Sunday, February 26

Dear Birders,

Today I joined the truly fun and very talented big day team members Dylan Holstein-Radin, Jake Mohlmann, John Yerger and Gavin Bieber in an attempt to break the February Big Day record for Arizona. The official ABA record for this month was 113, set by Gavin and Peter Salomon, but Gavin tells us that on another attempt they got 123 but did not submit totals. Our preliminary total today was 164 species.

Our route, very roughly, took us from Mount Lemmon to Patagonia Lake, then north to the Santa Cruz Flats of Pinal County. With 50 more minutes of daylight than our January attempt, (with 150), we drove 3 miles less and actually finished the day 2 hours sooner.

Big misses always tell you more about a Big Day Count. We did not do well on owls (got only Barn, Great Horned, Western Screech-, Whiskered Screech- and Burrowing). We missed two staked-out White-tailed Kites, Prairie Falcon, and eagles (but otherwise did well on raptors). We certainly drove by a few Ash-throated Flycatchers without ever connecting with one. We missed Black Vulture and the stakeout rarities of White-throated Sparrow and Lazuli Bunting at the Patons, while Patagonia Lake State Park's several rarities (such as Elegant Trogon and Louisiana Waterthrush) were not very active and avoided us during our necessarily short visit around noon. We also missed Dusky and Hammond's Flycatchers there. With so many species of swallows migrating through now, we managed to find only Violet-green and Northern Rough-winged. We couldn't fit in the time needed to drive through urban Tucson to add Common Goldeneye, Snowy Egret, Costa's Hummingbird, and Bronzed Cowbird, though with more scouting effort a couple of these might have been located closer to our route. Finally, with only 10 more minutes of daylight we would have likely been able to find Sage Sparrow or Sage Thrasher at the Harmon Road-Sunland Gin Road spot, but everything was already starting to go to bed by the time we got there.

We did have some good finds. We saw the MAGNIFICENT HUMMINGBIRD that has been wintering at Barbara Bickell's feeders in Willow Canyon in the Catalinas. Some scouting from yesterday snagged us a CASSIN'S SPARROW on the Greaterville Road on the east side of the Santa Ritas, and a NORTHERN BEARDLESS-TYRANNULET at Patagonia Lake State Park was probably an early migrant. We saw a pair of BLACK-CAPPED GNATCATCHERS there a short ways up the 4th wash, and the wintering "WESTERN" FLYCATCHER was calling about 200 yards upstream from the creek mouth. The male GREATER SCAUP was still there, hanging out with the COMMON MERGANSERS, and there are now two NEOTROPIC CORMORANTS.

A GREAT EGRET at Kino Springs clubhouse pond was a nice surprise, as was a NORTHERN PINTAIL (surprisingly a very difficult bird to pin down in SE Arizona this winter) at the smaller first pond. We saw the 6 RUDDY GROUND-DOVES with INCA DOVES near the clubhouse complex.

Several SNOW GOOSE at the Quail Creek development just south of the Green Valley Sewage Ponds were our only geese.

We saw the LEAST GREBE at Sweetwater Wetland as well as one of the YELLOW WARBLERS and WILSON'S WARBLER (but missed the Cassin's Vireo and Black-throated Gray Warbler). We saw the growing number of AMERICAN AVOCETS at the Orange Grove Road pond, as reported by Peter Salomon and the large flock of BLACK-NECKED STILTS (I counted 238 two days ago) north of the Ina Road bridge over the Santa Cruz River.

The Santa Cruz Flats treated us pretty well with CRESTED CARACARA, FERRUGINOUS HAWK, and MOUNTAIN PLOVERS west of Tweedy and Pretzer. We had 6 GREATER YELLOWLEGS at farm ponds, which we didn't expect. We ended with the AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN which has been wintering at the San Lazaro pond at Arizona City, and which has now been joined by a NEOTROPIC CORMORANT.

For information on the locations above, you can consult either of the two birdfinding guides for Southeastern Arizona and the DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer.

Good Birding,

Rich

Rich Hoyer
Tucson, AZ

Senior Field Leader, WINGS, Inc.
www.wingsbirds.com