Catching up on Warblers just North of New York City ...

A quick circuit of state parks and other hotspots North of New York City.

So I thought I might go to Cape May today to look for kites (they had Swallow-tailed and Mississippi Kites yesterday) but when the alarm went off at 4am, by brain was willing but my body said "No", there was just no way I was up for that kind of drive today.  Just too tired I guess, so I turned off the alarm, got up at 6am and instead headed North to some of the State parks North of New York City in search of some of the warblers that I'd missed this year in Central Park.

First stop was Doodletown Road, a nice trail in Bear Mountain State Park about an hour North of the City.  This park is famous for it's CERULEAN WARBLERS, a bird I'd missed in the Park this year and was obviously popular with New York birders this week as I saw many old friends.  The trail was very birdy with 15+ species of warblers including a lot of migrant Tennessee Warblers, an Olive-sided Flycatcher, and a nice selection of local birds.  My focus was very much in the two specialty warblers there though and I soon had a nice look at a male Cerulean, and then a brief look at a female at a nest.  I also got to hear, but not see, a KENTUCKY WARBLER (thanks to Jeff Ritter).  When I bumped into Rich Cech later he said that you basically come here for those two species, and they cooperated remarkably well.  A very cool spot ... two target species ... done.

Cerulean Warbler nest .... saw the female building it when I first saw it, but
she didn't come back for a photo.
Black Racer ... a very cool snake seen warming up on the trail.

After Doodletown I headed over the Sterling Forest SP with a plan to see a GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.  As I pulled in to the site I bumped into a gaggle of New York City birder (Richard Friend, Peter Post, Anders Peltomaa, Brian Paden, etc.) who quickly gave me good directions to the warbler sites.  A half hour later, after some advice from some photographers, I did find a Golden-winged Warbler which was singing and vigorously defending it's territory from a Blue-winged Warbler.  The sad thing about this site it that it's very much on the front-line of the war between Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers and sadly the Blue-winged Warblers are winning.  Over the years I've been in New York the number of Golden-winged locations has slowly declined each year as each site has winked-out one-by-one with the Blue-winged Warblers slowly absorbing their sister species and pushing them further North.  We're not sure how much longer we'll have Golden-winged Warblers here and this is basically the last place 'downstate' that you can see them reliably.  But they're still around this year so I made the most of the views .... really neat bird ....

Golden-winged Warblers (3 shots)

Blue-winged Warblers (the villain of the piece) ....

Having got the three warblers I came for, and still having time to kill, I decided to joint Richard Fried and co. and head up to Blue Chips Farm (a 600-acre horse farm) to hopefully add an UPLAND SANDPIPER for the year list.  Richard and I got brief views of a distant sandpiper, one of my favorite North American birds, but couldn't get the others on it before it vanished behind a fold in the field.  So on to the Shawangunk Grasslands, a former airport that has been restored as grassland habitat and had a great selection of grassland birds (declining in the East).  We had Eastern Meadowlarks, Eastern Kingbirds, Eastern Bluebirds, American Kestrel and lots of displaying Bobolinks.  We also had two singing GRASSHOPPER SPARROWS - a bit of a surprise as we didn't realize they were there but apparently they've come back with the habitat restoration and numbers are increasing.  This site was also one of the last 'downstate' sites where Henslow's Sparrow used to breed (another species declining sharply in the East) so let's hope they make it back there too.  A very neat spot, and nice to see a grassland habitat on the rebound.  I definitely should come North more often; even though I was only an hour-and-a-half North of the City, it really did feel like a day in the country.

Postscript:  the next week several birders bumped into (Eastern) Timber Rattlesnakes at this site - my most wanted Eastern herp.  Should have stayed longer, and looked harder I guess.  I really need to be more patient ....

A Day off in Newfoundland.

Unexpected day off to actually bird in Newfoundland.

So after the easy hits (and epic birding day) on Monday.  I found myself with a totally free day on Tuesday and planned to simply, well just go birding.  I'd asked Jared Clarke for some suggestions and he kindly gave me some locations so I got up early, hit a Tim Hortons, and headed out for my favorite sort of day ... no plans, limited cell-phone reception, unfamiliar place ... and birds .....

