Listing Through Life

antrostomus arizonae

Cochise County, Arizona – Coronado National Forest – South Fork Road

Friday, May 6, 2022 – 4:45 pm

After easing my car back down the mountain from Rustler Park, I returned to South Fork Road because it offered my best chance to see lifers and I liked the place. I parked and walked up the canyon. There weren’t a ton of birds around, but the ones I saw were cool ones — the trogon, Acorn Woodpeckers, four kinds of warblers, Hepatic Tanagers. Around 4:30, the sun dipped behind the western canyon wall and it felt like evening. I was strolling slowly back toward my car, enjoying the day when I heard the unmistakable sound of a whip-poor-will in the nearby oak/sycamore woods. I taped the call with the Merlin app and it immediately identified the bird to be what I already knew it was.

I made a brief effort to cross the creek and look for it. After about 10 repetitions of the call, it stopped singing. I figured I’d scared it and returned to the road. I’d gone perhaps 30 yards when it began singing again. I walked back to the closest spot on the road and took the video above. At one point, I heard it give a few single-note calls. Again it stopped singing and, a few minutes later, I heard it or another one way off in the distance.

The Mexican Whip-poor-will used to be considered a subspecies of the Eastern Whip-poor-will. It was split off in 2010 because of slight differences in song, size, and other things. It ranges from Arizona and New Mexico down through Mexico into Central America. It is one of the birds I asked the guide to show me when I went owling in Patagonia three days after this “hearing.”

That owling trip took place in the woods near Patagonia, 92 miles southwest of Portal as the crow flies. It wasn’t hard to locate Mexican Whip-poor-wills in the pine/oak woods. We heard at least four. The guide, Matthew, and I got out and tried to draw a couple of them in with recordings of their calls, but only one responded. My guess is that you have to be very close to a nest to get it excited since they’re used to hearing other whip-poor-wills in the distance.

Matthew played the call, and a whip-poor-will began singing aggressively and close by. On two occasions, I saw its silhouette as it flew low over the road and over our heads. It looked large in the night — it has a wingspan of a foot and a half. It landed frequently and three times, as Matthew shined his light into the woods, he saw eye shine but I never caught a glimpse of it because the bird was light shy. After 10 minutes, we left the area to look for another one and a Whiskered Screech-Owl. We saw the owl but couldn’t get another whip interested.

In our pre-trip emails and on our drive into the woods, Matthew had talked a lot about the need to use recordings responsibly, but his definition of what that meant was flexible. We went back to the spot where we’d stirred up the first whip and got it riled again. It was hanging close by, moving frequently, and Matthew spotted it buzzing us again. Suddenly he shined his light into the woods right in front of us. The whip-poor-will was about 10 feet away, about three feet off the ground, and hovering in one spot facing away from us like a giant gray moth. We could see the white tail spots prominently and I wondered if this might be a threat display. It landed on a parallel branch not 15 feet away and I tried desperately to get a flash photo while Matthew urged me on and wondered why I didn’t know how to use my camera. (I never told him, but I’d actually forgotten to put the flash up.) After maybe a minute of posing the bird flitted off. Matthew continued to play the calls and make it fly around the area long after I was satisfied and had told him so. He was on a mission to show me the bird. Or to see it himself — I got the impression he’d never had one respond like this one was. We finally gave up after maybe 20 minutes and headed back to town.

Later, when looking at my camera, I realized I had been taking photos by the light from the flashlight, even though the flash wasn’t going off. With considerable lightening on my computer, I came up with this photo. You can tell its a nightjar with a lot of white in its tail (meaning that it’s a male).

poecile sclateri

Cochise County, Arizona — Coronado National Forest — Rustler Park

Friday, May 6, 2022 — 12:46 pm

The Mexican Chickadee looks and acts very much like other chickadees. It’s grayer, with no warm coloring and distinctly gray undersides. It’s widespread in Mexico but its range just creeps over the border into the United States in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona and at one local spot in New Mexico. It lives on mountain tops, so I had to drive to a much higher elevation to see it.

Rustler Park is a campground/picnic area in a pine grove that has been thinned out. The other three people I’d been birding with were walking through the grove near where I parked, so I headed off in another direction for maximum coverage. I kept my eye on my car because I hadn’t paid the $8 for the daily fee — all I had were $20s. I’d listened to a recording of the Mexican Chickadee on the way up, so I knew it had a harsher call than other chickadees I know. I was watching scattered warblers when I heard a repeated call from high in the trees that consisted of two harsh notes, followed by a softer, quieter note. It sounded like a chickadee with a sore throat. I soon spotted it and managed a lousy photo. I got the attention of the other birders and managed to show it to them. (I also found and showed them an Olive Warbler and a Townsend’s Warbler, along with the Red-faced Warbler and the Mexican Chickadee. They were very grateful and went away with a highly over-inflated sense of my birding prowess.)

