More Avian Adventures!

With June left holding the fort in the Algarve, Peter has again been off again leading a tour for Avian Adventures, this time in his favourite Arizona.  It was his 22nd visit to the Grand Canyon state and his 14th spring tour there.

This year's tour was confined to the south-east of the state with just one brief excursion north of Tucson to find Burrowing Owl.  The itinerary included stays in Portal, Sierra Vista, Green Valley and Tucson, giving access to more excellent birding sites than could possibly be covered in the time available.

Here are some photographs of a few of the birds seen and places visited during two weeks of sunshine:

Scenic Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahuas

Burrowing Owl - in decline and becoming harder to find around Tucson

Willow Tank - an oasis in the desert, near Portal

Whitewater Draw - not much water at this time of year but still worth a visit

Patagonia Lake - a large man-made lake, good for ducks, grebes, shorebirds and more

Lower Sabino Canyon - saguaros, chollas, mesquite, palo verde and more

Amado Sewage Pond - often attracts something unusual, this time a Greater Scaup

Portal Main St. - always good for an early morning or evening walk

Black-throated Sparrow - an attractive common resident of desert scrub

Lark Sparrow - one of the most numerous birds we saw

Cactus Wren - the official state bird of Arizona

Greater Roadrunner - always popular and seemed particularly numerous this year

Scott's Oriole - one of three oriole species seen

(Mexican) Spotted Owl - well worth the climb up Miller Canyon 

Lucifer Hummingbird - eight species of hummingbirds were seen

Vermilion Flycatcher - presumably a first-year male

Just back from Florida

We really enjoy the Algarve at this time of year.  It’s much less crowded with people than it is during the summer months but it’s still full of birds.  Also, the weather is generally rather better than we can expect in the UK with temperatures forecast to be as high as 18°C in the next few days.

Having said that, we do also very much like birding in other parts of the world that have a warm climate and we never turn down an opportunity for some winter birding in the USA.  In November, December and January of the last few years we have led tours for Avian Adventures in California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and Florida, often over Christmas and the New Year.  Just like the Algarve these southern states attract countless wintering birds from the north and there’s always a chance of finding something unusual.

This year’s tour in Florida from which we have just returned was most successful and full of interest.  Not only did we record a good selection of birds but there were also butterflies, mammals, reptiles and amphibians to keep us occupied.

 Green Heron

 Osprey

 Reddish Egret

 Loggerhead Shrike

Limpkin

Compared to Arizona, California and New Mexico, Florida isn’t particularly attractive scenically, it’s rather flat and much of it is only a few feet above sea level.  It is the eighth most densely populated of the US states and much of it has been built on.  For all that there is surprising habitat diversity and it still has plenty of wildlife.  The birds include a splendid variety of wetland species, several subtropical specialities some of which occur nowhere else in the USA and many exotics that have either escaped from captivity or been deliberately introduced.  There is just one endemic species, the Florida Scrub-Jay, first officially recognised as a separate species only about 20 years ago and now for many birders one of the main reasons for visiting Florida.

Florida Scrub-Jay (John Cutting)

  White-crowned Pigeon

Apart from the Florida Scrub-Jay, the most notable birds seen during our tour were Snail Kite, White-crowned Pigeon and Limpkin, none of which can be found elsewhere in the USA, Burrowing Owl of the subspecies floridana, which is much darker in appearance than the birds we see in Arizona, the white morph of Great Blue Heron (“Great White Heron“), Vermilion Flycatcher, Worm-eating Warbler and Summer Tanager that are all somewhat scarce in Florida during the winter and Henslow’s Sparrow, a species that neither of us had seen previously.  We also saw two House Finches in the Everglades National Park, a common enough species in the northern part of the state but almost unheard of so far south and the cause of some excitement among the locals.