First stop was Cape Spear, which as cold and birdless, so I soon retreated to the boreal forests around the settlement at Blackhead (I presume this was named after a geographic feature, not a skin problem) and spent a happy couple of hours slowly working thought 'boreal' (black spruce) forest.  I wanted Pine Grosebeaks and Boreal Chickadees and got both relatively easily, along with a supporting coast of Pine Siskins, both Kinglets, Fox and White-throated Sparrows, and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  The dawn chorus was also supplemented by 'drumming' Ruffed Grouse and 'winnowing' Wilson's Snipe ... a very happy couple of hours for a 'lowland' birder.

Pine Grosbeak and Boreal Chickadee ... rare treats for a largely coastal birder. 

Then back along scenic coasts to the Goulds area where I'd really hoped to get photos of yesterday's Black-tailed Godwit.  No luck with that, although I spent a fair amount of time looking and did luck-out with great views of a River Otter that swam around in the marsh, came up on to the bank (do otters do anything that doesn't look like they're playing) and was so preposterously photogenic I completely forgot to pick up me camera.  Sometimes you just have to look and not worry about the optics, it was a special moment.

Next was Bidgood Park (on Jared's suggestion) where I planned to kill a few hours in what seemed like a pleasant, but not necessarily birdy, local park.  While I was getting out out the car though, and before I was set up, I heard a crane bugling.  "Nice" I thought, "didn't realize they had Sandhill Cranes here".  The bird called a few more times and I looked up, got brief binocular views and got back to business, getting set up to to birding.  It was only after a few steps that I thought to check the range map .... Sandhill Crane it tuns out was rare and accidental in Newfoundland.  With all these East winds and Eurasian vagrants, did I overlook a Common Crane?  Did I see a black neck?  No ... surely I would have noticed that, right?  Yes, it wasn't that high ... I would have noticed.  So Sandhill it was, but it turns out that even that was a rare bird (Alvan Buckley still needs it for Newfoundland) so a good find nevertheless.

The other rare bird I found at Bidgood Park was a bit of an oddity, but in a similar vein.  At the far end of the marsh I heard and saw an Eastern Phoebe.  Again after the fact I sort of had a vague recollection of the locals talking about a vagrant phoebe somewhere and I took photos just in case this was a different bird (they are very rare here apparently).  As none of the locals have since commented on this bird, I'm guessing it was the one that they'd already found.  Rarity is a function of geography it turns out ....

Eastern Phoebe ... garden bird in New York, rare in Newfoundland ...

Next stop was back to look for the European Golden-Plovers in the hope of getting better photos.  The birds were not on the field when I pulled up but just as I was leaving I saw a flock flying by and was able to get a few more shots (not all that much better) and an accurate count ... 58 (Jared's ~60 was pretty good it turns out).

European Golden-Plovers (two more shots)

After that, and chilled to the bone, I sort of gave up for the day, ran back to St. John's and checked the  ponds for ducks, adding 4 TUFTED DUCKS at Kent's Pond and intending to go back to the hotel.  I thought I was done for the day, but the time in the car had warmed me up and, as it was still early, I though better of it and returned to Goulds for another crack at the godwit.  No godwit, but while I was there I met some local birders who (were jealous of my crane but) gave me directions to another Northern Wheatear.  By this time I was getting really cold and chilled but decided I'd like to end on a high note so headed over to Ruby Line Pond (farm?) to the "shit pile" to try to add one more good bird before I gave in.  Sure enough, when I got there, there was a male Northern Wheatear on top of said pile, and I was happy to end my weekend on a high note with a good bird.

Northern Wheatear on a 'shit pile' ... the local term, not mine ...

In the end I had 70 species for the trip, 3 ABA birds and numerous year-birds.  It was a really great adventure and I'm sure I'll be back.  Keep finding those European vagrants and I'll book a flight.  Great trip ...

Chasing "Euro-Trash" Shorebirds in Newfoundland.

A quick trip for some ABA birds in Newfoundland, Canada ....

