Well, all right, I suppose by some standards it wasn’t that bad, but 23 degrees Fahrenheit is cold for Tucson! It had warmed up nicely, approaching 60, by the time we hit Casa Grande at 3:00 this afternoon. But Katie, David, Graham, and I hardly noticed the weather all day: there were too many birds to distract us.
We started in the chilly dawn with a fluffed up Western Screech-Owl, and ended, 70 species later, with an actively diving female Long-tailed Duck, the biggest surprise of the day (and only the second I’d ever seen in Arizona). In between, we enjoyed such special targets as Mountain Plover and Northern Jacana, Ferruginous Hawk and White-tailed Kite, Burrowing Owl and Prairie Falcon, White-throated Swift and Bendire’s Thrasher, Crested Caracara and Oregon Junco…. It was a magical day on the lower Santa Cruz, as most of them are.