The chickadee was easy to follow as long as it called, but it went silent for long periods during which we lost it in the pine branches high overhead. I saw it on two different occasions, about 10 minutes apart, and heard it again 10 minutes after the second sighting. It looked and behaved very much like any chickadee. Even in my poor, back-lit photos, you can see the large black bib and extensive gray on the sides and chest. I believe, when I first spotted it, that there were two in the tree.

cardellina rubrifrons

Cochise County, Arizona — Coronado National Forest — Rustler Park

Friday, May 6, 2022 — 11:55 am

Wood warblers are my favorite birds, and this is the most wide-spread one that I hadn’t seen prior to this trip. It’s also one of the prettiest. It was definitely on my list of target birds in Arizona. After birding lower in Cave Creek Canyon in the morning, I drove 10 miles up a dirt road to Rustler Park — one of the very few places in the United States where Mexican Chickadees can be seen. It wasn’t a great road, and I wasn’t thrilled about driving it in my car, but compared to some of the roads I tackled later in the week, it was a dream.

I was near the picnic area at the top of the road, driving slowly to watch and listen for chickadees. I saw a small bird flitting through a pine grove and looked at it through my binoculars from my car. It was obviously a Red-faced Warbler, a hard bird to confuse with anything else. I pulled over and jumped out, but I couldn’t find it again. Five minutes later, three other birders drove by. When I told them what I’d seen, they stopped and looked with me. Another five minutes passed before I found it again. It was moving fast through the trees about halfway between the ground and the treetops. It came within 50 feet of where we stood, but it was moving so rapidly that I couldn’t find it in my camera or, when I did, I couldn’t get my camera to focus on it quickly enough. After a few minutes, we lost it in the thicker branches of the pines. The other birders left, but I stayed another 10 minutes. I never spotted it again. I’d had it in view for maybe a total of two minutes, and it never stayed in one place for more than two seconds.

Two days later, I drove to Miller Canyon to see a White-eared Hummingbird. After I’d seen it, I overheard some women mention that they’d seen a Red-faced Warbler up that canyon just a little while before “and it was vocal.” I showed immediate interest, and they told me where to go and wished me luck. I had to walk through a gate (with a combination lock to keep illegal immigrants out of the yard of the guy with the hummingbird feeders). I hiked up the canyon for maybe three-quarters of a mile when I heard the Red-faced Warbler singing. For the next half hour, I stalked it. This one also moved fast and covered a lot of ground, but it kept singing so I managed to follow it. It also tended to stay within the branches and not come out to the edges. I got the following photos, all of which stink, but they at least prove I saw the bird and give an idea of how beautiful it is.

trogon elegans

Cochise County, Arizona — Coronado National Forest — South Fork Road

Friday, May 6, 2022 — 8:05 am

The Elegant Trogon was on my “really want to see” list for this trip. As I sat on the porch at Cave Creek Ranch watching the feeders on Thursday evening, I grabbed the opportunity to ask a couple birders where I’d be most likely to see one. They said trogons were seen daily along the South Fork of Cave Creek, about five miles from where we sat. They said the birds were most active beginning around 8:00 am when the sun finally got down into the canyon, but that they were sometimes heard and seen earlier. One guy said he and his wife had see a pair by a hole in a tree just that morning.

I still hadn’t figured out that Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, so I got to South Fork road the next morning around 6:00. I had the place to myself for the first half hour. It was certainly one of the prettier places I’ve birded, but there weren’t a lot of birds around yet.

For the next hour and a half, I wandered up and down about a third of a mile of road, listening for the odd barking call of the trogon. Other people began arriving shortly after I got there, and I suppose there were a total of around 20 who came and went. Most of them gathered on the bridge over the creek, so that’s what I did. The FOMO was strong — I didn’t want to be elsewhere when someone spotted it so I stuck with the crowd. I figured these people must know that they were doing.

I finally decided they didn’t. The guy who told me where to find a trogon was there, and I asked him where, exactly, he’d seen one the day before. He directed me to a trail that headed up the canyon from the cul-de-sac at the end of the road. You can make out the trail in the photo above at the far corner of the pavement. I walked up that way, leaving the crowds behind me. A couple by the start of the trail was looking at a Scott’s Oriole. I got to chatting with them, and as I did, I heard a trogon calling from up the canyon. The three of us began walking toward the sound. After about 150 yards, I could tell the bird was off to my left, along the creek, and not on the trail. I cut over through the woods and actually circled the bird. I expected it to be 20-30 feet up in the trees, but I was looking in the wrong place. I was walking back down the canyon in the creek bed when I spotted it low in the understory next to the creek — maybe two feet off the ground.

It’s a stunning bird. It’s easy to see why it’s the main attraction for birders in Arizona. It’s large, about the size of a flicker, but it seems larger. In some ways, it’s parrot-like. It had four notable characteristics:

1. Its call — usually in series of four or five but sometimes more. It sounds like a small dog yapping. You can hear it several times on the video. Once you hear it, you can’t miss it. It gave the call every 20-30 seconds, making it fairly easy to track the bird down.
2. Its tail — it looks broad when it sits, but it really looks oddly broad when it flies, giving the bird an odd perspective.
3. Its stunning color, especially the way its red belly flashes when it flies.
4. The amusing, quirky way it has of sitting with bad posture and looking around in slow motion, like someone checking over their shoulder to see if anyone else is in on the joke.