So OK, I'll admit it.  I have a crappy ABA list.  Most of my friends have at least 700+ but I'm languishing somewhere in the 640s and have never really focused on it.  I guess for two reasons, i) because when I first moved to the US in 1991 the idea of chasing vagrants from Europe in the NorthEast just wasn't all that appealing and, ii) once the World-listing bug kicked in I just couldn't see the thrill of trolling the Southern borders of the US for birds I'd already seen in Mexico, or sitting in the rain in Alaska hoping for a bird that I'd either just seen in Thailand, or which breeds in my parents' garden in Wales.  Time I guess gives your perspective though, and now that I'm safely past my World-listing phase (and now that I've been here a while and see European birds less regularly), my ABA list is starting to get more interesting.

I also blame eBird for this change of heart.  Every day I get an email detailing ABA rarities, and while I'm usually able to ignore it, sometimes birds just stick in my mind.  So after weeks of seeing reports of LaSagra's Flycatcher in Florida I went to see it.  Then I just had to see a Sinaloa Wren in Arizona.  Neither were Life Birds, but both somehow stuck in my mind and just had to be seen (I'm not even going to try to explain the psychology).  More recently, the alert was filled with news of an incredible invasion of Eurasian shorebirds in Newfoundland and, after watching it for weeks, I gave in to the urge, booked tickets, and headed up to St. John's on Sunday.

Before leaving I'd made contact with local birding experts Jared Clarke and Alvan Buckley who assured me that the birds were still there (but that they could leave any day).  I'd arranged to bird with Jared on Monday so counted down the days, checking the eBird reports to make sure the goodies were sticking, until I finally I landed in St. John's in an Ice Storm on Sunday night (quite a change from watching warblers in shorts in New York that morning), scraped the ice of my rental car windshield, and drove through driving hail and freezing rain to the Marriott in St. John's Harbor.  Next morning, after clearing a thin layer of snow (!) off the car (and wondering exactly what possessed me to do this), I pulled up to Jared's driveway at 7:15am, and headed off to look for a troika of rare Eurasian shorebirds, all of which would be new for my ABA list.

First stop was Cochrane Pond Road in Goulds, just South of St. John's.  We pulled up to a field that was full of oddly shaped brown lumps ... cow pies?  No, they were EUROPEAN GOLDEN PLOVERS, lots of them.  We guessed that there were about 60 of them hunkered down in the field, but later we got some decent looks and got some (distant but diagnostic) photos.  First ABA birds of the trip, and it took seconds after getting bins out of the bag .... this was looking promising.

'Cow-pies' turned out to be 60-ish European Golden Plovers hunkered down in a field
(with a diagnostic ID shot down below).  A bird that is annual in Newfoundland but
which arrived in unprecedented numbers this Spring.

So that was easy!  And so, after trying to get closer via a couple of different roads (and failing), we decided to head off to look for the next target - after all, these birds could leave at any minute, the pressure was on.

Next stop was Third Pond in Goulds, where we walked across a race track (horses) to overlook a nice marsh and lake.  The target here was BLACK-TAILED GODWIT and there had been up to three of them the week before.  At least one of the godwits was supposed to be lingering and we learned that it had been seen that morning although the bird was apparently distant and being seen on the other side of the lake.  Setting up scopes, we scanned and .... no godwit.  So we just hunkered down in the cold and kept scanning the area where the bird had been seen earlier that day (left of the plastic bucket apparently).  After ten minutes, Jared, who'd borrowed my scope, got the bird and pulled me over to the eye-piece.  It was a good job he did because the bird, which was frequenting a small muddy area of field that was largely obscured from us, wandered out for a minute or so then turned around and drifted back out of sight.  No photos, but decent views, and a very spiffy breeding-plumage Black-tailed Godwit joined the list ... ABA bird number two.

OK, so two quick ABA birds and time to drive South for the star bird, North America's third record of COMMON REDSHANK (although the records each involved multiple birds) which had been hanging out at Renews, about an hour South of where we were, for the past week or so.  So back in the car and off we went, luck definitely seemed to be on our side.

An hour later, we pulled up to the 'Redshank spot' where another local guide (Dave Brown?) and his client had scopes set up by the side of the road.  We jumped out expecting the redshank, but it turns out that it wasn't there and they were just watching the worlds tamest Northern Wheatear (not exactly a bad bird though).

