We arrived in Phoenix early enough to do some birding at one of my favorite spots - Gilbert Riparian Preserve.
Verdins are way better than butter-butts if you ask me.
Anna's Hummingbird
I was kind of jealous because my older brother was getting lifers left and right. My younger brother doesn't even list but pretty much everything was new for him.
Wilson's Snipe - in NC this species is rarely seen out in the open.
Lincoln's Sparrows are plentiful out west. I thought about putting one in my pocket and releasing it in NC as I am still waiting for my NC year bird.
Next morning dawned at our first destination, the foothills north of Tucson. We had stayed at the Jeremiah Inn, a nice B&B with a good view and some good birding. Even better it was off the road to Mt. Lemmon.
At the time we thought this was a Costa's Hummingbird, but now I am not sure. There is a bit of a curve to the bill but otherwise it is hard to tell.
Ladder-backed Woodpecker - the backlighting was horrible the first day but I think the birds appreciated the cloud cover.
Female Phainopepla
An ongoing joke the whole trip was that if we could not identify something we called it a Chipping Sparrow. This applied to unidentified raptors, shorebirds and passerines alike. Ok, you had to be there...
Black-tailed Gnatcatcher - see white and black contrasting under tail.
No doubting this ID, it was sitting on a cactus so it had to be a Cactus Wren.
Black-throated Sparrow - I tried to warn my brother that people have been known to poop themselves when they first see a BTSP. Needless to say, Raf had to change his underwear when we got back to the B&B.
What a crippler.
We tried to turn this thrasher into a Bendire's Thrasher but in the end we decided on Curve-billed.
Pyrrhuloxia! The bird with the most ridiculous name that is actually not that hard to say when you have practiced it a few times.
A closer look at what we thought was the same bird we saw earlier.
Spots on breast were relatively large which is why we settled on Curve-billed Thrasher.
On the way up Mt Lemon, we kind of struggled to find birds but when we did they were good. I actually was the only one to get on a beautiful Olive Warbler but alas no picture.
Yellow-eyed Junco - somehow this was still a lifer for me. We saw many more throughout the whole trip.
Up on top of Mt Lemmon, a raven was sitting on a fence.
I joked that it was a Chihuahuan Raven. So my brother asked what the field mark was and I replied that white feathers at the base of the throat and nape were pretty good. Then a nice stiff breeze kicked in....
Ha! We also observed that it was a good deal smaller than we would expect on a Common Raven and the bristles on the top side of the bill extended pretty far out.
eBird did flag this bird because it is fairly rare for them to be up top Mt. Lemmon. But eBird also flagged Pygmy Nuthatches and we saw hundreds, no exaggeration.
Chihuahuan Raven
I believe Common Ravens can have gray feathers at the base of the nape but in my opinion these were more white than gray.
Steller's Jay
I was pretty upset that we did not find any Mountain Chickadees which is working out to be my nemesis bird.
As the sun started to set, we made our way to our next destination, Madera Canyon!! We ended up staying at the famous Chuparosa B&B for 3 nights.
However, upon waking it was cold and cloudy so I suggested we head to Florida Canyon where it is always sunny.
Hmmm, well it's not a Chipping Sparrow.
This guy was much easier to identify - Green-tailed Towhee.
The punk rocker of the bird world.
I am pretty sure Hermit Thrush is the default thrush this time of year in Arizona. We saw many.
It was very good to be re-aquainted with Black-chinned Sparrows. Last time I saw them was on top of Mount Ord many years ago.
Black-chinned Sparrows know how to make an impression with a fairly limited color palette.
But they still can't hold a candle to BTSPs.
We agonized for a while over this Empid, but in the end we decided on Dusky Flycatcher which now that I am sitting in my bed looking at field guides is an easy ID considering time of year (winter), habitat (canyon with secondary growth) and relatively short primary projection.
Maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but I am thinking the Empids in Arizona are better than ours in NC. Maybe it is just the setting that does it.
Hermit Thrush
The weather was improving so we headed back to Madera and right outside the B&B ran into a huge feeding flock. We figured that the rest of the stay would be this good so we probably did not comb through the flock as much as we should have. It turned out that this flock was the most active flock we would see all trip.
This Painted Redstart was jumping around right at our feet and actually was making it very tough to get a decent picture with my 400 lens.
We had 2-3 Arizona Woodpeckers stockpiling acorns for the winter.
It's always good to find hummingbirds out away from feeders. I believe this is a Magnificent although it is hard to tell now without the scale.
The crazy-eyed Acorn Woodpeckers - lunatics of the bird world. Some people think they look like clowns, which I guess is appropriate but more like killer clowns. Insane Clown Posse ready to drill holes in your jugular. I kept a safe distance.
Right after this picture was taken this Acorn Woodpecker plucked the eye from a Geri-birder and stored it in a Oak for the winter.
