July TFG Birding

If you are scope-less, shore-less, and/or south of the 49th parallel in July, your birding can be a dull affair. Many of the birds themselves are dealing with empty nest syndrome and can cope differently. Shorebirds deal with this by going on midlife crisis global tours from north to south. Flycatchers do this by making all sorts of incoherent and target-less vocalizations. Some birds, and some birders, cope better with the late-July doldrums than others.
Burrowing Owls spend a good amount of time subterranean anyway, and as such are less affected by the environment changing above them.

Acorn Woodpeckers, ever successful and gregarious, usually spend late July dealing with swollen family groups. The main problem is that dead trees do not directly replicate like ACWOs do, so sometimes the birds have to deal with overcrowding. 

Gray Hawks have to deal with much the same existential angst as always, namely, to attend Christmas festivities with Hawk family of Falcon family this year? Tough call.

Sulphur-bellied Flycatchers are especially grumpy come late July. I believe it is because their SE AZ woodlands are filled with one thousand and one shitty looking and sounding Western Wood-Pewees. I can sympathize. WWPEs or whatever the code is don't sound like Pewees and are very variable in plumage, but always drab. To make matters worse, the aforementioned Acorn Woodpeckers start to invade their cavities, or at least move into cavities near their own, and SBFLs are very protective and vocal about their neighborhoods.

If they cannot extricate or annoy the ACWO into leaving, Sulphurs often become irritated with each other, no doubt one blaming the other for leaving the cavity vacant and allowing the interloper  into their abode. It's trying times.

Even after some embarrassing displays of domestic distress, Sulphurs are still a Top 5 North American Flycatcher.

Broad-tailed Hummingbirds cope pretty well, in part because in places like Miller Canyon their food is provided for them and the rude Rufous Hummers are not yet unbearable. Life is always pretty good for Quetzalcoatl incarnate.

The end of July is tough. It's downhill now to the end of summer, to other journeys, work and hardships. It can be hard to get moving again, and sometimes everybody needs a little push.

Ramsey Canyon Seizure-Inducing Rarities

Also known as another installment of that the most bittersweet (mostly sweet) series: "Awful Photos of Amazing Birds; Not Brought to You by National Geographic."

As you may or may not have heard, there's been some crazy stuff happening in Ramsey Canyon of the Huachucas Mountains. Now the Huachucas are probably the best birding destination in the whole state, but usually it's Miller Canyon stealing the show with its panoply of Hummingbirds and Owls, or Huachuca Canyon itself with wayward tropical Wrens and Redstarts. This spring/summer it seems to be Ramsey Canyon's turn to shine, as some very impressive vagrants were not only seen well in the canyon, but confirmed to be nesting. Of course, when one rarity is found, that draws in more birders, who find more birds. The Patagonia Picnic Table Effect, as it's been called, has been rocking the SE AZ birding scene (again).  

After several tense non-birding days, brought on by the necessities of moving and continued work, I was at last able to chase after the Ramsey Canyon rarities. The birds were good enough that even Pops Butler had to get in on the action. This necessitated stopping first, of course, at Ft. Huachuca to check in on the Sinaloa Wren. The Wren was a no-show, as it has been for the last week or so, but there were lots of Montezuma Quail in the surrounding grassy slopes, and plenty else as well. *Remember the description of this post; here is one such Quail. Probably four or five times, one or two would take off from mere feet away, scaring the expletives out of me and making me look and feel the fool.

The dally in Huachuca Canyon was also a stalling tactic, since the Ramsey Canyon preserve doesn't open until 8am. This gateway can be circumvented by hiking Carr Canyon next door and then looping down into Ramsey Canyon, allowing for an earlier start but a longer hike. There are many options, and all of them are good. This time of year, the oak, pine, and sycamore canyon slopes are bursting at the seems with Tanagers and Flycatchers, as well as croaking Trogons. Those are the normal breeders. 

After hanging in the mild and birdy Huachuca Canyon until 8am, the steep and scree-ridden trail up Ramsey was a comparative challenge. One of the Ramsey rarities can be seen on the Bledsoe Loop fairly near the visitor center, but we elected to bypass it in pursuit of the rarer bird up canyon. 

In addition to a Scarlet Kingsnake (also less cooly called a Milk Snake), we enjoyed nifty birds up the trail. Red-faced Warblers were buddy-buddy with Painted Redstarts. Three species of Vireo chimed with two species of Nuthatch (it was a definite cacophony). Cordilleran Flycatchers were gathering nesting material and they weren't the only ones, but more on that later.



