Home Sweet Home

Libby and I finally made it home. It was a long drive (9 hours) from Sierra Vista, Arizona to La Mirada, California, but it's good to be back.

Looking back, the real highlight of the trip was the Flame-colored Tanager. It was both strikingly beautiful and rare, which if you ask a gold miner, denotes value. This individual bird has been coming back to Madera Canyon for the last four years, and he'll probably not be around too much longer. He doesn't have a female consort, either, so when he's gone, who knows when the next Flame-colored Tanager will find Madera Canyon (or the United States at all, for that matter)? It probably won't be too long, but there is usually only one or so a year north of Mexico in any event.

Our pictures all turned out fuzzy, so here's a link to a really good one someone else took: Flame-colored Tanager picture. This fellow took a bunch of pictures, too: Flame-colored Tanager page. These are all of the same bird we saw - he's got to be one of the most photographed and admired birds in the United States. That's the other thing about Southeast Arizona, there are birders everywhere. There were birders in our hotels, birders on the trails, birders from all over the country, all of them walking around with binoculars around their necks and field guides in their hands. It will only get more crowded in Arizona with birders as the season progresses - late April and early May bring in the rest of the Arizona specialties. We were early for a lot of neat birds, but that's ok, we'll go back some day to see them. In the meantime, we were really happy with experiencing such a neat place.

A real highlight for me was seeing all of the hummingbirds throughout the week, though especially Friday. There are so many hummingbirds in Arizona. The big feeder collections we posted pictures of would draw dozens of hummingbirds at a time - and of so many different species - that you couldn't watch all of them. The air would be full of their whirring, and each bird's wings make a different kind of hum. Broad-tailed Hummingbirds' wings hum really loudly, and so you always knew when one was around. They would chirp and chase each other around, and then all feed at the same feeder. You'd have four birds at one feeder, which is something that would never happen in our backyard. It was also a real treat to see Magnificent Hummingbirds and Blue-throated Hummingbirds. They were so big! Imagine the sparrows you see hopping about as hummingbirds, whirring around on giant wings. That's about what it was like - they dwarfed the other hummingbirds at the feeders with them. Perhaps some day I'll get to go somewhere where you can see 50 hummingbird species in a day.

Libby counted up our life birds for the trip, and we had 37. That's a lot of new birds! We haven't figured out the trip total for birds, but we'll post that after we figure it out. All in all, this was a rewarding and relaxing vacation.

*Note from Libby: Birders sometimes calculate the "cost per bird" of a trip like this. Since we saw 37 lifers, and the trip cost approx. $710 (with lodging, food, gas, and fees), our cost per bird was about $19.19. Of course, we got more than birds for our money. We got some great experiences and memories...and a nice change of scenery before going back to work.