Commons and Rares and Just Plain Beautifuls

So how many places do you know in the US and Canada where you can spend a leisurely day afield and tally 100 species–without a Mallard or a Red-winged Blackbird?

Danny and I found one today: the north flank of the Santa Rita Mountains. We divided our time equally between Florida and Madera Canyons, and it was never not birdy on this very warm, very wonderful day.

Before heading up into the canyons, we walked the quick circuit behind the Continental Feedlot (a cafe, the famous eponym of a great birding magazine sadly no longer published). I wasn’t all that hopeful: the drive in had been virtually migrant-free. But as soon as we got out of the car, we were almost overwhelmed by birds. Western and Summer Tanagers were everywhere we looked. Yellow, Lucy’s, Wilson’s and a single MacGillvray’s Warblers dripped from the trees (well, the old cliche can hardly apply to a single bird, I guess). The ground crawled with Lark and oriantha White-crowned Sparrows. The mulberries were jampacked with Pine Siskins and one of the largest assemblages of Cedar Waxwings–80 or more–I’d ever seen in southeast Arizona. As we walked around open-mouthed and happy, our only true “waterbird” of the day flapped past, a Great Egret no doubt on its way upstream to the Rio Rico ponds.

Florida Canyon is famous of late for its Rufous-capped Warblers and Black-capped Gnatcatchers, but we dipped on both, never so much as catching a whiff of the warblers and hearing only a couple of brief buzzes from a gnatcatcher on our afternoon return visit. But it was outstanding birding nonetheless. Black-throated Gray and Townsend’s Warblers soon became a mild nuisance as we sorted through them for prizes such as Cassin’s Vireo and Hermit Warbler.

And the hummingbirds. The Justicia and ocotillos are blooming like I’ve never seen them bloom, and they were filled with trochilids. Rufous and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds were everywhere, both migrants headed to higher altitudes and higher latitudes, and the common breeding species–Black-chinned, Anna’s, and Broad-billed were a dime a dozen. A nice surprise was the male Costa’s Hummingbird we watched drinking from the water spilling over the dam. But a truly great surprise was a splendiferous Berylline Hummingbird, likely a first record for heavily birded Pima County, that flashed in to land and preen for nearly ten minutes. This species isn’t nearly the big news it was 20 years ago, but it’s still mighty uncommon, and one of a only a few I’ve seen away from feeders north of the border.

So as birders do, we pushed our luck and headed up Madera Canyon, which we found full of the usual wonders. A Whiskered Screech-Owl was asnooze in a sycamore cavity, and we had decent views through the foliage of a male Elegant Trogon. More warblers, more tanagers, more orioles, and a very fancy show of Lazuli Buntings at the Santa Rita Lodge feeders, which were besieged at various times by Pine Siskins and Wild Turkeys. A first-year male Rose-breasted Grosbeak popped in to munch from the tray feeders, too; this is an annual species in southeast Arizona, but one I rarely have much luck in finding. A surprisingly high-elevation Gray Hawk was screaming as it circled over Madera Picnic Area, and assiduously checking black dots in the sky gave us our second Zone-tailed Hawk of the day.

There’s been an excellent push of flycatchers, especially empids, the past couple of days, and we wound up tallying 11 species for the day. Gray Flycatcher, the commonest winter Empidonax, was represented by just a single individual, while for the first time this spring, Dusky Flycatcher outnumbered Hammond’s Flycatcher among the identified empids. And my heart quickened at the whistles and trills of Dusky-capped Flycatcher, which seem finally to have “come in” to the oaks in something like their summertime numbers.

Apologies that this entry has been so much “then-we-went-and-then-we-saw,” but it was a pretty overwhelming day. And it was topped off by our afternoon return to Florida Canyon, where we found a Black-chinned Sparrow, a bird I’d suggested we not even bother with hoping for, drinking daintily from the path next to the dam.

What’s the only logical reaction to a day like this? I’m going out again tomorrow!