Amazing SE Arizona
It sure is hard to beat southeast Arizona in the spring time. The days are often still not too hot, the evenings not too cold. Wildflowers are starting to spring up and everyday can bring a fresh wave of migrating birds back to the Sky Islands. But the thing about migration, is every year there are subtle (and not so subtle!) differences in the year to year patterns. This was no exception and from my perspective a little baffling as some early season migrants were scarce, while some later migrants were quite abundant. But in all, it was quite birdy for us and we were able to record 196 species, my second highest total yet for this tour!
Obviously owls and warblers are the highlights of the tour, we did well for owls with 8 species recorded. We had great looks at Whiskered Screech, Western Screech as well as Elf, Burrowing and Great Horned Owls. Also thrilling was hearing Northern Pygmy, Spotted and Northern Saw-whet Owls, the latter being only the 4th time ever encountered on this tour (out of 24 tours)! Warblers were modest in numbers and diversity, but we had banger looks at some of the most “important ones”, with terrific experiences with Red-faced Warbler and Painted Redstart. An honorary warbler, though a solo species in its own family, this was the best showing for Olive Warbler I’ve seen in several years. Good to see after a few years of low numbers.
But the highlights don’t stop there! Hummingbirds were excellent and we had 12 species plus a Berylline x Broad-billed Hummingbird hybrid! Very notable was only our 3rd and 5th times respectively for Rufous and Calliope Hummingbirds, with several Calliope’s on multiple days. Flycatchers had great diversity and we enjoyed goodies like Thick-billed Kingbird, Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, Greater Pewee and Olive-sided Flycatchers. We had a few rare woodpeckers with the expected species, namely Red-naped Sapsucker and a male Williamson’s Sapsucker, the latter only being the 3rd time recorded on the tour. Raptors showed well, we had multiple Zone-tailed and Gray Hawks, and in a remote canyon saw an adult Golden Eagle tending to its two fluffy white young in the nest! Another moment of parental care had us watching a pair of Mexican Chickadees constantly coming in to feed their tiny young in a nest cavity up in the Chiricahuas. We had decent shorebirds the few times we checked out some wetlands. Western Willets were clearly having a good migration and we saw them on multiple days, Avocets gave us some great looks and most exciting was the fourth ever Long-billed Curlew for the tour!
A few standout moments that must be mentioned include a flyover over Crested Caracara, only the second ever for the tour, and an evening where we had a pair of Buff-collared Nightjars vocalizing in a dry wash; a few participants even got eyes on them! Over in the Huachucas, a pair of Flame-colored Tanagers had set up shop. A little searching yielded the female bird sitting on the nest, but the male was rather elusive around the nest. We eventually got cracking in-your-face looks at the male down by the creek bed, a real delight to encounter! And finally, it would be remiss of me to not mention after last year’s abysmal trogon numbers, that we had some great experiences with the recently renamed Copper-tailed Trogon in both Madera Canyon and up the south fork of Cave Creek Canyon! Such a wonderful bird to get great looks at!