The world's tamest Northern Wheatear (2 shots)

Nice bird, but not what we were there for, so while I photographed the wheatear, Jared wandered along the beach and within minutes, a shout and excited waving alerted us to the fact that he had 'the bird'.  The Common Redshank turned out to be equally confiding and allowed decent photos.  This is a bird that breeds near my parents' house in Wales and one which I saw daily growing up, but here in North America it did in fact seem very special.  ABA bird number 3.  Mission accomplished ....

Common Redshank - ABA 'Code 5' and a very special bird in North America.

So by 10:45am, we had all three target birds and Dave's client was on the phone changing his flights and canceling his hotels so he could go home early (he apparently had no intention of actually birding on this trip - he was shown his ABA birds and was done).  I had a day and a half left before my scheduled return flight however, and I really wanted to go birding.  Newfoundland was spectacular and I really wanted to get to know it better, see some more birds, and maybe even find a few more things (the locals were convinced that there was a European Oystercatcher out there somewhere).

We don't get a lot of icebergs in New York ... as I said, Newfoundland was different
and spectacularly scenic.

So with an afternoon 'at leisure' we decided to bird Cape Race, dragging Dave's reluctant client along with us.  We saw some really cool things - 3 Snowy Owls, Glaucous and Iceland Gulls, Black Guillimots, Razorbills and Common Murres, two Pomarine Jaegers, another Northern Wheatear, and even a dead Sperm Whale.  A really nice afternoon of birding in spectacular scenery.

One of three Snowy Owls at Cape Race ... the last of the biggest invasion in
living memory.

On the way back to St. John's we even added some Gray Jays, a few Merlins, and (even though we were too early for Atlantic Puffins and Nothern Fulmars), enjoyed some great birding in some spectacular spots.

Afternoon birding highlights (for me anyway) included Gray Jays and Ruffed
Grouse. 

By the time I dropped Jared off at his home and wound my way back to the hotel I was exhausted (and realized that I hadn't eaten anything all day) but I'd had a great day of birding, 3 ABA birds, multiple year birds, and a really good time.  Local lobster for dinner, a few cocktails, and an early night.  Great day ...

Postscript:  the Black-tailed Godwit was not seen again after Monday (I looked twice on Tuesday but didn't see it).  The Common Redshank also apparently departed either on Tuesday or Wednesday as an extensive search by Alvan Buckley and Neil Hayward (of record ABA Big-year fame) also came up blank despite many hours of searching on Wednesday.  Seems I got there just in the nick of time ....

Central Park .... Real Spring At Last.

A great weekend of birding in Central Park, including 20 species of Warbler.

So I changed my plans this weekend.  The original plan was to drive North to Vermont for the Garganey (an ABA bird) on Saturday but a change of weather on Friday allowed the duck to move on and also produced a real influx of migrants locally.  So instead of driving hundred of miles I decided to stay close to home an just bird in Central Park.

The Park in May is, truth be told, a bit of a circus.  Birders can sometimes outnumber birds and the already large cadre of New York City birders are supplemented by visitors, bird walks, and a huge number of birders who really only come out to look for warblers in the Spring.  There's a lot of bad ID's, a lot of chatting and socializing, and huge crowds form when a good bird is seen.  It's not for the faint of heart - Isaac Grant says it's like birding at the zoo - but if you can deal with the birders, there are also lots of good birds.

Friday was promising, lots of new migrants arrived, and after last year's 'nonslaught' where weather stalled migration for weeks it was obvious that the weekend would be very birdy.  So I spent two long (7 hour) mornings in the Park and saw a total of 79 species in the small (less than a square mile) wooded area called The Ramble where most birders tend to congregate, and most birds tend to be seen.  Birded with various people including Christian Copper (famous for swearing at a Blackburnian Warbler in the the movie Birders, the Central Park Effect), Morgan Tingley and Ryan Walker.  A pretty good weekend.  Here are some of the highlights in photos:

Scarlet Tanger - lots of these around, plus a single Summer Tanager.

Northern Waterthush - maybe a dozen or more of these in damp spots around the Park.

Prairie Warbler

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Indigo Bunting (above) and the crowd looking at the Indigo Bunting (below).
Yep, that whole crowd was just for an Indigo Bunting - pretty trumps rare in
Central Park in the Spring.

