Sabino Canyon

Here’s an idea: lead a trip to Sabino Canyon for Tucson Audubon, and forget to announce a limit on the number of participants! But who can blame people for wanting to get out on a beautiful day like this? Though nobody—not even the leader—got to see everything, I think everyone got to see something good, whether a Black-chinned Sparrow at the “usual” spot near the dam, or one of the many Green-tailed Towhees wintering in our area this year.

As we climbed up from Sabino Creek to head back along the road to the Visitor Center, somebody in the back of the line called out to get my attention: but I’d already seen it, a bright white dot atop the cliff that could only be one bird: Prairie Falcon. We reached the road and set up scopes, and spent the next half hour watching this amazing bird preen and stretch and yawn, unaware or unconcerned by the gaping admiration going on an eight of a vertical mile beneath him (it was probably an adult male). We left the bird still perched, his tarsi stretched out and his toes curled in the classic “relaxed pose” of raptors (it always looks like a painful spasm to me, but birds are just different, I guess).