It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The Christmas song is wrong. The most wonderful time of the year is spring!

Janine McCabe took this photo of Brian Nicholas and me
near Gordon Hirabayashi Camp during our Birdathon

In southeast Arizona migration is wonderfully drawn out, with some migrants appearing very early in the year. Many of the other early migrants are in place looking for nesting opportunities by mid March. More continue to arrive in April, some arriving to nest and others just passing through. By the end of April we've reached one of the two points of the year with the most avian diversity.

I've neglected my blog posts. Work and birding take up a lot of time this time of year.

Pine siskin in Sumerhaven

On April 26 my Team did our Birdathon fundraiser for Tucson Audubon Society. In this fundraiser, sponsors pledge per bird species and teams try to see as many species as possible within 24 hours. The end of April is a nice time for it, not only because of the available bird diversity, but because the weather is usually very nice. In comparison to August, the other height of bird diversity, birds are more vocal in spring--singing to define their territory and attract a mate. This makes them easier to find.

We decided to limit the area where we could go birding to Tucson and its immediate vicinity. This would make it an opportunity to show people Tucson's avian riches. It would also mean that we

Black-crowned night-heron at Reid Park

would be driving less and birding more--more species per gallon of gas! We decided we would stay within a 20-mile radius of Reid Park. This still gave us a lot of latitude--the top of Mt. Lemmon, the east, south and west sides of Tucson, Catalina State Park were all inside the circle.

We met at 1 a.m. to look, or rather listen, for owls in northeast Tucson. We moved up the Mt. Lemmon highway to find higher elevation owls and other night birds like Mexican Whip-Poor-Wills. It got windy and it was hard to hear anything but dawn came and we birded for hours in the

Neotropic cormorants at Reid Park

mountains seeing many, though not all, of the species that can be seen up there.

We came down the mountain and visited an area along Tanque Verde Wash, getting lucky and finding the gray hawk that has been in that area. Other stops were Reid Park, University of Arizona Farm, Sweetwater Wetlands and Crossroads Park in Marana.

When all was said and done we had seen 134 species. We feel we've set the baseline for the number of species that can be seen in 24 hours in

Common yellowthroat at Sweetwater Wetlands

this area. We hope others will take us up on a big day competition in this circle.

What a glorious town! There are so many kinds of birds just a short drive away. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

More species--some of the late migrants--show up in our region in May. I'll be watching for those in the days to come.

White-winged doves at sundown, Crossroads Park