In all I think 25 species of warbler were seen in the Park this weekend (I only saw 20).  Spent most of Sunday looking for a Kentucky Warbler (other parks in NYC got them this weekend but we didn't) but in the end had to settle for Hooded and Worm-eating Warblers, although Black-billed Cuckoo, Lincoln's Sparrow, and Yellow-throated Vireo were also worth an honorable mention.

Hooded Warbler - male (above) and female (below)

Blue-winged Warbler

Worm-eating Warbler - one of three I saw this weekend (2 shots).

The birders were also entertaining.  I saw plenty of mis-IDs including Prothonatory Warbler (Yellow Warbler - although there was a real one I missed), Connecticut Warbler (Nashville Warbler), and Philadelphia Vireo (Warbling Vireo).  I also saw raised voices over the use of tape and flash photography.  As I said, the Park in Spring is quite a scene, but in the end the birds were good and (almost) everyone was happy to just soak them up for a few days.  Let's hope it stays this good for the next few weeks ....

Update:  of course, once I left the Park someone did in fact find a Kentucky Warbler, subsequently seen by many other birders.  Have to learn to be more patient I guess ....

April Weekend in Tucson (Part 2)

A day in the Chiricahuas chasing a Redstart

So having picked up the Rufous-capped Warbler and the Sinaloa Wren we were at first not sure what to do on Saturday.  As luck would have it though word got out that someone had found a Slate-throated Redstart at Cave Creek Canyon on Friday.  This was a target worth chasing and would have been an ABA bird for both Rich Hoyer and for me.  The only problem with Slate-throated Redstarts is that they almost always tend to be short-staying, usually one-day-wonders, but if we had to chase and miss a star bird we couldn't think of a better place to do it.  Cave Creek Canyon is one of the best birding spots in the US, and a personal favorite that I fell in love with when I first visited it 22 years ago.  It was a long drive but definitely worth the risk, so another 4am start and I picked up Rich and headed out of Tucson to the SouthEast en route to the Chiricahuas.

After stopping to get provisions (we were committed to a stake-out) we pulled into the parking lot at around 8am and headed up the South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon.  The initial intel was good and we bumped into birders who had seen the Redstart on Friday afternoon, meaning it had stuck around for the whole day.  Reality set in soon enough though as we got to the area of the sightings and met more birders who had been looking since dawn and not seen the bird.  Still, we're both optimists so we plugged away at the canyon, birding hard for the next five hours hoping that this Redstart at least was stickier than it's kin.

Elegant Trogon - a star bird here, in fact most of the birders we met that day
were looking for Trogons and not for the Redstart.

Even though the Redstart was not cooperating, the birding was really very good.  We worked several large mixed flocks that had multiple warbler species (Hermit, Townsend's Black-throated Gray, Red-faced, Grace's and lots of Painted Redstarts) and had great looks at Elegant Trogon, Arizona Woodpecker, Mexican Jay, White-throated Swifts and even an Olive-sided Flycatcher.  All really good stuff.

Painted Redstart - or 'Wrongstart'  as I took to calling it by the afternoon.

Gray-headed Dark-eyed Junco - one of those Western Juncos we don't get to
see in New York.

Hummingbirds were also in great form with Magnificent, Black-chinned and Broad-tailed all zipping about.  Overall we had 44 species within about a mile of the trail head - as I said, it's a really neat spot - but unfortunately none of them was a Slate-throated Redstart which turned out to be another one-day-wonder and thus true to it's kind.  Can't win them all ....

Magnificent Hummingbird

Perhaps the highlight of the morning though wasn't avian but rather two really special snakes that we found on the trail not far from each other.  The first was a large Black-tailed Rattlesnake, coiled and rattling by the side of the trail.  Then shortly afterwards we bumped into a truly beautiful Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake, a lifer for me, and certainly a memory that will make up for the Redstart dip.

Black-tailed Rattlesnake - not as close as it looks, I had my 300mm lens on.

Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake - Rich Hoyer is the hand-model.

