I have so many amazing memories from Arizona and Madera Canyon, which I have posted about before, which is is a huge component of why I always yearn to go back. I have huge revelations when out in that specific area of desert; I learn so much about myself in the process of learning about something I love: birds.
Here is a list of some of the things that Madera Canyon has done for me:
-made me like tomatoes
-made me more comfortable in my own skin
-introduced me to bird watching aka crack
-taught me how to identify most southwestern birds quickly and accurately
-improved my turkey gobble
-taught me how to be make friends with total strangers
-fostered my love for the outdoors and hiking
-made me closer to my lab
-taught me about falling in love
-helped me to become a more assertive/bold person
-taught me valuable research skills and that field research, though romantic sounding and tons of fun, is also tons of hard work. But worth it
I asked my mom if she wanted to go on a bird watching trip after graduation, since May is the best time to go to Madera Canyon to see the hundreds of species of bird migrating through from the heat of the south for summer. She said yes, since she has recently gotten into bird watching, so we headed out the sunday after graduation. The ride is usually broken up into a couple of days during our field course, since we camp out at different places prior to arriving at Santa Rita Experimental Range, but otherwise it's a fourteen hour drive from Salt Lake City to Madera Canyon, Arizona. We began our journey at 7 AM and hit the road. The first day only had a couple of highlights, since most of it was spent driving, but among them were:
-stopping in Scipio to see the petting zoo that accompanies Dairy Queen. The petting zoo is sort of a disaster waiting to happen; when it's open you can go into different pens containing normal farm creatures, like mini ponies, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, etc., and then there are other pens where you can go inside with ostriches, emus, and zebras. AKA dangerous. Which is probably why they had to put up this sign.
I wish I had brought out my camera, since there were some nice picture taking opportunities. I ended up taking some pictures with my I-phone, but nothing too special though, except for PEACOCK SEX. It's weird to see the elaborate male getting up on the female with his huge-ass tail in the way. Also some house sparrows had made their nests in the e's of the Dairy Queen sign.
ALSO there was an ADORABLE little baby goat head butting a shoop. It was SO CUTE. He would just rev up and then head butt the poor shoop, who looked exasperated (to me). UGH IT WAS CUTE!
-A couple of hours later, we filled up at a gas station in the middle of a Cherokee reservation. We thought it was funny because there was a long list filled with names of people who were NOT ALLOWED INTO THE GAS STATION. Many of them had been typed out, but a couple of names had been written in with sharpie at the end. We called it the shit list gas station and stopped there on the way back home too.
-Stopped at a pullout for the Vermillion Cliffs. We hoped that we might see a California Condor (since they release them there), but no luck.
-Many, many hours after that, we finally reached Green Valley (the town outside of Madera Canyon). It was already dark, and we really wanted to get to our lodge, but we had to stop by a grocery store to pick up food (since our lodge had a kitchenette). We went by Safeway to get foods and some dinner (since we hadn't eaten yet) and our credit card was declined. AWESOME. We found out later that it was because they thought someone had stolen my mom's credit card. Really? Whenever she's in Europe, they don't care, but in Arizona IT'S A BIG DEAL. Yeah, okay.
We FINALLY got all our groceries and made it up to our lodge! On our way there, we saw a coyote in the headlights! It was really cool, I've never seen a coyote before. Once we reached the lodge, we unloaded the car, put groceries away, ate some dinner, and hung out for awhile before going to bed, since we had an early day the next morning.
Mmmmm!
We woke up EARLY (5:30 AM, since the best birdwatching is sunrise and late evening), ate granola bars, and headed out into the MORNING. We first surveyed the feeders, since the lodge we stayed at (Santa Rita Lodge) has a huge feeder area where birds gather for free food and people gather to hang out and watch them. The first bird we saw was a Bridled Titmouse, followed by a Black-Headed Grosbeak. My mom's question about seeing the grosbeak was, "Is that a parrot?" Um, no.
After the feeders, we headed to the car to go find the fee station and then to head to Proctor Trail (or Nature Bottom, as I know if from the field course). On the way down to the station, we saw lots of deer by the road side!
We ended up going on sort of a wild goose chase trying to get to the fee station, which turned out to be closed ANYWAYS, so instead we just headed up to Proctor Trail and started a-hikin.
