Occasional Jots and Tittles

Tomorrow (Saturday) I depart on another birding trip, this one to Texas and points west.

Rob and Jon, who met me in Tucson to bird in Arizona, and Rob’s partner Tom will be driving through Baton Rouge from Birmingham to Phoenix, to collect the rest of Rob’s belongings (he’s resettled in B’ham). They’re detouring through the lower Rio Grande Valley, and when they mentioned the trip, I half-jokingly suggested they stop on the way and pick me up. They took me up on the suggestion, and I’ll ride with them down to Texas for the birding there. Assuming none of them are ready to kill me, I’ll ride on to Phoenix with them, and fly back from there – but I’ve got the option of flying back from almost any Southwest airport along the way since the only tickets available were refundable.

We’ll pass through New Mexico – my first time in that state – and I may end up staying through Sunday after Thanksgiving in Arizona to pick up some birds I haven’t seen yet. All in all, it should be a fun trip.

A few weeks ago, the last of the fall migrants filtered through my backyard. While there may be a few stragglers out there somewhere, and some of them may end up spending the winter (I hope!), I’ve probably seen the last of the ones “moving through”.

So I was happy that my last migrant visitor turned out to be a pretty one – a male Summer Tanager – and he chose to visit the bird bath we installed next to our fish pond specifically to attract visitors.

Saturday morning, we headed for Ramsey Canyon Preserve, a Nature Conservancy site which was once called the Mile Hi Ranch. The guest quarters are now a private concern (the Ramsey Canyon Inn). Twenty twenty-five thirty years ago, when I started birding, this was considered the hummingbird capital of the world, with as many as twelve species present regularly during the peak months. The preserve is still a birding hotspot.

Or rather, it can be, but on nice days like when we went, the place was overrun with families bringing children to experience nature. Unfortunately, most parents today don’t seem to grasp the concept that it’s hard to experience nature when your rugrats are running, screaming, and crying the entire time, as most wildlife quickly scatters and you can’t even enjoy the sounds of a creek rushing by.

Once we got far enough away from children, I did get a good look at more deer:

And even though you could barely hear it at times, the creek was actually rather pretty:

And we did see a fair number of hummingbirds, though virtually all were either Black-chinned, Broad-billed, or Anna’s – the three most common species in the region, and ones you can spot almost anywhere. It became clear that we needed to hit some of the more recently discovered spots, places where hummingbird variety is still the norm.

So off we went to Miller Canyon, to the Beatty’s Miller Canyon Guest Ranch, probably the best spot in the United States to see a diversity of hummingbirds. The Beatty family runs an apple orchard and bee farm/honey operation up in Miller Canyon, and many years ago, learned that their property was a key spot for attracting hummingbirds, including a few that are seldom seen elsewhere in the United States. In what has become a tradition for yards like this in Arizona, the Beattys opened their orchard to visitors. Not only do they accept donations for the sugar fund, but they sell apples, honey, and other products from the orchard from the front porch of their welcome building. If there’s nobody at the building, they leave a change box and ask you to write down what you bought and put the money in the box. I can’t imagine the trust that must require – and yet Mr. Beatty told us it’s seldom abused.

Anyway, a short hike up into the orchard (which grows on a hillside in the canyon) is a comfortable sitting area surrounded by about 15 hummingbird feeders. And scores of hummingbirds on the feeders at all times, probably representing a few hundred in the immediate area of the feeders all the time. I saw ten species at this one site–and finally, for once, I got pictures of many of them. They include the Violet-crowned, which we’d already seen at the Paton’s house, but which made for a good picture here:

In addition, we caught great views of the Magnificent Hummingbird, one of the largest in the United States. Here, one’s pictured with two Black-chinned Hummingbirds nearby for comparison in size:

There were also numerous Broad-billed and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds at the feeders. Here a female Broad-billed shares a meal with a male Broad-tailed.

Although I’m not as pleased with this shot, there were plenty of Anna’s Hummingbirds present as well:

But the star of the show at Beatty’s, as it is every year, is the spectacular White-eared Hummingbird. Although there are a few others every year in the region, finding them is incredibly difficult, if only because there is so much territory to search. But Beatty’s has hosted at least one or more of these birds for years now, and if you come at the right time of year, seeing it is a matter of waiting 10 to 15 minutes, rather than searching for weeks in the fields.

After a few hours of entertainment here, we finally left and headed to our final birding destination: still another yard, opened to birders by a gracious homeowner, this time the only spot easy to find a Lucifer Hummingbird. Unfortunately, lighting in this yard didn’t lend itself to taking pictures easily, but we still got excellent views of two Lucifers, male and female, along with the usual suspects.

At this point, we decided it was time to pack it in, get some rest, and prepare to return home the next morning. In my four short days in Arizona, I saw thirty life species, at least that many others I had already seen, and got my first taste of the mountain-desert region of southeast Arizona. I’ve already started planning my return in 2009.

