Continuing Education: Grasslands and Riparian

It did not take long for me to head back south to the grasslands of southeastern Arizona after my first trip with Barb and Jeanne.  Four days later, I was heading back again and this time I asked Kyle Waites if he would be interested in checking out some of these grasslands.  He readily accepted and off we went.  This time we headed straight to the grasslands and the longspur pond just east of the town of Sonoita, Arizona.  We arrived early, around sunrise, and it was overcast, cloudy and windy.  But we had prepared for that and we bundled up, got out our scopes and started scanning.  We actually arrived a bit too early as the only activity we had in the beginning was a few Horned Larks and Savannah Sparrows. It did not take long to hear the first of the longspurs flying in.  Once again, this was educational for me to experience their flight calls as they arrived and to also observe the flight patterns and compare those flight patterns to the Horned Lark flocks.  One can read about these details in books and hear it from other birders, but to actually experience it, it then gives a new meaning to continuing education. Hopefully, I will remember these points for the future.

On this visit I managed to capture a photo of the single Lapland Longspur that had eluded me on the first visit. Sad fact to this photo was that after finding the bird in my scope, and then trying to find it in my binoculars, when I raised my camera, I had no idea what I was seeing.  I just saw something moving in all the piles of cattle manure, I just started taking photos.  Surprised to get home and find I had the right bird.  We did manage to find and see all 3 species of longspurs;  Chestnut-collared, McCown's, and Lapland .

Lapland Longspur

Grsshopper Sparrow - Nice have this one pay a visit as well.

Pronghorn - I always love seeing these mammals.

From here we headed to the quaint and fun town of Patagonia to stop in for a visit to Paton's Hummingbird Haven which is now managed by the Tucson Audubon Society.  This place is well known to most birders in the United States as the best place to find the Violet-crowned Hummingbird.  And once again it lived up to its expectations as one came in to visit one of the feeders.  

 Violet-crowned Hummingbird

Keeping an eye to the sky!

Finding Cassin's Finches at this location was a bit unexpected and was a welcome bird to add to my Santa Cruz County list.  

 Cassin's Finch - Female

 Cassin's Finch - Male

 Lincoln's Sparrow

And of course Pyrrhuloxia is never a bad bird to see.

 Pyrrhuloxia - Male

Pyrrhuloxia - Female

Since we were already that far south and needed to plan a route home, I suggested stopping at Santa Gertrudis Lane on the west side of the Santa Rita Mountains.  There had been reports of a Sinaloa Wren in the recent past, but it had proven to be a bit difficult to find and did not always cooperate with many birders.  Guess this day, it decided to cooperate with a few of us birders that were there. This is Mexican species that seems to be a bit more regular in the past few years in Arizona.  It has not been reported in any other state in the United States. 

Sinaloa Wren

Our final stop was at the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, which is one of my favorite spots in the entire state of Arizona.  They have created a great setup for birders to watch and enjoy the birds.  And they have made it very friendly for the birds themselves.  

 Arizona Woodpecker

 Hepatic Tanager - Male

 Rivoli's Hummingbird

 Rufous-winged Sparrow

Wild Turkey - Male

We had an amazing day of birding and was able to see many of the southeastern Arizona specialties along with a lot of the really great regulars as well.  I believe Kyle ended up with 8 new life birds and he now knows where to find some great birds in some amazing spots in that part of the state. I am sure he will venture to the southeastern part of the state a bit more in the future.  It is amazing in the diversity of birds only a couple hours away from the Phoenix metro area.  We have our specialties as well, so many from the southeast also make the trek northward to see some of our great birds.    

More of Sonora - Chapter 2

Day 2 quickly turned into the day of the Sinaloa Wren.  This is a bird whose range is predominantly in Mexico, but occasionally a few stray into southeastern Arizona.  In fact there is currently one in Arizona that has been reported for almost 2 years.  They can be a very secretive wren, but their loud song is unmistakable.  The bird in Arizona was quite cooperative for photos back in February when I visited and my blog post for that trip can be found Here.

This trip to Aribabi was an eye opener for all of us.  Sinaloa Wrens were quite numerous and their singing was quite loud.  We even had the fortune of finding a pair in the process of constructing a nest.

Sinaloa Wrens and nest

And as a bit of an experiment, I tried my luck at making a video of this process. (Quickly realized that I definitely need to improve my video skills!)  Right at the end of the video, you will see the wren emerge from the bottom of the nest and fly off and shortly thereafter, you will hear its very loud call. 

Sinaloa Wren in nest and its song is recorded at the tail end of the video.

 Black Vulture

 Gray Hawk

 Gray Hawk pair

 Crappy photo of a Violet-crowned Hummingbird

 Western Wood-Pewee

Yellow-breasted Chat

This is just part of the fine group of avian experts embarking on their early morning adventure that morning.

Some of the other non-avian finds for the day included some damselflies and a butterfly.

 American Rubyspot - Female

American Rubyspot - Male

 Unidentified Damselflies

Texan Crescent Butterfly

Common Checkered Skipper or perhaps a White Checkered Skipper

Siesta time.