We walked up a pathway through a grove of joshua trees and were astounded to see javelinas crossing the path in front of us! I've never seen wild javelinas before either! Javelinas are basically wild, desert peccaries. Three of them crossed in front of us, the third bounding after the first two as if saying, "WAIT UP GUYS!" We decided to call it Javelina Highway. I was so shocked and excited to see the javelinas that I didn't take a picture of them, though as we walked past another sneaky one darted across Javelina Highway just as we turned around. Little scamps. We also saw a Northern Mockingbird displaying. He would leap from the top branch of his tree, display the white patches on his wings as he called, and then land back on his perch perfectly. I was confused at first, since mockingbird calls are comprised of what sounds like several difference bird calls, making it sort of a deceptive call to identify. As soon as I saw the signature white patches, however, I realized what he was. We also saw a huge congregation of Turkey Vultures (or tuvus), so something must have recently died.
There were also GIANT bees the size of hummingbirds buzzing around every bench in the area. We learned later that it's because the females eat wood, chew it into a pulp, and then use it to fashion nests.
We headed back home a couple of hours later for breakfast, since we were STARVING at that point. Along the pathway on the way back there were bat boxes, so we resolved to go back after nightfall to see if there were any bats in them. Bat watching! After breakfast, I hung out at the feeder area and took ONE MILLION PICTURES.
I took a lot of flying pictures, especially of Mexican Jays, since they were the sassiest and classiest of the bunch (or the bullies, you choose).
Beautiful turkey feathers
There are so many wild turkeys in Madera Canyon. The males love claiming their territory and females with cries of GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE, which is really tempting to respond to. I usually do respond to it, prompting a battle of gobbles, even though it's not actually allowed in Madera Canyon to call to the birds.
I stayed there for probably an hour, returning to the room to ask if my mom wanted to go birding again along the nature trail that lines Madera Canyon (Nature Top, from our field course). Mom wore her cool hat.
After the hike I realized I was missing my beloved bird guide and figured I'd left it by the feeders. Turns out some jerk decided to STEAL IT, which really pissed me off >:( I was inconsolable for about an hour as I wept bitterly into my pillow and then fell asleep. When I woke up I felt much better, especially since it was 2.5 hours later. We ate some lunch out on the deck and I downloaded I-Bird Pro for my I-Phone, since it was on sale for 99 cents (down from $30)! It's an amazing app, I really couldn't recommend it more. It provides you with a really elaborate search function to find the specific bird you're looking for in the 900 bird database, and the best part about it is that it has bird calls for each one. This really helps in some situations when it's hard to identify the bird based on sight. Sight, sound, and behavior all combined together create the ULTIMATE BIRD WATCHING IDENTIFICATION COMBINATION. It made me feel better about my stolen guide :( For our evening hike, we decided to go up to Bog Springs, since I've never been there before.
The weird can in front of our parking spot. Ashes of what? Do I want to know?
Rainbow!
Rollin in the deep
We only saw one bird while hiking, a dusky-capped flycatcher, but it was still a fun hike where we saw more deer and discussed Game of Thrones (of course). The mosquitos got worse and worse as we neared Bog Springs, so instead we headed back down after a few miles.
I threw it on the GROUND! A moment of symbolism.
A really awkward moment occurred when I thought I heard a real parrot (not a Black-Headed Grosbeak), so I followed the noise and found that it was coming from a house in the canyon. I picked up my binoculars to see if I could see where the bird was and saw a girl staring right back at me through them. AWKWARD. For some reason, she apologized to me and told me it was her sun conure. Huh.
We went back to the lodge (home away from home) and ate some delicious burritos and drank blueberry lemonade. YUM! We were sunburnt, dirty, and had tons of bug bites. SUCCESS! When it was dark, we decided we would go back to Proctor Trail and see if there were any bats in the bat boxes. It was fairly creepy walking along the pitch black pathway with nothing but a tiny car flashlight to guide the way, but when we turned the flashlight off, the sky was absolutely breathtaking. It was swirling with stars and galaxies, diamonds and opals. Oh, it was amazing. When I shoved my forefront paranoia to the back of my brain, I felt a peacefulness as we walked under the canopy of trees where we'd seen sparrows earlier that morning in the darkness. We finally reached the bat boxes and saw with disappointment that no one was home. It was still a fun, nighttime walk though. We went back to our car, drove down to the grocery store to get sundae fixings, and then back up to our casita to eat banana sundaes on the bed before we passed out.
