When I restarted my blog a couple of months ago, I intended to keep my blog limited to Wisconsin bird topics, but birding in Arizona and Texas is so special, I just need to include a few highlights in my blog from my recent trip there. It was both a wonderful and a horrible trip. The birds and the birding, of course, were wonderful, but at the start of the trip when I had just been in Arizona a couple of days, I learned that my beautiful longtime Texas friend, Debra, whom I was going to visit and stay with and bird with the next week, had just died of a very unexpected heart attack! Deciding that changing my travel plans would do nothing to bring her back, I kept on keeping on with my previous plans.
After I birded with a Wisconsin-Arizona friend south of Tucson, the Arizona portion of the trip was primarily a great night-birds tour offered by Field Guides to southeast Arizona birding hotspots. We visited places on the tour that I had birded many years ago with my Texas friend. Each day where we went and the birds we saw brought memories of her. On this year’s trip, we saw many southern Arizona birds including five owls plus another owl that we only heard. After Arizona, I flew to Texas and birded places that she and I had birded together and had planned to bird again. I also went on my originally scheduled trip to the King Ranch, especially with the goal of seeing the Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl. A photo sampler of my trip follows.
The first set of photos is from days 1-2 of the Field Guides tour. The birds shown are in order from top left across each row and then going downward and across each row of photos: Verdin, Vermilion Flycatcher, Broad-billed Hummingbird, Yellow-eyed Junco, Arizona Woodpecker, Acorn Woodpecker, Elf Owl, Whiskered Screech-Owl, and Red-faced Warbler.:
The next set of photos is from days 3-5 of the Arizona guided tour showing a Montezuma Quail (bad photo that still shows its distinctive silhouette), Elegant Trogon, Green-tailed Towhee, Western Screech-Owl by flashlight, Spotted Owl (back), Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Black-chinned Sparrow and Lazuli Buntings at a feeder.
The last set of photos is from the Texas portion of my trip taken along the Gulf coast and along the Rio Grande Valley, showing a Great Kiskadee, a perched Greater Roadrunner (they aren’t always running on roads), and a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (two back views – top photo shows the feathering on its back that looks like eyes, and the bottom photo shows one real eye and part of one of its fake eyes on its turned head).