Where can you find the best birding in the western U.S., daily thunderstorms, and oppressive heat? Monsoonal southeastern Arizona, of course, our most recent summer trip destination.
If you're a regular reader of our little blog (our apologies), you might remember we visited Arizona in
April (click on the month to see the first of that posting series). It was much the same in August, and we visited many of the same places. However, it was somewhat hotter now (though partly cloudy skies in Sierra Vista actually kept it below 90 - it was broiling in Phoenix and Tucson), and much, much greener. Fields that were brown in April were green and tall in August. The birds were different, also. Early April is too soon for many of the specialty migrants in Arizona, and quite a few birds wait to breed in this "second Spring" brought on by the regular rain.
Boy howdy does it storm there! Our first night in Nogales was brightened by regular, intense lightning. I've never seen anything like it. One bolt started far away on the horizon and surged toward the middle of the sky, branching into innumerable red forks until it filled half of the sky. It was intense, but it only sprinkled on us. The next day we talked to some English birders from Norfolk that had been in the midst of the hail. It was apparently golf ball sized and accumulated in the road to the depth of six inches - pockmarking their rental! When we were in that area, we saw that the trees had been torn apart. Leaves and branches covered the ground, and hung broken from the trees. There was literally a carpet of newly lain green leaves over everything.
Anyway, we'll probably post an exhaustive list of the birds that we see later, but in the meantime on to some of the avian highlights:
The neat thing about Arizona is that most of the birds we saw were birds we'd been admiring in our guidebooks since we first cracked them open. These are the kinds of birds about which we'd say "Wouldn't you like to see that?" Sometimes when you see a bird like that, it's a little disappointing, but sometimes it's above and beyond what the pictures show!
The
Elegant Trogon (see public domain image from Wikipedia below) was certainly the latter. This is a breathtakingly beautiful bird, and the colors are all exceptionally vibrant (the photo doesn't capture the beauty at all). It's the most northerly breeding species in the neotropical branch of the family - which is spread all around the world. They're in the same family as the fairly well known
Resplendent Quetzal.
We actually saw four in the Garden Canyon Complex of the Huachuca Mountains. The first pair we saw was way up the canyon, and it was totally unexpected. We had been looking at a pictograph site, and were walking out of the woods to our car, when this brilliant flash of red took us completely by surprise. There was a male flying across the hill directly in front of us. We were both in shock. I was sputtering something about a Painted Redstart (thinking, red-breasted bird in pine-oak woodland, oh wait, that's enormous!) The male flew off, but the juvenile sat quietly in a bush for about 45 minutes while we watched and waited, hoping the male would return. It didn't, but we did hear the distinctive bark up canyon: these birds don't sing or chirp or whistle, they make the strangest bark you've ever heard. When we drove back down the canyon, we were able to follow the barks to another pair - this time male and female - in a picnic area that's well known for them, but didn't have any when we passed through on our way up.
The second best bird we saw was a
White-eared Hummingbird. We knew where one had been regularly visiting a feeder, and we just sat there until it showed up. It's a very dramatic looking bird, with a striking white eyebrow.
To the right is a group of
Black-bellied Whistling Ducks (public domain from Wikipedia and US Army Corps of Engineers), another bird that was exciting to see. We saw around 10 of these birds in Rio Rico, just north of Nogales. Don't these ducks look funny? They're very beautiful, though, especially in flight. The white line runs along the feathers in flight, and it contrasts with their black wings. The first one we saw was flying, and it was quite exciting as it rounded us low and headed off into a flooded field.
Other exciting new birds we saw were
Yellow-billed Cuckoo (finally! After twice missing it at other locations we had visited for it specifically we heard a bizarre knocking kind of call coming from trees at the famous Patagonia Road Side Rest, and successfully sorted a cuckoo out from the trees! This image is public domain from Wikipedia),
Yellow-breasted Chat (four! we've heard it around So Cal before, but this was the first time it's actually showed itself to us),
Hepatic Tanager (looking rather like a dull Summer Tanager),
Eastern Bluebird,
Yellow-eyed Junco and a Thick-billed Kingbird (a juvenile, unfortunately). Some new birds were Arizona specialties, but not all that exciting to look at. We saw plenty of Buff-breasted Flycatchers up in Carr Canyon (but it wasn't as warm looking as in the book - maybe because it was cloudy), a couple of Greater Peewees (but we had bad looks, they were up on snags singing their distinctive song), Cordilleran Flycatchers and Tropical Kingbirds - which looked much like Western and Cassin's - sporting a forked tail and yellow breast.
We dipped on (birder slang for missing a bird you tried to see) several birds we really wanted to see. We didn't see any of the high elevation warblers in Carr Canyon that I was hoping for - no Olive, Grace's or Red-faced. Red-faced Warblers were especially disappointing to miss. We also didn't get any of the specialty sparrows (Cassin's, Botteri's, and Rufous-winged), though we didn't try for them very hard. There weren't any Harris Hawks at a place they're known to frequent in Tucson on our way in, so we braved 110 degree heat in vain as far as they were concerned, and Varied Buntings (image at right copyright expired - found on Wikipedia, again) continually eluded us. Actually, we probably saw a Varied Bunting fairly well, but it was silhouetted against the rising sun as it sang from a fence post and we couldn't see any of its distinctive colors, so we're not counting it, yet.
Well, we'll go back some day, and I don't have any complaints.
Tide pools and a cute kid.
