Arizona, Here We Come!

Hi folks! Libby and I are at the hotel on the first night of our trip. We're going to try and basically live blog our trip. Every night we will post some pictures, and talk about what we did. Mostly it's for our sake (saved for posterity!), but maybe some of you will be interested, too.

We left Libby's parent's house at 6:15 in the morning, and we got to Blythe around 9:00 (we think). Here's the Colorado River as we cross it on the 10:


Here's a quick picture of the welcome to Arizona sign. They had a check-point for commercial vehicles and livestock, but we didn't have to stop.


Libby drove from Blythe to Pheonix. She did a bang-up job: the miles flowed by to the rich bass voice of our narrated Dean Koontz novel. This is both of our first Dean Koontz novel, and we're both entertained and entertained by it. Why the heck does he take so long to develop things? Why does he have to use so many bizarre metaphors?


Our first birding stop was in Tucson, at Arthur Pack Park. We don't have any pictures from that stop. We ate lunch, and then we walked around looking at the birds. We had our first Arizona lifer there, the common Gila Woodpecker (both a male and a female). The species from that stop where:

1. House Sparrow
2. European Starling
3. House Finch
4. Mourning Doves
5. Great-tailed Grackles
6. Gila Woodpecker
7. White-winged Dove
8. White-crowned Sparrow
9. Cactus Wren
10. Verdin
11. Gambel's Quail
12. Brewer's Blackbird
13. American Coot
14. Northern Shoveler
15. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
16. Yellow-Rumped Warbler
17. Red-tailed Hawk

We saw a pair of Verdin nesting. Their nest is a really neat looking, almost football sized, ball of thorns and twigs. We were surprised to see one of them disappear into it through a hole at the base of the nest.

We then drove on to Green Valley, where we checked into our hotel and took a little rest. After settling in and getting replenished, we headed off to Florida Wash (pronounced Flor-EE-duh), on the way up to Madera Canyon (where we plan to go on Wednesday). Florida Wash is famous for Buff-collared Nightjars, and Rufous-winged Sparrows. We didn't see either of those species, but we had a wonderful walk. It's really beautiful, the air was cool, and the sun was setting - casting rich light on the Santa Rita Mountains and the dry grass. Here's the stile that takes you over the barbed-wire fence:


This is the direction we walked up the wash. Those are the Santa Rita Mountains in the background. Madera Canyon is in those mountains.


The trip wasn't really birdy, but it was, again, wonderful. We did see a few birds - three new. We hadn't seen a whip-poor-will before, and we also saw our first Lucy's Warblers and a male Broadbilled Hummingbird (it was partly silhouetted against the light, and facing away, so we're still looking forward to seeing more of them).

1. Verdin
2. Northern Cardinal (this was exciting - a very pretty female)
3. Black-tailed Gnatcatcher
4. Costa's Hummingbird
5. Lucy's Warbler
6. House Finch
7. Bell's Vireo
8. Common Ravens
9. Lesser Goldfinches
10. Whip-poor-will (this was seen both flying and sitting: our first good look at a resting nightjar).
11. Ash-throated Flycatcher
12. Black-throated Sparrow

After dinner, we saw a Curve-billed Thrasher right outside the door to our hotel. So that's another lifer for today - bringing our total to five.

We had a flycatcher from a distance that we couldn't identify, and a lot of movement in the bushes that we couldn't see very well. That's all for now! More pictures and text to come, tomorrow!