It’s a wonder the birds can fly this time of year at all. This raggedy adult  Western Kingbird was perched on the fence at Willcox this morning, concentrating hard on growing some feathers. These swallow-tailed birds are always good for a late-summer quiz, and I shudder to think how many of them get called Tropicals….

Bryan and I had planned a day in Madera Canyon yesterday, but when it came time for the sun to rise, we discovered that the entire Santa Rita Mountains had vanished, hidden behind a shroud of heavy rain. So we improvised, dodging rain drops and thunderstorms, sometimes getting wet but always getting our birds.

The rain made for some interestingly out-of-place birds, including a Greater Yellowlegs over the Continental maintenance yard. That site also produced the morning’s first Lazuli Buntings, along with such beauties as Vermilion Flycatchers and Lesser Goldfinches.

Hoping to skirt the storm, we headed out the Amado-Montosa Road, only to find the rain falling more heavily as we went along. But Black-throated and Rufous-winged Sparrows were up and singing, and the bright tails of Ash-throated Flycatchers in dense-leaved ocotillos against the leaden sky were postcard-perfect.

We stopped at the Rex Ranch in hopes that the Passerina flocks that frequent the brushy edges in autumn would be apparent. No such luck. What greeted us instead was a lone Solitary Sandpiper, huddled in the downpour, a sight that pretty much summed up the entire day.

A glimpse of what we thought was blue sky in the north gave us the courage to head back to Madera. Cleverly enough, we headed straight for the Kubo, where the male Flame-colored Tanager was singing lusty and loud from the tops of the oak trees. The charred mud of recently burned Proctor Road was irresistible to three soggy javelinas, and a male Varied Bunting perched up and sang for us along the road itself. Botteri’s and Rufous-winged Sparrows were audible all through the grasslands on the way back down, but oddly enough, we missed Cassin’s Sparrow both of our days out.

With our targets seen well, we decided to drive south to Patagonia. The Roadside Rest echoed with the metallic calls of Thick-billed Kingbirds. Approaching Mrs. Paton’s, we found the Sonoita Creek crossing too muddy and rutted for Bryan’s vehicle, so we parked it on the town side and slogged across. The rain let up just as we took our seats under the awning, and the hummingbirds reacted nicely to the pause in the drenching: many Broad-billed and Black-chinned Hummingbirds were joined by a single Violet-crowned, as beautiful as it is rare north of the Mexican border. A Thick-billed Kingbird was calling there too, but soon the rain returned, and with a vengeance. We ran back to the creek, which was already starting to flow hard, and splashed across to the car for the drive to Kino Springs.

Gray Hawks were still squealing from the nest tree, and Common Ground-Doves flitted around dodging rain drops. A Sora, my first of the fall, was on the first pond, but we could not find the White-collared Seedeater that had been seen there again in the morning. All told, though, a surprisingly good day for the weather!

A great day in my favorite Arizona range, the Huachucas. These richly forested scarps are said to have been called by the Apache “thunder mountains,” and the wisdom of those long-vanished people was apparent today, when Bryan and I wandered the canyons beneath skies lit by lightning and darkened by rain.

The weather wasn’t so helpful, but the birds could hardly have been more cooperative. We started on the grasslands of Fort Huachuca, where Rufous-crowned and Botteri’s Sparrows sang against a background of Blue Grosbeaks and Eastern Meadowlarks. Viva Aimophila!

A major surprise was the abundance of Scaled Quail. I usually hope to see a couple on the way up to the mouth of Garden Canyon, but this morning we found them all the way from the water tower to the oaks, the largest covey a gang of about 20 scurrying away from us in the grass. Several were obviously young.

Even better, though, was a pair of Montezuma Quail that flew across the road in front of us. The female quickly melted into the grass, but the male gave us a second chance and a nice second look. This is perhaps the best time of the year to look for this secretive little quail; they seem to get careless when the eggs hatch, actually letting themselves be glimpsed on oak-clad hillsides.

Sulphur-bellied Flycatchers accompanied us all the way up the road once we’d entered the canyon proper, and it wasn’t long before we started to hear Elegant Trogons. We tracked down one persistently honking bird, spotting first the lovely female, then the singing male; as we watched, the female entered a sycamore cavity, whence she issued four or five seconds later: a new nest!

Scheelite Canyon was quiet as always, a perfectly sepulchral setting for the allopreening pair of Spotted Owls we discovered perched just above the trail. Canyon Wrens serenaded us all the way down, and Bryan picked the day’s only White-throated Swifts out against the cloudy sky.

On up to Sawmill, where we had scarcely opened the car doors when I heard the funny chlirrps of Buff-breasted Flycatchers. Two birds there and another four or five higher up were one of the day’s highlights: at least, that is, until an adult Red-faced Warbler materialized. That bird was followed quickly by a small mixed flock containing Grace’s Warblers, Brown Creepers, White-breasted Nuthatches, and my first two Hermit Warblers of the fall. And by then it felt like fall, too, the air and the rain getting colder by the minute.

Time to seek shelter, which we found at Tom Beatty’s wonderful feeders in Miller Canyon. We paused on the way up to admire a flock of a dozen Band-tailed Pigeons, posing with uncharacteristic aplomb over the road.

We walked reluctantly past the fresh rhubarb and fragrant apples at the store up through the orchard to middle feeders, where good numbers of hummingbirds were dodging the raindrops and each other’s aggressive impulses. Black-chinned Hummingbirds were most common, but there were also many Broad-tailed, a few Broad-billed and Anna’s, half a dozen Magnificent, a single bossy Blue-throated, and a breath-taking male White-eared Hummingbird. Numbers should only increase over the next couple of weeks at the hummingbird capital of the US.

A quick stop at Mary Jo Ballator’s place in Ash Canyon was equally enjoyable. Though we missed the Lucifer Hummingbirds still in residence there, a male Scott’s Oriole was some consolation as it fed among the swarms of hummingbird in the blooming agaves.

Even if it hadn’t been thundering, it would have been a roaring good day all around!

Elizabeth, Beth, and I had a great time driving around the Willcox sewage ponds this afternoon, getting one of us a lifebird, one of us a state bird, and one of us (me) an Arizona year bird.

The adult Ruddy Turnstone continues, vigorously turning mud (and yes, the occasional small stone) as it waddled around the legs of the American Avocets and Long-billed Curlews. Today this bird was much more mobile than when Darlene and I saw it on Tuesday; we got to watch it both at ‘the point’ and, at point-blank range, on the east shore of the lake. Naturally, I’d left my camera in Tucson, so the views were superlative.

The dozen shorebird species we found also included ca. 15 Stilt Sandpipers, twice that many Baird’s Sandpipers, and bunches and bunches of Western Sandpipers; all of these were adults, of course. An adult Lesser Yellowlegs was my first of this slightly uncommonish species in Arizona for this calendar year.

It took us quite a while to find an avocet chick, but we did; it’s possible that the others were hiding in the grass, possible too that they have fallen prey to a bobcat or coyote since Tuesday. Two quite young Killdeer chicks were a nice sight, too.

No terns today, and Tuesday’s Franklin’s Gull had moved on as well, leaving us with just His Scruffiness. This badly, badly worn bird is apparently a Ring-billed Gull, meaning that I misidentified it the other day–ack. Here’s another photo of the bird from Tuesday.

I don’t feel  t o o  bad for muffing this one.