Rio Magdalena

There’s little more lovely than a desert river, and Darlene and I chose a fine day, if warm, to drive down to the Rio Magdalena in northern Sonora. We birded several spots between Imuris and San Ignacio, and though our hopes for a rarity remained just that, it was still a very pleasant day’s birding, with just enough “Mexican” birds to remind us that we truly weren’t in Arizona any more.

We started at the Imuris bridge, parking at the junkyard and feedstore and walking downstream to where the river path meets the road. There were good numbers of noisy Tropical Kingbirds along the river, and Gray Hawks, adults and squealing juveniles, were much in evidence. A House Wren was a nice surprise, a bit on the early side for an arriving winterer; other migrants were pretty thin on the ground, only Lazuli Bunting present in more than single digits. Warbling Vireos and a single Gray Flycatcher were also on their way south, but the couple of  Bell’s Vireos we saw and heard may have been local, as were most likely the last few lingering Lucy’s Warblers. I don’t know if it was fall recrudescence or vaunting reproductive ambition, but a number of species were still singing up a storm, Common Ground-Dove, Yellow Warbler, and Blue Grosbeak loudest among them.

It wasn’t long after I’d remarked on how unsuitable this first, relatively open stretch of river was that the day’s first Green Kingfisher, a snazzy little male, flashed past upstream; on our way back we found him perched uncharacteristically high–a good four or five meters–in a willow, whence he eventually flew to an even higher perch in a cottonwood.

We’d talked about raptor migration on the way down, and the occasional check of the omnipresent Turkey Vultures eventually produced two or three Swainson’s Hawks; we were pushing the season a little, but in the next week or so the big flocks will start to move south through Arizona and Sonora. Two American Kestrels were the only other raptors of the day; not bad when Gray Hawk outnumbers everything but the vultures!

We drove slowly south to the Imuris dry crossing, a fine broad wash just downstream from town, only to find it flowing. It was hot by then, the day wearing on, and I was eager to get to Terrenate, so we barely paused to admire the Cassin’s, Tropical, and Western Kingbirds neatly lined up on the wires over the weedy field that in just a few weeks will be one of the finest sparrow spots around.

Terrenate’s wet crossing was flowing nicely, and to my relief the riverside trails were not quite as foully besmirched as they had been on my last visit. A short walk upstream from the crossing gave us a few quick snatches of song from an invisible Yellow-breasted Chat, while a Yellow-billed Cuckoo chuckled in the distance.

The first hundred yards downstream from the crossing are consistently some of the best birding in northern Sonora. Today there was a disappointing lack of migrants–a few Nashville Warblers and a pile of Lazuli Buntings were about it–but it was heartening to have another Green Kingfisher at this always reliable spot, followed soon therafter by my first Belted Kingfisher of the winter, a great bruising female. A good surprise was a female Broad-tailed Hummingbird, the first I’d ever seen at that location. Another first was an even better surprise, a Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher squealing from the cottonwoods; like the hummingbird, this species breeds just a few tens of miles away, but unlike the trochilid, this bird is only rarely seen on its way from the mountain nesting grounds to the wintering areas.

I’ve posted the day’s lists to ebird.org, where they can be fruitfully compared with those compiled by today’s wren-seekers (and finders!) in Patagonia. It’s pretty obvious that most of the passerine migrants are piling up just north of the border; what I wouldn’t give to be along the Rio Magdalena on the day they all decide to move south!