Along the way we came across an intriguing Hummingbird. Black-chinned would be the statistical bet in Ramsey, but this bird has some dark cheek patches and some buffy flanks, as well as the elongated and decurved bill. Kinda maybe sorta good for female Lucifer's eh? Like the number of licks required to get to the center of a tootsie pop, we may never know (although apparently it's 364).

After hiking 2 miles and gaining 1000 feet we came upon a group of excited nerds patting backs and shaking heads, gaping and chirping like hungry Robin chicks. It was a big enough deal that even Neil Hayward of recent Big Year fame was hanging out with the bunch. Rightly so:

Indeed, the small cinnamon-flavored thing is a code 5 Tufted Flycatcher, only the 7th or 8th confirmed member of the species to visit North America. The odd turtle-shell thing on the branch below? Yes indeed, that is the Tufted Flycatcher's stately nest, quite possibly the first ever recorded in North America.

The hike up the mountain was a satisfactory travail and the birds along the way were hella splendid, but it all just sort of melted away when we saw this little buggar, rarest of buggars, quite possibly the rarest buggar currently in the ABA area right now, setting up his homestead.

 For the hour or so we lingered the TUFL stayed pretty high in its pine or gathered lichen from the nearby oak trees. It didn't allow for much by way of photos but it was pretty dynamic stuff. We figured with the group of birders being the size it was, the bird wasn't going to come much closer and this proved true for the afternoon.

It would have been a good time to dawdle with the TUFl. A male Trogon even flew up the canyon and overhead head as we watched, but the desire to remain could not countermand the desire to see another vagrant, half as rare (which is still pretty damn rare) and twice as gorgeous (which is very doubly damn gorgeous). Also, it stayed even doubly higher, which was very aggravatingly damn high.

A pair of Flame-colored Tanagers has been nesting in the Bledsoe Loop for the last 3 or so weeks. The male, at least, is a clean specimen with none of that icky, quotidian Western Tanager mixed in. These lovebirds were the original draw to Ramsey Canyon, and by coincidence or causality someone hiking casually farther up canyon soon afterwards found the nesting TUFL. 

It was then revealed, though 10 days after the fact, that someone also found and photographed a friggin' Blue Mockingbird at the Ramsey Canyon Folklore Center just farther down the canyon. Yeah yeah with a bird like that provenance comes into questions, but just consider all those rarities and be at peace. 

Normally a crazy or not-crazy person would make a trip down to the Huachucas just for Sulphur-bellied Flycatchers and Trogons. On a trip when those are only the 4th or 5th coolest birds, something is egregiously unbalanced in the universe. Somewhere in tropical Mexico there is a 2 mile patch without any cool birds at all.

No one in the entire world knows that a SBFL nest looks like, though this is not so much due to great secrecy on their part but more so their exclusive proclivity for nesting in cavities. It's the only place that's safe from marauding, dive-bombing Black-chinned Hummingbirds.

It isn't Tufted or Flame-colored, but its belly is noxious and its call is one of the best to echo in the canyons. There will not be any of these birds in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina to which I soon depart, nor will there be Black-headed and Little Gulls nor Spruce Grouse. We who are the rest of the bird blogosphere do the best we can, dammit!

Foothills of the Santa Ritas

Last week Pops and I embarked on a birding excursion to southeast Arizona that had the potential to be marvelous, with a chance of becoming epic, and that ended up being legendary for Butler birding. With only half a day at our disposal in the Santa Rita Mountains, we had to hit the ground running. We planned to check out the Montosa Canyon on the southwest side of the mountains first, and then explore the Kent Springs trail before moving to the upper Madera sites. It was a complicated itinerary with little room for error--clearly a two-man job. 

We reached Montosa Canyon by 6 am, optimistic that we might find a lingering Plain-capped Starthroat seen visiting a feeder near the canyon wash. The Plain-capped Starthroat is not as excitingly colored as the name implies, but it is one of the rarer Hummingbirds to stray into Arizona. 

We drove a ways into the canyon seeking out this oddly placed but well-attended feeder. It was moved from its original location, and so Pops and I had to do some splorin' (isn't life hard sometimes?). Before we found the feeder, we were treated to some excellent views of Broad-billed Hummingbirds, Canyon Wrens, and Cardinals. We were also pleasantly surprised to see Varied Buntings off and on throughout the morning, though only the drab females stopped for a picture. 

