some stacks of hay bales in the middle of a field, the raptors have gathered. There are at least two big Ferruginous Hawks, standing on the ground, looking like eagles, perhaps a dozen soaring Redtails inhabit the quadrants of the sky Off to the left a Harris’s Hawk wings by, all black and russet; a Kestrel takes up post on a power line; and then, swooping close to the Ferruginous at lightning speed, a Prairie Falcon completes the picture. Surely, it’s the bales that draw them and the mice and rats that inhabit this rodent apartment building. It’s a thrill to see these raptors.

Harris’s Hawk, Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona

We pile back into the school bus. Our leader is the same man from the day before. Then he was unlucky; today he is lucky; today makes up for all. At a farmhouse at a crossroads, we find a pair of nesting Great Horned Owls. I’m amazed, sometimes, at the behaviour of some birders. My philosophy with birds is to gaze for a polite measure of time, take my pictures, thank the bird for being there and then move off quickly and silently. I try never to crowd the birds, particularly owls. Resting is a life or death thing for them. Some people, however, seem to think that the birds are there for them t take pictures. They move up closer and closer, talking loudly, snapping shots with their phones. Maybe it’s okay but it bothers me to see such, for want of a better word, disrespect.

Great Horned Owl, Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona

We’re seeing lots of other birds too. I’ve lost count of Meadowlarks (both Eastern and Western occur here but I can’t tell them apart, not with my eyes). We’ve also seen Thrashers, Loggerhead Shrike, a Red-naped Sapsucker and a couple of Ladder-backed Woodpecker. A brace of Greater Roadrunners fill out the score. And that’s it for the Wings Over Willcox festival. When the bus returns to the Community Center, most everything is packed up. Even the Kettle Corn seller who accosted every passerby has departed the scene. I return to my motel room. I’m ready to move on.

Redtail, Arizona
Bridled Titmouse
Not Birds
Harris’s Hawk
Black-throated Sparrow, Tucson
Sandhill Cranes
Vermilion Flycatcher
Ferruginous Hawk, Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona
Cactus Wren, Tucson

My Arizona Birding 2

Arizona 2

Sandhill Cranes, Willcox Arizona

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The Willcox Golf course is a prime birding area and very close to the town. On this score, an overzealous ebird volunteer corrected me on the distance I’d travelled. I’m getting used to ebird challenges so I rarely now record a species unless I’m damned certain I’m correct and have good pictures to prove it. Being corrected on distance is a new one for me but I guess it matters to some researcher somewhere. Part of the problem in this case was that I had to drive miles to find the stupid place, which is called the Cochise Lake and Twin Lakes Golf Course not, as I thought, the Willcox Golf Course. But I digress.

Waterfowl and shorebirds frequent the sloughs near the course. A sandy road makes a circuit of the sloughs, which, I think, are called playas in these parts. Most stops along the route are productive. A dozen or so Long-billed Curlews feed in the shallows and, near them, two American Avocets. The Avocets are rare here at this time of year and I’m delighted to see them. In the middle distance, huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes arrive and depart in noisy confusion as the sun begins to set. A cold wind that could ‘trim a hedge’ makes standing around watching more a bit of a trial. A Vermilion Flycatcher drops by and poses for pictures. These little birds, black masked and tropical red, always delight me. I also spot a Say’s Phoebe and then a two Black Phoebes and, with that, I call it a day. That night I eat at the local Barbecue, which is okay but. Like many things in the town, the atmosphere is not overwhelmingly welcoming. With that, I’ve done the Willcox nightlife so far as I can tell. In any case, my eyes are strained and I’m bone tired. Enough, Michael, tomorrow you start early. I go back to the motel, get ready for bed and fall asleep before I get through two pages of my book.

Long-billed Curlews, American Avocets and Coots, Willcox, Arizona

My first official field trip of the Festival is to the Cochise stronghold, which means I’m see more than just birds here. I love history, having written over a dozen history textbooks in my time. I also love the history of the old west. Cochise led the Chiricahua Apache against American soldiers and settlers in the in the 19th century. The war started over a cow and ended up costing four thousand lives. I know it would have been death for our little party to be in the pretty park on the stream back then. Today, the Chiricahua have a few ceremonial acres donated to them by a white benefactor. It almost makes one weep to think of the injustice of it all.

Cochise Stronghold Rock Formations

This is the beginning of a long weekend, which means campers and RVs are in the park early to secure a spot for the weekend. The desire to be closet to the washroom results in some amusing attempts to back ten-foot wide vehicles into nine-foot wide spaces. I’m estimating, of course. I don’t need to measure vehicle or space. What I can say is that aluminum being scraped by tree branches makes for some God-awful screeches. This happens to different RVs in different spots at least a half dozen times. It makes birding less serene, that’s for sure.

Some times a group leader doesn’t have the bird luck, not when you’re part of the group anyway. This has now happened to me. I’ve drawn the unlucky leader. The birds just aren’t there for us, with the result that members of the party drift off on their own, or tag along with a new group which seems to have drawn with a lucky leader. I did both. I got a sweetly singing Canyon Wren out of the latter bit of disloyalty. I picked up a few other birds, including a Townsend’s Solitaire, but it was the fact of being in the Stronghold with its echoes of the last days of an independent Chiricahua nation, that resonated the most with me. I’m almost sad to leave but the din caused by arriving RVs backing into too-small sites helps us on our way.

We make a stop to check out a flock of birds that turn out to be lark Buntings. Then we move on to a dairy farm and veal ranch that has a permanent pond. Nothing much to note here — Northern Shovelers, Widgeon and Mallards predominate. I’ve seen all these guys many times before. And then we’re back at the community center and pile off the school bus that has transported us around. I don’t have a trip planned for the morrow so I’m free to explore on my own. Conversations on the bus have given me some options. Next morning, I’ll head south. I’ve heard there’s a Sinaloa Wren down there and I’d like to have that bird!