Catalina State Park

There are emblematic moments in the desert, when the sights and sounds come together to burn an image into the birder’s mind. My own is still blissfully smoldering from this morning, when Darlene and I stood beneath a flicker-topped saguaro while Bell’s Vireos and a Cactus Wren grumbled and grunted around us: that’s what it’s all about!

This pair of Gilded Flickers was masterfully surveying a landscape that also hosted Crissal and Curve-billed Thrashers, Northern Cardinals and Pyrrhuloxias, and a bounteous plenitude of Lucy’s Warblers and Rufous-winged Sparrows. Flycatchers were scant, though there’s no sense in complaining when they included Vermilion and Ash-throated Flycatchers and the first Western Kingbirds I’d seen in the park this year.

The arriving birds should find plenty to eat. Red-spotted toads are out on all the trails, as shy as they are cute: guess they must have seen the Greater Roadrunners patrolling the area this morning!