Pomona Valley Audubon -
Chaparral Naturalist Archives

As in past years, the call to go birding in Southeastern Arizona could not be ignored. So, early one Wednesday morning, Glen took off pulling our 5th wheel trailer, popped in a book-on-tape, and started the 10 hour drive to Tucson; I headed off to work. Late Thursday afternoon I took off from Ontario Airport on my way to Tucson through Phoenix. And this year, same as last, my departure from Phoenix was delayed about an hour. When I finally arrived in Tucson, it was raining; good news though, because it cooled things off. We drove 50 miles to where Glen had parked our trailer in Whetstone, 10 miles north of Sierra Vista.

Friday morning we awoke to the sounds of cactus wrens and curve-billed thrashers—no alarm today. The temperature was nice from the rains the prior evening and on our way out of the trailer park we found Cassin’s and western kingbirds as well as juvenile and adult Swainson’s hawks. The destination was Fort Huachuca* to bird Garden, Scheelite and Sawmill Canyons. We planned to stop at a roadside pond to see if there were any water birds, and turned in at a sign for Woodcutters Pond (a notice was posted to notify base personnel if you planned to fish, but we weren’t going to). About half a mile up the road there was a lot of bird activity, so we hopped out to look around. It was then that we realized we had not listed this as one of our destinations, so we grudgingly turned back towards the main road. We decided to start at Sawmill, remembering the summer of 1995 when we saw eight warblers and a buff-breasted flycatcher. There was not much activity, but we did see a family group of buff breasted flycatchers. Our unproductive birding was interrupted by late morning rain. We retreated to the truck and lunched on PBJ sandwiches. Still no birds, but the butterfly population was great; we had never seen as many as we did on this trip. On the way out, we headed back down towards Scheelite, stopping at the pictograph trails. No luck here either, the trail was very slippery and we could not find the Indian artwork we had anticipated seeing.

Just as we started in to Scheelite, Glen caught a glimpse of the red breast of an adult male elegant trogon. As we trekked in, flapping wings caught our attention and what we at first thought was a spotted towhee, on further investigation turned out to be a juvenile elegant trogon. It resembled a female but with just a blush of pink near the vent, fine barring on the undertail and undertail coverts and whitish wing coverts. We followed it up the

Saturday we were on the road at 6:00, and decided to try a new location, the Pinaleno Mountains (Mt. Graham the highest peak is the site of a Univ. of Arizona telescope). The drive was a long one, and we turned off the road to Mirijilda Creek for riparian species. We had only gone about a mile when we decided to turn around because the road was so rough. We got out to check out the bird songs, which belonged to black-chinned, chipping, and Botteri’s sparrows, blue grosbeaks, western tanagers, Bullocks oriole and canyon towhee, to name a few. But the gnats and buzzing insects drove us to distraction until we could stand it no longer. The road continued through nice juniper oak woodlands, and stands of pines, past flats and meadows, turning into a well graded dirt road with lots of traffic! What’s the draw? Seven miles up we came to Columbine Ranger Station (closed), and although the roads had been steep, we decided to go to the end to see Riggs Lake (it should have been called Riggs Pond). It was packed with fishermen, young and old. A walk around the perimeter yielded house wren, yellow-rumped warbler and brown creeper. Back down the road (9,100’) we walked a trail at Shannon Campground hoping for the rare northern goshawk, but found instead red-faced, hermit and olive warblers. We headed for home, picking up some water birds in a pond near Safford at dusk.

By 4:45 a.m. Sunday, we were headed for remote Guadalupe Canyon, east of Douglas, thinking we would make it by the time the sun was up—WRONG! We didn’t get there until nearly 7:30, and lucky for us there was a light cloud cover until nearly noon. One of our first birds was a varied bunting that we later discovered was rearing 2 babies.

We started out Monday at the Sierra Vista Sewage Ponds, another new place, and were surprised by the presence of a peregrine falcon in the fields there. Yellow-headed black birds were in the reeds, as was a pair of lazuli buntings. Bird activity was down, as it was already very hot. So we headed for the higher ground of Miller Canyon again, deciding to skip Ramsey Canyon for the nicer hike in Miller. The bed and breakfast in the apple orchard had a sign out welcoming birders, so we ventured in. The owner, Tom Bailey, proved to be quite a talker and took some time to sit with us on his patio. We saw black-chinned, magnificent, rufous, blue-throated, Anna’s and broad-tailed hummingbirds as it rained lightly, and came away with some apples (he has 20 varieties), honey and bees wax.

We left Miller Canyon to hitch up the trailer and head for the Tucson airport. Four days (104 species) was not nearly enough time, so perhaps we will steal away during the winter break from school to visit hawk alley, south of Wilcox.

*Note: Admission to Fort Huachuca requires a current vehicle registration, and proof of insurance.