Birding at Squaw Creek

Thursday we drove up to Squaw Creek Wildlife Refuge to bird.

Family of Canadian Geese

We had never seen so many Orchard Orioles  before.

                            There were lots of Dickcissels.  
                                               

Or so many frogs.

 But after coming home with 55 species we saw birds posted on line that others had seen there we hadn't, we still have a lot to learn about birding.  We need to get out our scope and take closer looks at those shore birds.

I'm not sure how this post will look as I still haven't figured out how to arrange photos and captions.

Have a great Memorial Weekend!

This weeks photos

 The Baltimore Oriole at our grape jelly feeder.

 Little Wood Satyrs were everywhere today at Watkins Mill.

 So were the Fritillaries.

Aren't these day lilies beautiful, I enjoy them every year.  

They were given to me when I worked at the golf course when one of the ladies was thinning out her bed, lucky me.

We tried to see the eclipse Ken got a couple of photos, my camera couldn't get any, I'll just have to enjoy his. 

We finished the master bath and bedroom floors, painted the walls too.  I just have to put the little stuff back and the paintings.

Have a great week! 

Taking time for the birds

 We have been busy around here, Ken's got the tile down in the bathroom and almost has the new flooring down in the bedroom.  I cleaned up the gardens and most of the RV, but we have taken some time to do a little birding.

The Catbird above is one of our visitors to our feeders.  It's was nice to see most of our regulars are back, we have a couple of Black capped Chickadees, Baltimore Oriole, Ruby throated Hummingbird, Downy Woodpecker, Robins, Morning Doves, Cardinals and of course the grackles, starlings and house sparrows.

 We went over to Watkins State Park for a look and I got a nice photo of this Indigo Bunting who was singing away up by the old school. 

We saw several Brown Thrashers, Eastern Kingbird, Bluebirds and Thrushes not sure which ones.

We are going with the Backyard Bird people tomorrow over to Westin Bend State Park to do a little birding.  It's to be a grey day, maybe some rain but it'll be nice to get out and maybe see a bird or two.

Have a Happy Mother's Day

and have a 

great week.

Home

 We visited Isley Park Sat. morning to bird I could hear them but didn't see many as the trees are leafed out so it's  hard to find the birds.  Everything thing seems to be a month early, Kansas is even going to harvest the wheat 3 weeks early.

I had to get a shot of the super moon, you can see the craters on it.

We had a nice rain today, and getting more tonight just hope we don't get anything more than rain.

Ken's back to taking the carpet up and I still have the RV to clean up and to clean out the leaves and dead stuff from out of our flower gardens.

So we have a busy week ahead, hope you have a good week.

Some favorites from the end of April

 April sure went by fast and it is time for us to start thinking of heading north.

Here are some of my favorite photos from this week.

Above is morning light on the mountains we see from our RV.

 I thought this group of boulders looked like a person praying.  It's taken up at Mt. Lemon.

 This Painted Redstart is one of the birds that SE Arizona is famous for.

 We went to watch the hummingbird banding again Sat. afternoon and this time I got to release one of the tiny birds.  This isn't me, Ken took some photos of my release and I haven't seen them yet.

My little bird turned out to be a special little lady, a Black Chin Hummingbird as they all were Sat., she was missing 6 tail feathers so she survived an attack from some predator. She was  9 years old, the average life of a hummer is 5 years, they have had one 10 years. She didn't stay in my hand very long as soon as the handler let go she was gone sometimes they will sit for a few minutes.

 We saw our first Arizona Sister Butterfly today, isn't she beautiful.

I've been wanting to get a photo of Arizona's state butterfly the Two tailed Swallow but they never lite on anything.  They even tease me by flying around my head. 

 We saw the trogans again and here is the female Elegant Trogan not as colorful as her mate.

How's this for a proud boy, they are a different specie of turkey then the ones back home believe it is a Gould Turkey.

I have been keeping track of the number of  bird species we see in AZ and so far we have seen 204 species and 50 of those species are from SE AZ.   We have been able to add 26 new birds to our life list and we still have another day or so in AZ. 

Hope everyone had a great week. 

A warm week

They have changed the format of blog spot so I am trying to learn how it works. So we'll see how I do.

This week has turned very warm so we have been getting up earlier to go birding.  Here are some of my better photos of the week.

 Since I am not getting very good bird photos, I have some butterflies, flowers

 lizards

 Hummingbird moth

 oh, here's a nice bird.  It's the Elegant Trogan.

We saw a pair again this week up at  Huachuca Canyon which is in Fort Huachuca the army base in Sierra Vista.

They are nice to let us birders go in with just showing our ID.

We took a drive up Carr Canyon, here's a view from the road.  There is a primitive campground at the top in the pines. Much of the canyon was hit with the Monument fire last year. It's pretty but it should almost be listed as a four wheel drive road.

Our little car has been pretending it's a four wheel high clearance vehicle our entire stay here as most of the roads we go on are rocky and nasty.

Well, let's see how this turns out.

I previewed it and I still have to figure out a few things.

  Why couldn't they leave things the way they were!!!

Till next time, have a good week.

Owls, winds and chill

We had some beautiful sunrises and sunsets this week, here is my favorite sunset.

If you follow me on Facebook you know we saw our grail bird, the Elegant Trogon, Monday, my photos weren't very good as it was in the shadows of the trees.

Friday turned out to be a good birding day for us as we had this N. Pygmy Owl and a Whiskered Screech Owl pointed out to us in Ramsey Preserve. The Pygmy was right out in the open on a dead looking tree just right next to the path but he is so small most people would miss him. He is only around 7 inches tall. The Screech Owl, she is in her hole in a sycamore tree just off the path, the owl makes that a regular spot to nest so regular birders know where and what to look for and they are nice enough to point it out to the visiting birders.

This photo is taken off of one of Ramsey's paths and you can see the various trees here as it is at a higher elevation and has a little stream which makes it good for birding.

The lower elevation where we are staying has only scrub mesquite trees and grasses but we see a good number of birds at our RV park. This morning I heard a Great Horned Owl. We have a couple of regular visitors a pair of cactus wrens, curved-bill thrasher. At the clubhouse where there's the only allowed feeder there's quail, black-throated sparrows. We have also seen a pair of western kingbirds, a Say's phoebe, a green-tailed towhee and today I spotted a lark sparrow.

We took a drive to Coronado National Monument where the Monument fire started last year in June. The fire went over the mountain and down the canyons toward Sierra Vista. Then July the monsoons came and then there was flooding. The birding may be down because of those factors but no ones knows, several groups here are keeping records and watching for any nesting activity.

We toured the big room of Kartchner Caverns Thursday, it is a beautiful cave. They allow no cameras so we had to buy our souvenir photos. It is expensive at $25 per person in that is for only half of the cave but it was worth it. It's discovery in 1974 and the discoverers keeping it a secret for 14 years so it would be saved in it's pristine state makes a good story. They carefully planned the best way to save it and share it with the public and that was to make it a state park.

It's a windy, chilly weekend but Monday looks nice again so we can get back to birding.