Lake Patagonia to Florida Canyon

Kate and Jim's 2003 Vacation - Day 2 - Feb 23

We spent a fair amount of the morning looking for the rare Black-capped Gnatcatcher that has been seen regularly at the east end of the lake.  We broke Stuart's record of having seen the bird every time he'd been there.  But it wasn't a lifer for us, so we weren't as determined as many are...we had seen the bird a few years ago with Ann Johnson.

This is a very nice birding spot.  Stuart said this was one of his best birding locations, and it certainly was very birdy.

After Lake Patagonia, Stuart took us to Kino Springs where we found a couple of Lawrence's Goldfinches.  This was our first lifer of the trip, and one that I've been wanting for a while.  The looks were not great though, since the birds were flying around high in a couple of pine trees, and there were so few of them.  But we did get the tick.  

We then headed up to the Pima County Maintenance Yard near Green Valley, AZ, a well known local spot, where we had spectacular looks at the bird (I left my camera in the car - THAT won't happen again).  This was Stuart's original planned spot, but by going to Kino Springs first (we were ahead of schedule), we  freed the cosmic forces necessary for us to have great looks at Lawrence's Goldfinch.  And there were several flocks in the area, naturally.

In fact, I had the chance to do a little "digiscoping" which is essentially simply holding the digital camera up to the spotting scope and taking a picture.  Which is pretty much what I did.  There are adapters you can purchase for this type of thing and effort you can put into this, but the primary reason for the purchase was not just bird photography.  So I had passed on the investment.  But I did wind up having lots of problems getting a picture, and this is the best of the lot, so I may have to revisit the acquisition of a few more toys.

Stuart also had his digiscoping rig set up, and we stopped traffic with both of us having big scopes set up looking at an apparently empty tree.  He got a much better picture than I got.

Speaking of the border, I'm fascinated by the whole Border Patrol thing.  These folks just are all over the area.  My guess is that for every police or sheriff's vehicle we saw, there were five Border Patrol cars or trucks.  We even got stopped at a roadblock between Nogales and Green Valley.  But I digress.

The drill here was that the robin only showed up periodically, with some people having to wait up to three hours to see the bird.  And when it did come, it wouldn't stay long.  It would take a drink of water, then leave for another long absence.  We had also been warned that birders were feeding the lone horse in the corral and that was upsetting the horses owner.  So were were specifically instructed not to violate the owner's intention.

We set up shop with scopes and snacks and proceeded to wait.  Stuart wanted a couple of pictures, so he set up his digiscoping apparatus.  Unfortunately the horse was not aware of (or chose to ignore) the new instructions regarding its snacking habits.  After we had been there a while, he moseyed over to interact with us.  Kate had to heroically throw herself at the horse to prevent it from knocking over Stuart's scope.  But you can see she kind of enjoyed it.

OK, you're probably wandering.  The Rufous-backed Robin DID show up and we had nice looks at it...the third lifer of the day.  It's a good thing it came back a second time...Kate didn't see it the first time and I would have felt guilty about getting the bird and her not.  Both Stuart and I breathed sighs of relief when it came back a few minutes later and Kate was able to get satisfactory looks.

And yes, it looks just like an American Robin, but with a...rufous back.

Other interesting birds were Scrub Jay, Phainopepla, and Canyon Towhee,