For the next 10 minutes, I followed it through the trees. So far as I could tell, it never paid the slightest bit of attention to me. I spotted the couple zeroing in on the sound from the other side, so I waved to get their attention and showed them the bird. After getting good looks, we stopped following as the bird continued working its way down the creek. So far as I know, none of the rest of the people in the canyon that morning saw it.

I went back to South Fork in the afternoon to look for warblers and anything else that might show up. Three other birders who I’d run into in four different locations throughout the day were there also. I was hunting for new stuff, but they heard a trogon, so we followed the noise through the woods to the creek and soon spotted it. It was probably the same bird I’d seen in the morning. People told me there’s a pair in this section of the canyon and another pair farther up.

This time the trogon was further off the ground. It was behaving the same way it had in the morning except that it only called maybe every four minutes now.

It stayed in the same location for so long that we left. We’d just gotten back to the road, about 20 yards from where we’d been standing, when another couple showed up. We tried to show it to them, but it was gone. We left, and they hung around. By myself, I continued wandering along the road up the canyon. I soon heard and saw the trogon by the bridge. I walked back down and found the new people. I told them where it was. I met them the next day, and they said they’d seen it, not as close as we had, but they were happy. They thanked me for finding it for them.

And that’s the funny thing about this bird. I had to work to find it the first time, but after that, it kept finding me. The afternoon sighting I just described happened without any effort on my part. I was looking at other birds when the trogon came close. I even have a video of a Painted Redstart on which you can hear the trogon in the background.

The next morning I went back to South Fork because I’d been told it was also a good place to see Arizona Woodpeckers. (It was.) I parked far down the canyon from where I’d seen the trogon the day before but immediately heard and saw one in the branches right above the road. I watched it for a while until it moved back into the trees out of sight. Half an hour later, I was stalking a pair of Dusky-capped Flycatchers through the woods even farther down the canyon when suddenly the trogon flew over and landed in clear view about 40 yards away. All this time, other people were driving and walking up and down the canyon looking for it — some successfully and others not. It was weird the way I kept happening upon it.

The whole rest of the week, birders kept talking about trogons to me. I’d ask if they’d seen a Red-faced Warbler and they’d say, “No, but we saw a trogon.” I saw one couple staring intently into a tree. I said, “If you tell me you’ve found a Varied Bunting, you’ll be my favorite people ever.” They said they were looking at a vireo, but if I could show them a trogon, I’d be their favorite person ever.

Another shot of Cave Creek Canyon and the road where I saw the trogon.

chordeiles acutipennis

Rodeo, New Mexico – Chiricahua Desert Museum

Thursday, May 5, 2022 – 7:50 pm

I drove over to Portal after seeing the Bendire’s Thrasher and spent a couple hours at Cave Creek Ranch. When I got back to my cabin, the sun was setting. I wandered along a dirt track out into the scrub behind my cabin to get in my steps. The sun had dipped below the mountains, but it was still fairly light. Just as I got to a spot where the track was posted no trespassing, I saw a nighthawk coursing low over the scrub perhaps 10-15 feet off the ground. It banked so I could see the pointed wings with white bars. It dipped behind a bush and never reappeared. It was in view for perhaps 5 seconds. I knew to look for the location of the wing bars, so when it banked about 15 feet in front of me, I concentrated on the wings. The bars appeared to be close to the wing tips, but that’s hard to determine. I decided to count it because of the habitat, how low it was flying, the wing beats that seemed smoother and somewhat less erratic than a Common Nighthawk, and the fact that it made no noise. I didn’t have a chance to get a picture. I stayed out there until it got too dark to see, with my phone ready to take a video, but I didn’t see it again.

I went out the next two nights, but never saw another nighthawk. On the second night, however, I heard one giving it’s weird, haunting trill. I don’t know how far the sound carries over the desert on a still night. It sounded far off, but my guess is that it wasn’t that far away. I now had confirmation that Lesser Nighthawks were in the area, because that sound is very different than the harsh calls of the Common Nighthawk.

After three nights in Rodeo, I headed west to Patagonia and birded that area. One morning, I drove into the Santa Rita mountains. On my way back to the highway, on a two-lane blacktop road through desert scrub, another nighthawk flew low right in front of my car. I pulled over and jumped out but never saw it again.

I resigned myself to the realization that this was going to be my one lifer from the trip for which I had neither photo or recording to prove I saw one. And then …

On Friday morning, I was doing some early morning birding in Tucson Mountain Park, waiting for the Sonora Desert Museum to open. I spotted a Curve-billed Thrasher fly into a cactus and saw that it had a nest hidden in the spines. I walked over for a closer look and flushed a Lesser Nighthawk that had been resting on the ground. It flew about 30 feet and landed on a dead branch. It stayed there without moving (except to half-close its eyes). I looked down to take a photo of the thrasher nest, and when I looked back up, the nighthawk was gone.

In all my years of birding, living constantly in the range of the Common Nighthawk, I’ve spotted one sitting like this in the daytime exactly twice. The odds of seeing a Lesser Nighthawk do it when I was in Arizona have to be pretty small. It proves that if you just go outside and wander, you’ll never know what you might see.