The next day we were going to THE ARIZONA-SONORA DESERT MUSEUM!!! One of my favorite places EVER! It's in the middle of Saguaro National Park, which is beautiful country.
We had slept in (well, compared to the previous day), but we still arrived early enough so that it wasn't supreme sunburn weather yet. Even so, they have sunblock dispensers in the bathrooms so you remember to reapply frequently. They so smart. The front of the museum has a huge exhibit filled with tons of different native lizards. It's like a treasure hunt trying to find them all; I've never succeeded. There was also a docent standing by this exhibit with a beautiful female kestrel.
I have tons of other pictures too, but I'll post a few more later maybe. It seemed like she was posing for me, because she seriously turned around and gave me a good shot at every angle with wings extended or not. I love the one of her cocking her head at the camera. She was lovely. As I photographed her, my mom asked a sweet old man (who was also a volunteer/docent) for a map and mentioned that I love birds, which led him to circle all of the bird-centered areas in the park. It was so cute :) We also bought a track tracker pamphlet, which is a little booklet filled with fun facts about different creatures. All around the park there are stations where you can stamp different tracks into the pamphlet, so we were on a mission to get as many as possible.
First we visited the reptiles.
There was also the cutest little hognose snake digging his nose into the sides of his tank, as if he was trying to escape. A docent was in the middle of the room and for some reason I just knew that it was a tarantula, so I told me mom to check it out. She alerted me that yes, it was a tarantula, and the docent asked if I was afraid of spiders. I said that I was and she came over to me, placed her hands gently on the sides of my arms, and led me over to the tarantula tank. She then told me about how she also used to be scared of spiders too until she started showing them as a docent. She would repeat the mantra, "I can do this, I can do this" and willed herself to become braver every day, eventually leading to touching and holding the tarantulas. The story was inspiring to me, even though I myself still am not super interested in holding or showing tarantulas. In the end, she told me to take a picture of the tarantula (who I named Rosie in my head), so the docent shoved her into the middle of the tank (she favored the corner) and I snapped a terrible, washed out picture of her with the flash. Oh well, a good reminder of a good story.
On the way to our next destination, we walked through desert gardens with amazing blooming flowers and cacti.
There are tons of creepy, metal statues littered throughout the museum. Last time I took a picture of a weird jaguar thing, so this time I took a picture of this lovely javelina, since we had seen a couple the day before.
We headed to a venomous reptile showing where keepers would display a gila monster and a rattlesnake in front of the audience on a plastic table with snake hooks to keep them in check. The gila monster was so cute, I wish I could have been closer to take a good picture of him. The keeper showing him was really peppy and informative, she gave a good fifteen minute presentation and then passed it over to the rattlesnake keeper. GOOD GOD IT WAS THE LONGEST FUCKING PRESENTATION OF MY LIFE. The rattlesnake was really cool (and a bit pissed), but the keeper would not stop talking, telling us arbitrary things that did not have to be included in the presentation. There is a delicate balance between giving a good, informative presentation and also keeping it short enough that people don't drift off during it (which a good amount of people did). Forty-five minutes later I told me mom that we should just leave. So we did and got some lunch instead, which is why we never got an up-close look at any of them.
After lunch we went to the HUMMINGBIRD GARDENS! It's the best because there are just tons of hummingbirds everywhere, the males always squabbling for territory and females either looking for places to nest or incubating their eggs.
The hummingbird garden is like a little club of people telling each other the different types of hummingbirds they've seen, what territories they've seen these hummingbirds in, where nests are, best places to get a good picture, etc. I found a female hiding deep in a bush on her little nest (in one of the pictures above, look hard), which I was pretty proud of (no one else in there had found her yet). After the hummingbird garden we went to the aviary, which is supposed to be full of desert dwelling birds, but is actually just full of doves. Many, many doves. Doves in love, in fact.
There were also other birds too, I'm being unfair.
This Lilac-Crowned Amazon was so cute. He's been in the aviary since I first started going to Arizona for field research (2009), when he used to have a Black-Necked Stilt girlfriend and follow her everywhere. She has since been removed or died :( I saw him hiding in a tree nearby a bench my mom was sitting on and started snapping pictures of him. He then FLEW OVER to the branch right above my head and started talking to us! He would say "hello" in a really adorable, high-pitched voice and wolf-whistle. He was very concerned when I walked around to take more pictures, my mom said, and eventually he left her to go talk to a duck in the pond. Scamp. He wanted to leave us before we could leave him.