  Great Blue Heron - white morph

Burrowing Owl

Amongst the mammals the main attraction is West Indian Manatee, which we saw in several different locations.  Nine-banded Armadillo was also popular although most frequently seen as road-kill.  Snakes included the attractive but venomous Pygmy Rattlesnake.  With our emphasis very much on the birds, we paid attention mainly to the larger butterflies such as the potentially confusing Gulf Fritillary, Monarch, Viceroy, Queen and Soldier.  Needless to say, we saw countless Alligators.

 Nine-banded Armadillo

Gulf Fritillary

We were also fortunate to be able to watch the launch from Kennedy Space Centre of the Orion EFT-1.  We joined a small crowd of people at Kennedy Point Park at first light on a rather dull morning to see the rocket lift off and very soon disappear into the clouds.

Lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre

We can thoroughly recommend Florida for a winter birding break.  If it appeals to you, let us know - we are planning another tour there for Avian Adventures in January 2016!

Arizona

The Avian Adventures tour in Arizona during the first two weeks of May was a great success and very enjoyable as always.  In addition to visiting many of the popular birding sites in the south-east of the state, we also went north to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, which gave the opportunity to see a few additional bird species and some spectacular scenery.

Grand Canyon

 California Condor

Although our main focus throughout the tour was obviously on the birds, there was plenty of interest in the mammals, reptiles, butterflies, plants and just about everything else.  As usual, we also included a short stop in Tombstone to see the OK Corral, Boot Hill, etc.

 Red-naped Sapsucker

 Yarrow's Spiny Lizard

 Texas Horned Lizard

Mourning Cloak

Burrowing Owl

More than 200 bird species were recorded by the group including seven species of owls.  Although it wasn’t a particularly good year for hummingbirds, we did have good views of both male and female White-eared Hummingbirds at Beatty’s Guest Ranch in Miller Canyon.

 White-eared Hummingbird

Spotted Owl

Also in Miller Canyon, we saw a female Mexican Spotted Owl on a nest but we were able to see this species much better and closer in Scheelite Canyon.

Without doubt, Arizona is one of our favourite destinations and another visit (Peter's 22nd!) is already being planned.  If you haven't been there, you're missing a treat!

Salton Sea

Leaving behind the scenic California coast we headed east for a two-night stay in Brawley, situated near the southern end of the Salton Sea. Shortly before we reached Brawley we saw our first of many Greater Roadrunners and Burrowing Owls and also one of the least expected birds of the tour, a Zone-tailed Hawk.

Burrowing Owl – a close relation of the Little Owl, familiar to us in Europe.

The 35-mile long Salton Sea is the largest lake in California that owes its existence to an irrigation scheme started at the end of the 19th Century. In 1905, when heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused the Colorado River to swell and breach an Imperial Valley dike it took nearly two years to control the river’s flow into the formerly dry Salton Sink and stop the flooding. The sudden influx of water and the lack of drainage from the basin resulted in the formation of the Salton Sea. It became a desert oasis and a thriving tourist attraction but by the 1970s, as the sea grew heavy with salt, sewage and agricultural chemicals, disease outbreaks began to kill birds and fish and tourists stopped coming.




Cleaning up the lake became one of the issues championed by Sonny Bono during his two terms in Congress (1995-98). Who would have thought back in the 1960s when he was a successful singer, songwriter and actor, that following his premature death he would have a National Wildlife Refuge named after him as a result of his efforts to reverse the environmental problems of the Salton Sea?

Eared or Black-necked Grebe

Black-crowned Night Heron

Least Sandpiper

Great Egret

American White Pelicans

Western Sandpiper

The Salton Sea continues to be an outstanding location for birds and birders. Situated within the Pacific Flyway it provides important habitat for migrating and wintering birds. We had only a short time there but managed to see an excellent variety of shorebirds and wildfowl. As so often, it was large numbers of birds that impressed most – thousands of Snow and Ross’s Geese, Sandhill Cranes and White-faced Ibises.







We were to see many more Sandhill Cranes in Arizona…