Pena Blanca Lake…and a Rarity

Wow, two state birds in two days! At this rate, if I stay home until New Year’s, I may bring my state list up into the triple digits.

Darlene and I had planned a couple of early hours at Catalina State Park this morning, but a city-wide bicycle race chased us farther south, to Pena Blanca Lake. Our drive was pleasantly interrupted by Montezuma Quail, a covey of 6 birds crossing the newly blacktopped road ahead of us.

The area around Pena Blanca is probably the best place in Arizona for these beautiful little quail, but even here you really can’t look for them most of the year: instead, they find us.

The morning was off to a good start, and our fine fortune continued once at the lake. The short stretch of road to the boat ramp was alive with Bridled Titmice, Chipping Sparrows, Red-naped Sapsuckers, and Mexican Jays, and a gorgeous male Red-shafted Flicker perched nearby for several minutes before dropping to the ground to rummage.

We made our way slowly to the lake, where a couple of dozen American Coots shared the water with a Pied-billed Grebe and the usual Saturday complement of human fishermen; an adult Great Blue Heron sulked on top of the tall cliffs, doing his best impression of a dried agave stalk as he waited for his turn at the newly stocked trout.

Time was running out on us, but we turned down the shady path around the lake, resolved to bring our birding speed average up to more than 0.25 miles per hour. It didn’t work. When we stopped to admire a tapping White-breasted Nuthatch, a largish parulid in the willow above our heads caught our attention. What on earth? It looks like a… and it was! An immature Pine Warbler, a “good bird” anywhere in the western US, and apparently only the 10th record of the species for heavily birded southeast Arizona.

We enjoyed more than 10 minutes of good, close views of the bird, but its arboreal habit meant that I ended up with many more crisply focused photos of twigs and branches than hoped. But the image above shows the wing and breast pattern nicely, and here is the same bird’s head, with the dark-faced look so characteristic of Pine Warbler.

Thank you, bicycle racers!