The songs of various rufousy desert Sparrows echoed in the morning air, interrupted by the occasional outburst of Mexican Jays. Although the canyon was very birdy, we did not locate the feeder by 7 am, and I began to get antsy. We needed to see the Starthroat and get up to Madera before it got too late in the day, or so went my worrying. To add to my anxiety, this little female Black-chinned Hummingbird landed nearby and tempted me to turn her into a female Lucifer. Nice try Black-chinned, but you're too big and gray-cheeked! Plus the throat's wrong. Really I don't know what she was playing at...

The hummingbirds weren't the only little birds playing mind tricks. With its more gradual inclines and thick scrub, Montosa Canyon is one of the most reliable areas in the U.S. to see Black-capped Gnatcatchers. Pops and I spent a fair amount of time, really at all of our stops, trying to turn Blue-grays into Black-capped. The best way to ID a Black-capped, especially a silent female, is by the underside of the tail, but even there they look very similar to female Blue-grays. I am afraid the Black-capped Gnatcatcher still eludes me.

Apart from the no-show Gnatcatchers, the day was a great triumph. Pops, who is far more patient than I, found the feeder farther east of our original area, but by that time some other birders and beaten us to the good spots. After about fifteen minutes of waiting and a few twitches brought on by other Hummingbirds, the Starthroat finally made an appearance. It stayed only for a moment and as far as I'm aware did not reappear that day. While hovering near the feeder, Pops and I had great views of the bird's white back, and this blurry photo helped us note of the the proper facial markings. Oddly enough, the other birders in our little cul-de-sac convinced each other that they had, in fact, only seen a Broad-tailed Hummingbird. I don't really see Broad-tailed at all in this bird, and I'm not one to make declarations too soon. I guess some folks are just hard to please. Truth be told I was ready to leave Montosa before Pops found the feeder. I'm very glad that we stuck it out and the virtue of patience was once more reinforced for me.

From Montosa we drove north again, up Madera Canyon road to the Bog Springs campsite. From Bog Springs we took the steep rocky trail towards Kent Springs, hopeful of a few more new birds, some of which were common to the area and others not so much. Sulphur-bellied Flycatchers were one of my 'must-see' birds this summer, and they did not disappoint. The first half of our ascent was fairly quiet and fairly hot. While we did get some great looks at a family of Arizona Woodpeckers in the scrub oak, the initial trek was on the unenjoyable side of arduous. But as we approached the Kent Spring intersection we were ambushed!

The Flycatchers flew back and forth across the trail, shrieking their battle cries with great temerity and daring us to fight them for their territory. We were lucky they did not unleash any face-curdling, sulphur-tinted belches (from which these birds obviously get their name), because they're pretty face-meltingly beautiful already. Arizona's version of the Great Kiskadee, these magnificent flycatchers shown brightly even in overcast weather.

Though the Flycatchers were a definite highlight, they were not the primary objective of our Kent Springs excursion. This semi-obscured House Wren wasn't the primary objective either; it's just cute.

No, the main attraction of Kent Springs this summer is a half-mad half-insane Scarlet Tanager that has been living near the Kent Springs/Bog Springs intersection since the end of May. It had been my hope to see my first Scarlet Tanager this year, presumably when visiting family in Pennsylvania this past June. I did not expect that my first Scarlet Tanager would be in southeast Arizona in July, about 1,200 miles west of its normal range.

Lunatic birds are some of my favorite birds, and the Scarlet Tanager was no exception. As one might expect, this canopy dweller was a real lame-o about getting his picture taken, but the sensory overload when that Scarlet caught some sunlight...it's seared in my brain forever. Every summer Madera Canyon pulls in specialty Hummingbirds, Flycatchers, and Elegant Trogons, but a Scarlet Tanager too? Truly this must be one of the best birding sites on the surface of the sun (Arizona).

The birds received most of our attention, but they were not the only attraction. With its different elevations and ecosystems, Madera Canyon is also a herpetological powerhouse. This Yarrow's Spiny Lizard served as a reminder that superb coloration isn't just the domain of birds and butterflies. If only the birds had this guy's mellow attitude.

Kent Springs wasn't the last stop of the day. Pops and I still had a score to settle with the Elegant Trogons of upper Madera. We backtracked to our vehicle and drove further up the canyon towards the Super Trail (a fitting name for an epic showdown eh?). The stage was set for a great reckoning, like the kind of reckoning that must be immortalized in a special-effects laden, over-the-top Michael Bay movie, but more on that later.