Bird Counts

Fourteen degrees F is not an unusual temperature at the start of a Christmas Count in most parts of North America; but in southeast Arizona, it was a bit of shock this morning in Patagonia. Happily, we were well dressed and the wind stayed down, but there were still moments when we had to look […]

Facing the end of the count period, I got out early, early this morning to do my part of the Tucson Bird Count. Of the four years I’ve participated in this urban bird survey, this was the latest in the season I had ever run the route, and the first time I’d ever done it […]

Cactus Wrens were among the 39 species we tallied today on our urban and suburban CBC route; there’s very little that could be considered “wild” in our sector, but we made the best of it all the same. No rarities, but a couple of nice surprises, chief among them a Hutton’s Vireo at Quail Valley golf course […]

‘Tis the season, and Alison I were out bright and early (she was bright, I was early) to run our Tucson Bird Count route. This is a ‘citizen science’ project monitoring urban bird populations in a rapidly growing city, and every year it gets lots of people out birding in areas that just wouldn’t get […]

Two mornings in a row at Catalina State Park: the regular Friday morning walk yesterday, then a more purposeful excursion this morning as part of the North American Migration Count. Each trip turned up over 50 species, including such great southeast Arizona specialties as Gilded Flicker, Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet, Crissal Thrasher, Rufous-winged Sparrow, and Abert’s Towhee. […]