So finally admitting defeat, and pausing only to catch up with old friend (former WINGS office manger and private bird trip organizing genius from my more rabid days) Greer Warren, we gave up and headed out over the top of the Chiricahua Range hoping to add a few more things on the way home.  The drive added a Zone-tailed Hawk, Stellar's Jays, Pygmy Nuthatches, Yellow-eyed Juncos and a spiffy 'Gould's' turkey (who knew turkeys could have so much white on them?).  We also got a lucky break when some Border Patrol agents pulled a fallen tree off the road in front of us - if they hadn't we would have had to retrace out steps and add another couple of hours to our drive home.  Soon enough we were back down in the desert and saying farewell to the magic mountains (note to self: come back soon).

Yellow-eyed Junco

Faced with another three-hour drive back to Tucson we decided to break it with a stop to look for water birds in Wilcox and were rewarded with a great selection, and 31 species, including shorebirds, Franklin's and Bonaparte's Gulls, Eared and Western Grebes, and lots of swallows.  A little drama was added when a Swainson's Hawk blindsided a Peregrine and stole it's prey item right in front of us, plus we got a little intrigue when we saw a Barn Swallow with pure white undersides (couldn't be, right? Cough).   Then back on the interstate and, after dropping Rich off, back to the hotel, and finally a night without a 4am start to follow ... shower ... room-service ... movie ... 8-hours of sleep ... priceless.

Long-billed Dowitchers - a good bird in the East, but easier here.

So that was that for Arizona, a great trip with 142 species, 3 ABA birds, and a Lifer Snake - we could have seen more bird species if we weren't so target focussed, but I was really happy with my two-day haul of birds I don't get to see often any more.  Many thanks to Rich for the eyes, the ears, and the snake-wrangling.  I definitely won't leave it so long before going back again.

April Weekend in Tucson (Part 1)

Chasing some potential ABA birds near Tucson

For once my business life and my birding life came together nicely this weekend when a Board meeting in Phoenix on Thursday gave me the opportunity to do a couple of days birding in SE Arizona over the weekend (schedules never work out this well).

4am on Friday morning and I was up and on my way from Phoenix to Tucson with no plans but birding for the next few days.  By 6:30am I'd picked up long-time birding friend Rich Hoyer at his house in Tucson and we were soon on our way to chase down some special birds in the canyons South of the city.  I was very excited to get back to bird some sites I hadn't visited in ten years and had a couple of target birds I really wanted to get.

First stop was Florida Canyon (pronounced Flor-ee-da) and we went straight up to the canyon proper passing quickly through desert habitat that had yielded a lot of life birds for me the first time I came here in 1993.  No time for thorough birding today though as we had two target birds that I really wanted to see and the first of them, Rufous-capped Warbler, had been seen recently up in the canyon. So we pushed on past Rufous-winged and Rufous-crowned Sparrows, Phainopeplas, Lucy's Warblers and other desert birds until we got to the parking lot and started our hike.

Hutton's Vireo - one of five species of vireo we saw to heard over the weekend
(the others being Cassin's, Plumbeous, Bell's and 'Western' Warbling)

Florida Canyon is a very special place with rough trails winding up through dense scrub along a tiny stream that surfaces then vanishes many times in the space of a mile or so.  The canyon is narrow and the scrub-covered canyon sides are relatively steep.  Perfect habitat for the warbler which likes both the steep scrubby slopes and permanent water nearby.

The canyon was really birdy this morning and was we picked our way up we saw or heard a lot of birds.  Migrant flycatchers were very much in evidence with Pacific Slope, Dusky and Hammond's all vocalizing along with resident Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, Dusky-capped and Ash-throated Flycatchers.  There were also five species of wren (Rock, Canyon, House, Bewicks's and Cactus), lots of warblers, tanagers, orioles, etc., and even a fly-over migrant Townsend's Solitaire.  It would have been a wonderful morning of birding even without the target birds, but we were focussed and kept pushing up the canyon with our goal in mind.

Eventually, after passing through the area where the birds had most recently been seen (the lower territory?) we heard a really promising chip note and, after a bit of urgent scanning, found a pair of Rufous-capped Warblers on the slope across the stream.  They really are quite spiffy little birds and we watched them for 10 minutes as they flitted around in the dense scrub.  There are perhaps three pairs in the canyon, and perhaps a few other birds (pairs) in a couple of other canyons scattered across S.E.Arizona, and that is the total US population, definitely a scarce bird in the US.  Target number one down and so off again to search for the bird that I most wanted for the weekend.