At dusk on Saturday evening, the bats began to emerge from the rafters of the hacienda.

 Bat emergence

And finally after darkness overtook the area, a few of us managed to find a pair of Western Screech Owls.  (Found an Elf Owl the night before, but it did not allow any photos.)  Even the Western Screech Owls were difficult to photograph due to the low light and trying to hold a flashlight and take photos at the same time.

Western Screech-Owl

Sunday morning meant for an early departure but it did allow for a couple of hours of further exploration and a few more photos.

 Backside of a Rufous-winged Sparrow

 Another Sinaloa Wren

Vermilion Flycatcher

Flame Skimmer Dragonfly

This was one more very enjoyable weekend.  I have plans to return for a couple of nights in July and maybe someday in the far off future, I might even consider taking a small group of new people to this remote place where one can just enjoy nature without lots of humans.

Specialty Birding: Arizona Style, Part 1

This past weekend, I finally extended my Arizona birding, outside of Maricopa County for the first time this year.  I had the privilege of escorting a couple of serious birders from out-of-state in the quest for some highly desired birds, Jennifer Rycenga and Peggy Macres.  I had collaborated with friend, Chris Rohrer, in advance in trying to find a couple of specialty birds that were being seen in southeastern Arizona and we had come up with a plan.  Chris was working on our first day, so Jen, Peggy, and myself headed to the first spot on our own in the search of a Rufous-backed Robin.  

This bird is a resident of western Mexico, but it is considered annual in Arizona in the winter and there always seem to be a handful that make an appearance in the state every winter.  The one we were looking for, has been reported for some time at Catalina State Park, so this was our destination.  We knew it frequented the Hackberry Trees, so it was just matter of being patient and keeping our eyes open for it.  As most birders will do while waiting, we wandered around and started keeping a tally of the birds we were seeing.  For Jen and Peggy, almost all of the birds we found were new 'year' birds, and for me as well since I had not been out of Maricopa County yet this year.  So the first cool bird we found was a pair of Rufous-winged Sparrows.  Just looking back on my history and I had not seen this bird since 2013, so it was time to reacquaint myself with it and the two we found were actually quite calm with us.  They did prefer to stay a little deeper in the trees, but really did not show any stress with us observing them and enjoying them.  Often the small rufous colored lesser wing coverts are covered and may be difficult to see, but at least one of my photos does show this distinctive marking for a change.

 Rufous-winged Sparrow

Rufous-winged Sparrow with visible rufous wing patch

As we walked up the road a bit, we started finding a plethora of other birds as well and part of that group was a couple of male Vermilion Flycatchers.  Yes, this is a pretty common bird in Maricopa County as well, but when one sees this bird and it poses so well, you just cannot ignore it and not take photos; that would just be rude!

 Vermilion Flycatcher

Another bird that we discovered in the area was a couple of Pyrrhuloxia, also known as the 'desert cardinal'.  But unlike the Rufous-winged Sparrows, they wanted to be seen on the far side of the trees which meant trying to see them through the branches through small openings.

 Pyrrhuloxia - Female

We had a lot of White-crowned Sparrows to look at and while sorting through all of them for a possible misfit, I caught glimpse of a bird in the background and when I focused my binoculars on it, I discovered it was a Lawrence's Goldfinch.  Like the Pyrrhuloxia, this is another bird that I do not see that often, so it is always a treat to find it.

Lawrence's Goldfinch

After about and hour and a half of waiting and watching, Jen caught a glimpse of our target bird, the Rufous-backed Robin, coming in and sure enough it worked its way to one of the Hackberry Trees and put on quite a show for us.  It was not long and we had a crowd of others showing up and asking what we were looking at.  Some were not birders, so we pointed it out to them and some were birders that just drove in and they almost could not park fast enough so they could get over to see this gorgeous bird.  The non-birders were interested and thought it was very pretty.  One of the birders that drove in was a lady that had flown into Phoenix that morning and rented a car to come down to look for it.  Another was a trio of 3 young kids with binoculars and cameras and they were very excited when they saw it.  This bird acts a lot like the American Robin that just about everyone in the United States is familiar with, but that rufous colored back really stands out.

 Rufous-backed Robin - First View

 Rufous-backed Robin, posing.

By the time we finished at Catalina State Park, Chris had gotten off work and proceeded to join us in pursuing a few other birds in the short time we had left of the daylight hours.  At our last stop on the Mt Lemmon Road, and while we were listening for and trying to locate a Black-chinned Sparrow, a couple of deer made an appearance on the opposite side of the road on the slope and it was amazing how easily they could disappear into the foliage and rocks.

 Deer in the rocks and grass

Even though the first day was only about a half of a day birding, we really got to see some incredible birds.  The Rufous-backed Robin is one that I had only seen once before and I only got mediocre photos, but this one was more than accommodating and I along with Jennifer and Peggy thoroughly enjoyed it to the fullest.  The next day was going to be a long one and an epic one.  Stayed tuned for part two.