For some reason, I didn’t take any pictures of the place we stayed the rest of our journey, but I also highly recommend it to anyone who goes to south Arizona for birding. The Casa de San Pedro is a small inn, run by a charming couple (Karl and Patrick) who, while not hard-core birders themselves, both enjoy birdwatching and know how to cater to birders. The guest rooms are more like a traditional hotel (in-suite bathrooms, modern amenities, etc.) but they’re joined to a wonderful great room / kitchen / dining room space, making it feel more like a traditional bed and breakfast. Speaking of breakfast – it’s not the typical buffet or continental much fest; it’s a sit-down, served full-meal breakfast that fills you up. There are feeders around the lodge, including outside the dining room windows, so birders can get an early start watching what’s outside before heading out to more exotic locales.

We chose to spend Friday focused more on historical and touristy pursuits, partly because I felt guilty about dragging Damon out to all these bird spots. So our first stop Friday was Old Bisbee, the original part of the town of Bisbee, once a major mining center in southeast Arizona. The old part of town is now a tourist attraction, mini-arts&crafts mecca, and all-around bohemian sort of place.

Nestled in the hills, Old Bisbee is marked by a giant “B” marked in the dirt on a hill above downtown:

And one of its signature attractions is the Art Deco-style 1935 statue “Iron Man” celebrating the mine workers:

One attraction we didn’t visit, mainly for time constraints, was the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum. It looked like a pretty nice attraction, though – it’s a local affiliate of the Smithsonian, so I assume that means it has to maintain some standards.

However, we did make a quick pass through the local historical association’s “museum” – which, like many small-town historical association museums, is full of clutter and junk, arranged in a strange order and with no connection between items other than it all came from the locals. Don’t get me wrong – preserving this sort of stuff is important, and if you dig through it hard enough, a good historian could assemble some interesting exhibits on life in Bisbee at various points in the past – but it’ll take a long time and a lot of sorting to get there. (And someone needs to explain to these wonderful folks and all those like them that you don’t have to cram every single object you own into public exhibition space. You get people to come back by rotating exhibits and showing different things, with different themes, at different times.

Still, one artifact caught my eye. This early typewriter has the QWERTY keyboard layout we expect, but there’s no shift key function. Instead, there’s a second set of keys for upper-case letters. Additionally, the numerals zero and one are missing, because typists didn’t distinguish between a lower-case “L” and one, or between an upper-case “O” and zero. Instead, there are a variety of fractions (1/8, 3/8, 5/8, 7/8, 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4) and the cents symbol (¢).

So, we left Old Bisbee, and headed out towards Tombstone. We knew going in that Tombstone (and the OK Corral) would be a tourist trap, and in that, we were not disappointed. However, I was surprised how much I learned about Tombstone, the gunfight, and more.

For starters, I’d always pictured Tombstone as a town in the middle of the desert, the way it’s pictured in the movies, and the OK Corral as a sort of round, fenced enclosure for horses out at the edge of town. Kind of like this:

Surprisingly, the OK Corral was actually a stableyard, in town (though admittedly close to the edge of the town at the time of the gunfight). It was a place where carriages could be stored for people staying in the town’s hotels or other accomodations, and where horses could be stabled during a visit to town. In fact, most of the walls of the corral were formed by the buildings on either side of it, with only gates at each end (the corral reaches from one side of the block to the other).

More surprisingly, the famed gunfight did not take place in the corral itself. Although some of the gunfighters crossed through the corral on the way to the fight, the shooting took place in an alley between two other buildings, one of which also bordered on the OK Corral. Although I don’t think “Gunfight in the Alley by a Building Next to the OK Corral” would have been as big a hit as a movie title.

Anyway, the spot where the actual fight took place is marked on the sidewalk at the street:

And just down the street, a sign marks the location of the actual corral, which has largely been restored:

Naturally, the site’s kept closed off, so people can’t wander through without paying the admission fee, but for once, I thought it was worth it. Despite the tourist trap settings, including street vendors hustling carriage rides and such, it’s obvious a fair amount of research has gone into researching what actually happened at the gunfight.

At the time, Tombstone was the county seat of Cochise County, and it was a classic mining boom town, like San Franciso during the Gold Rush. Unfortunately, there were no other industries to keep the town going (unlike San Francisco’s shipping, for instance), and when the mines dried up (or, in one case, flooded out), the town almost died too. The handsome courthouse, however, has been restored as a museum.

Just outside of town is the famed Boot Hill Cemetery. I learned that this is actually a common name for cemeteries in the old West, where “dying with your boots on” generally meant you were killed, usually in a gunfight or other dubious circumstances, rather than dying peacefully in your sleep. Tombstone’s, though, is the most famous, partly because the dead from the OK Corral gunfight are buried there, partly because of some of the grave markers.