Rufous-capped Warbler.  The first one I'd seen North of the Mexican border.

So after stopping to chat with Ken and Suzy Feustel (friends from Long Island who we bumped into in the parking lot), next stop was a stakeout near Tubac where a Sinaloa Wren had been regularly seen in recent weeks along a pretty strip of riparian woodland along the San Pedro River.  I'd watched daily eBird rare bird reports on this species all Winter and I really wanted to see this bird (like last month's LaSagra's Flycatcher which lured me to Florida).  We had good directions and quickly found "the spot" next to the power-cut where the bird was apparently regularly seen.  It was supposed to be a "gimme" and we were hoping for a quick sighting and actually started making plans for what to do next.  Of course, needless to say nearly three hours later we were still staring into the leaf-litter and had seen nothing more promising than a Bewick's Wren.  Oh well, time for Plan B.

So an hour or so of driving later we were handing our ID's the the uniformed soldier at the gate of Fort Huachuca (US Citizens only!) and then wended our way through the fort to spot where a second Sinaloa Wren had been heard, but not seen, recently.  When we arrived at the spot the news was not good; two birders from Nebraska were staking out the site and hadn't seen the bird in an hour or so.  Still, not being people to stand around and wait, Rich and I split up and started working downstream trying to find the bird for ourselves and, not five minutes later, Rich yelled that he had the bird.

Rushing over I followed directions and saw a small brown shape working through dense underbrush towards the stream.  I had a choice at this moment, bins or camera?  I chose bins and got a great look as the bird popped out into the open.  I also really regretted the choice as, by the time I got my camera ready, the bird was back in the dense scrub and, despite an hour of trying and plenty of glimpses of the bird, I never did get a clear photo.

Two of the worst photos of Sinaloa Wren ever published - expert photographer
I am not ....

Luckily, Rich was luckier (or more skilled) with his point-and-shoot camera and got at least one decent shot.  I was thrilled either way though having got the bird I really wanted for the weekend (plus a real rarity in the US, and a second ABA bird).  Happy but exhausted we raced back to Tucson where I dropped Rich off and headed to my hotel to grab a few hours sleep before an early start to chase a Painted Redstart that had been found that day in another part of the state.  Last bird of the day for me was a Common Poorwill at dusk at my hotel (the J.W.Marriott at Starr Pass).  Perfect end to a very good day of birding.

Sinaloa Wren - Photo: Rich Hoyer (Used with Permission)

As a postscript, a funny thing happened while I was watching the wren that day.  After finally getting some (not so amazing) photos I stepped back to take a break and felt my phone buzzing in my pocket.  It was Corey Finger texting me saying "Ptarmigan on Sunday?" which truly confused me.  My Facebook status said I was in Phoenix but did he think I was in Colorado?  Had he sent a text to the wrong person?  After a few minutes I texted back that I had plans to look for Slate-throated Redstart on Sunday, which I thought would clear up the confusion.  In response Corey texted "Boo" and now I was really confused.  I asked where he was to be looking for Ptarmigan ... Colorado?  And he told me that a Willow Ptarmigan had just been found in New York State ... only the second ever in the lower 48 (!) .  Ho hum ... can't get them all (the bird did not stick around to wait for me to come back) .... but you can read about Corey's adventure (complete with encounters with New York State Troopers) at 10,000 Birds here.

Photospot: Rosy-faced Lovebird in Phoenix

Had a few spare hours in Phoenix this weekend so decided to see if I could track down some Rosy-faced Lovebirds now that they've officially been added to the ABA list.  The population is apparently doing very well with over 2,500 birds in the Phoenix area.  They were also supposed to be relatively easy to see and the on-line directions sent me to Encanto Park, a landscaped little green space with picnic tables, fishing lakes, and lots of people.  Nevertheless the birds were very cooperative and I heard some within 10 minutes of getting to the park.  Spend a half hour watching them fly around, squabble with starlings, and perch in a variety of different types of trees.  A pleasant way to spend a half an hour and nice addition to my ABA list.

Rosy-faced Lovebird (3 shots)

The Lovebirds seemed to be returning to the same palm regularly and chasing
European Starlings around - competition for nest cavities?