And, of course, more doves. Always more doves.
While in the aviary, I was able to show off my bird knowledge and point out birds and their nests to newcomers, since we had been in there for an hour. At one point I was trying to identify a bird who kept communicating with birds on the outside of the aviary and I wondered aloud if it was a curve-billed thrasher. Suddenly, he landed in the branch directly above my head as if to say, "Why yes madam! I am a curve-billed thrasher!" and then he immediately flew back up to communicate with his outside friends again.
We only had about an hour and a half left after my photo-taking mania, so we went into overdrive trying to see the rest of the museum before closing. We would look at the map, determine where the track stamp stations were, and then zoom over to stamp our pamphlet. And take a thousand pictures (in my case).
The dumb bobcats didn't really want me to take a picture of them.
I love that in an exhibit full of natural landscape, he chooses to sit on a towel.
"Oooh, Coatiii!"
The museum closed before we could get ALL of the paw prints, but we did get a majority of them. Unfortunately, I left it in the bathroom before we left :( So this was really turning into the trip of lost/stolen things. The good news is that my mom bought me a new bird guide! Sibley, too! So I now look at my stolen field guide as an opportunity to upgrade to Autumn 2.0 with my awesome Sibley guide and my new bird watching app.
On our way home, we stopped by Grimaldi's Pizza, which is a delicious replica of Patsy's Pizza that we went to when we were in Brooklyn when I was 16. The pepperoni is PERFECTION. We ate ravenously (and people kept staring at us because, apparently, my hair was completely out of control. They looked like they were offended). We finished our pizza and headed back to Madera Canyon, where I worked on my resume, drank Hurricanes (Mike's Hard Lemonade style, mmm), Facebooked, and studied my new guide before bed.
The next day we woke up early again to hike the Florida Trail that borders the Santa Rita Experimental Range, where I've always stayed during the field course. I really wanted my mom to see at least one tanager, since she had voiced her desire to see one the day before, and I was sure we would see one near the field station, since I've always seen them there. We unfortunately went the wrong way at first, accidentally traveling through a cattle pasture that wound through acres of scrub brush before we finally reached the trail.
I did get to take more pictures of my favorite desert plant ever though.
We saw so many AWESOME birds on the Florida Trail, and I saw three new species of birds I'd never seen before! The first was a Verdin, which is a small grey bird with a yellow head that I saw briefly at the beginning of our hike. I used my app to distinguish his call after he was gone to double-check (so geeky). We made our way up to a hilltop that overlooks the field station and the surrounding area that has always been a really good birding spot for me, which is where we found our goldmine of birds. We saw tons of tanagers, oriole, flycatchers, hummingbirds, and a gray hawk! The gray hawk is a rather uncommon raptor that only ventures into the part of Arizona we were at during springtime migration. They're beautiful birds, I was surprised to see one perched in the tree when I went to look for the tanager I was following. The other bird I'd never seen before was a Sulphur-Bellied Flycatcher. We saw a group of them on a cluster of ocotillo a couple of feet away and it took me a really long time to identify them, since I'd never seen anything like them. Their heads looked like Black-Headed Grosbeak females, but the bills were very different - pointed like a flycatcher rather than conical. My mom suggested a Sulpher-Bellied and after looking at the picture, I was convinced. They unfortunately never called, so we couldn't double-check, but I'm 90% sure that's what they were. After forty minutes of bird watching on the hill, we continued up the trail.
A couple of hours later we headed back. It was only 10 AM, but I decided that pizza and booze were acceptable breakfast items. Living hard and fast in the bird watching world. As we ate, it started to storm heavily outside, so we decided to nap for awhile instead of hike up Mt. Baldy, which was our original plan. Once again, we slept for two hours. We bravely decided to head out to the Patagonia Sonoita Creek Preserve, as mentioned in my post about the restorative spring. This time it was most definitely not boiling hot though, it was pouring rain. The lady overseeing the preserve told us we could go in without a donation due to the weather. She was in awe of us being so hardcore and told us to be careful not to get caught out in the lightning.
We hung out beneath the awning of the nature center for awhile, watching the hummingbirds going nuts at the nectar feeders. This is where I saw my fourth new species, a White-Eared Hummingbird! It was a good bird watching trip. We started off on the pathway, a bit surprised at how incredibly muddy it was. At one point I stepped down and my foot sunk into mud up to my ankle, causing a rodent hole a foot away to bubble up with a fountain of rainwater.