The three members of the Clanton “gang” killed at the OK Corral gunfight are buried side-by-side. Although general public opinion was that they got what was coming to them, one thing to remember is that family and friends generally get to write our epitaphs, and the Clanton gang made it clear what they believed happened (or at least what they wanted people to believe):

As for the other gravesites, they range from the quaint:

to the comedic:

to the poignant:

After Boot Hill, we headed back to the Inn, where we rested up for our final day of birding – with a special focus on hummingbirds.

When we left Tucson, my friends and I headed south towards the Santa Rita Mountains. On the way, however, we stopped at San Javier del Bac, a Spanish mission church on the Tonoho Odham reservation. It’s believed to be the oldest church building in the Americas still serving its original parishioners, as it was an Indian mission from the beginning. The church is currently undergoing restoration but is still in use and open to the public. One of the two bell towers has always been unfinished; the legend is that a mission church was eligible for subsidies from Spain as long as the church was under construction, but that operating funds after construction was complete were expected to be raised locally. So the church remained “under construction” for centuries.

Inside the church, it’s far more ornate than the typical Spanish missions in Texas, more in keeping with the missions along the California Mission Trail.

We left San Javier after a short visit and headed towards Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains.

We got great looks at a number of birds I’ve wanted to see for years, but as I mentioned in the last post, I was too busy looking to take many pictures. I did get some shots of a curious deer at one of our stops:

We stayed at the Santa Rita Lodge, one of three inns/lodges in Madera Canyon (and one I highly recommend). It’s simple but clean and like most lodging in southeast Arizona, it caters to birders, with lots of feeders on the property. We were in the left-hand building here, in the right-most unit.

Here’s a view of the main feeder area (non-guests are welcome to visit this part of the property):

And a view of the creek behind our room:

Thursday morning, we departed the lodge and drove further up into Madera Canyon. Again, more birds with no pictures, but I did get some shots from the parking area at the highest “driveable” point – several trails continue up from this spot.

Later in the morning we drove back down the canyon and decided to take what looked like a great shortcut on the maps. Going around the Santa Ritas was many, many miles longer than a straight-through drive on Box Canyon Road, or so we thought. “Straight-through”, however, is something of a misnomer as the road is (a) a mountain switchback road, curving back and forth as it makes its way through, (b) unpaved most of the way, (c) extremely narrow in spots, not really wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other, and (d) bordered by a 500-foot or more drop with no guard rail. What time we saved with the shorter distance was more than eaten up by having to creep along at 10-15 miles an hour. Live and learn. But at least the views were spectactular.

When we reached the other side, it was almost surprising to see (relatively) flat land. We headed into Sonoita for lunch, then went south to Patagonia to check out some more birding hot spots. At one of them, we got of these rock formations bordering a rest area pull off:

While in Patagonia, we stopped at the home of Marion Paton, who has opened her yard to birders for decades. Her yard is one of the few spots in the U.S. where one can see a Violet-crowned Hummingbird, and we got superb views of them here, along with several other species. Naturally, I forgot my camera in the car, and didn’t want to get up and get it while the bird viewing was so good. Imagine allowing strangers in your yard for 30 or so years, asking only that they latch the gate behind them, sign the guest register, and kick in a small donation for the bird food/sugar water fund. Surprisingly, there are many such sites in the southeast Arizona area.

As the afternoon waned, we left Patagonia for Hereford, on the east side of the Huachuca Mountains, where we were scheduled to spend the next three nights. The Huachucas would be the focus of most of the rest of my birding, although that would mostly wait until Saturday.

They say “Better Late than Never”, but even that’s a stretch here. All I can say is… well, I figured I’d better get this done before I left on my next trip. (At least I’m not like my dear, late friend Donna. She once took a roll of 24 exposure film to be developed. The first part had pictures of her son’s high school graduation. The second part had pictures of her son’s college graduation.)

So, without further ado… Part I of the Taste of Arizona Trip.

My friend Damon and I flew into Tucson to begin the trip, meeting up with some online GBNA buddies at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is a combination natural history museum, zoo, arboretum, and all around nature spot. On the way in, we got our first good looks at desert flora, including these Prickly Pear Cactuses in burgundy, maroon, and purple:

Also among my favorites were these barrel-like cactuses:

And of course, the Saguaros, which are perhaps the most emblematic cactus of the region:

I had heard about the lovely but nasty-to-touch cholla cactus – the thorns are very loosely attached to the plant, so even brushing against it can mean you get dozens or more of these thorns stuck in your clothes or worse, your flesh. I gave it a wide berth, but had to get close-up pictures of the flowers:

And I’d heard about the unusual-shaped ocotillo cactus – which lives up to its reputation – but I hadn’t expected to find a wild version of the Pride of Barbados flower – one the locals call Red Bird of Paradise. Oddly (or perhaps not) I often found the two growing closely together:

That first day, of course, I was focused more on seeing birds than photographing them. However, I did manage to get this one good shot of a male Costa’s Hummingbird, in partial molt. It would be my last bird shot for several days, actually.

Part 2 will pick up when we left Tucson and headed south for more touring, birding, and our first overnight stay.