Folks on the West Coast are always crying about their "drab" warblers. Well Townsend's Warblers are pretty badass and they are much more accommodating than our comparable Black-throated Greens.
Female Arizona Woodpecker
It's too bad my sons were not with me, they love a good Brown Creeper joke. "Dad, there is a Brown Creeper coming down your pant leg.... oh wait that's not a bird."
Red-Shafted Northern Flicker
Even the deer in Arizona are better, I think this was a Coues Deer which is really just a sub-species of White-tailed Deer.
Peaks shrouded in mystery - I imagined Eared Quetzals and Mountain Chickadees frolicking.
We did do some Geri-birding at Santa Rita Lodge, but my brother was not a fan. He prefers to work for his birds. He thinks Geri-birding is cheating.
Anna's HB
Mexican Jays were everywhere.
Magnificent Hummingbirds are a true crowd pleaser.
They keep a defibrillator next to Santa Rita Lodge because Magnificent Hummingbirds are known to induce cardiac arrest. Luckily I did not have to give anyone mouth to mouth.
White-Breasted Nuthatches were plentiful. They were as thick as mosquitos are at Alligator NWR. We had to move them aside to look for less common species.
Although most deciduous trees had lost their leaves already, the Ash, Sycamore and Aspen trees were providing really nice backdrops.
Even female Magnificent HBs are nice.
Some of the Dark-eyed Juncos were doing their best Black-chinned Sparrow impersonations but they failed miserably.
Apparently there was a Red-breasted Sapsucker hanging out at the Santa Rita but we only saw Red-naped Sapsuckers.
Next morning was Thanksgiving and we continued our ritual of heading to Florida Canyon in the morning as it was catching the sun earlier than Madera. While my older brother was looking up the trail I was able to locate the resident rarities.
Black-capped Gnatcatcher!!! White under tail is the diagnostic but Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are also a possibility so I double-checked the other field marks...
The male had a nice dark strip over the eye and it extended behind the eye which is fairly good for Black-capped.
The bill was fairly long but I can't say for sure that it was much longer than would be expected on a Blue-gray. However, most folks around Madera were saying if you see the white under tail and you are seeing them at the spot where the Black-capped hang out chances are you are looking at the resident Black-capped pair.
Black-throated Gray Warbler
We saw this Empid in the same place as the day before and assumed it was the same bird, but now I wonder...
Is it me or is the primary projection longer than the other bird? Oh well, the joys of Empids.
Highly cropped image of a Canyon Wren. I never did get a clear up close shot although we saw quite a few throughout the trip.
Coues Deer porn.
So cute....
Back at Madera I finally got some decent shots of a Hutton's Vireo. Other than the bill, the best field mark is that the yellow edging on the secondary feathers extend all the way to the white wing bar. Ruby-crowned Kinglets have a black patch interrupting the yellow edging. Amazing that although I saw about 5 million Ruby-crowned Kinglets on this trip, I didn't photograph any of them.
What a better way to end a Arizona post with some nice shots of Magnificent Hummingbirds. A little background on the below photos. On Friday my younger brother and I did a massive 10 mile + hike from Florida Canyon up to a saddle on the way to Mt. Wrightson with the intention of hiking Mt Wrightson and then back down into Madera on the Super Trail. That very ambitious plan would have been 15 plus miles which we have done many times before, but we failed to take into account the extreme elevation changes. We ended up doing just under 4000 feet elevation change and balked at the final 1000 feet. Florida Canyon's trailhead starts at about 4500 ft elevation and Mt Wrightson is over 9000 ft high. By the time we got to the saddle at 8000 ft we had already burned over 4 hours of daylight and we got a late start. The wind was howling on the top and it was near zero degrees and in fact there was ice and frost everywhere. Not to mention my brother hearing a bear growling. So we ended up chickening out and hiking down a trail before the final summit which ended up bring pretty cool because it was deserted. In fact a bit too deserted, the trail was overgrown in parts and a couple times we lost the trail altogether. I wish I had taken more photos as it was gorgeous. I will download some iPhone images later. I had lugged my Crusher all the way to the top thinking I would see some mountain specialties but we saw very few birds. So when we made it to the bottom of the trail which dumped us near the Santa Rita Lodge, I decided to take a load off and Geri-bird for a bit while my brother hiked up to the Chuparosa to get the car.
I took about 100 photos in this one Geri-birding session and tried to boil it down for this post but it is hard deleting pictures of Magnificent Hummingbirds.
What you say? This post was too short? Ok, well this was just the first half of the trip. Part deux is coming soon....
Cheers.
Phantastic fotos (excuse my Esperanto) of a huge variety of birds, phfun commentary - and I'm stealing some of your Magniphicents, and an Anna's, for my blog. Don't sue me.
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