I had to leave my fancy camera at the lodge since it was so rainy (I didn't want to risk damage), so I used my point and shoot for all of these. We continued down the trail and I saw a flash of red. I excitedly raised my binoculars to my face to see a male Vermillion Flycatcher! Earlier in the car my mom had said she didn't think we would see one in the heavy downpour, so I smirked at her as soon as we saw it. We also saw the female, as well as many Lark Sparrows pecking at the ground. We finished the loop we were on and headed towards the forest, since I wanted to see the restorative spring. When we reached it, we saw that it was completely overfilled with muddy rainwater, coursing down the bed as if it were a heavily planted spring. No longer a secret, restorative spring. Oh well, it wasn't really needed since it was pretty cold anyways. We walked up a couple of steps to another part of the path and my mom exclaimed, "Oh, a snake!" I looked to where she was pointing and thought that it seemed like the shortest snake I'd ever seen. It turned out to be a lizard.
It was so cold that he was easy to pick up. I warmed him up in my hands for a little while, trying to release him a couple of minutes later. He really didn't want to leave at first, since my hands were so warm, but eventually he scurried off into the grass. We then realized that mom didn't have her purse with her. It really WAS shaping up to be a misplacing things type of trip. Luckily, we rushed back to the ghost town of a nature center and it was still there. We beelined for the car, since we'd been out in the rain for an hour, and ate our lunch before heading back to the town of Patagonia. I told my mom that we should get a drink at the Wagon Wheel Saloon, which is where the infamous "Saturday Night on the Ranch" creeper painting can be found (which Scott and I found last time we were there and thought was so hilarious since it was in a bamboo frame). We entered the bar and were met by cold, disbelieving stares of the bartender and the three patrons seated at the bar. The saloon itself is absolutely amazing because the walls are plastered with firearms, dead animals, and knives, and yet there's a sign on the window reading "NO FIREARMS!" We sat down at the bar and told the bartender what we wanted, which she made with a suspicious glare after asking to see my ID since I look "really young".
At one point I thought that she was talking to me when she said that the rain was crazy, so I replied that it really was and we had been out birding in it. She glared at me and shuffled over to the other patrons to resume their "secret" conversation. Amazing. Mom and I decided to ignore them and tick off birds from our bird list of Madera Canyon and the surrounding areas. Once we were done with our drinks, we smiled and left as the bartender finally decided to be decent and wished us a safe drive. I'm glad that I can say that I had a drink in the unfriendly home of my favorite painting.
Patagonia is literally two miles away from Mexico (at one point we saw the border fence over a hill), so we for some reason had to pass through a border control checkpoint. Before the checkpoint, we passed by a colorful winery that I took a picture of as we passed.
Once we got back home, we headed out to hike up Mt. Baldy in the hopes of seeing the Elegant Trogon. We saw a deer at the beginning of the hike again and a couple of other birds (including one that seemed to keep taunting us because he would sing loudly nearby, but we NEVER SAW HIM. I still have to identify him). It was still drizzling a little and really green and pretty. It started getting dark, so we turned around and headed down after a couple of miles. At one point, we both freaked ourselves out a little because we had seen some guys behind us on the way up, but they were nowhere to be found on the way down. We convinced ourselves that they were hiding in the canopy on either side of the canyon, watching us, so we made our way down to our car via the picnic areas as soon as we could instead of the regular trail. The coolest part of the trail, since we didn't end up seeing the Elegant Trogon, was that we saw a whip-poor-will! We heard his call and so I played it on my phone to see if that's what it was and he immediately joined us, since he thought we were another male. It was so cute how he landed in the branches right by us, cocking his head expectantly. We finally made it down to our car and sought shelter in our casita as it began to rain again, preparing ourselves a delicious pasta dinner and getting drunk. Awwww yeeeah! Before I got drunk though, I finished up my resume and sent out the application for an internship that was due that day. We watched Anchorman as a perfect end to the amazing bird watching trip.
Our hummingbird guard
This was a palm tree structure in Green Valley that mom really liked. It is sort of iconic of the entire area, in my opinion.
We packed up early the next morning and headed out, seeing another coyote dart across the road along the way. Goddamn, I love Madera Canyon.
BIRD NERD 4 LYFE
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