Arizona Part 2 Mount Lemmon

I made a few trips out from our base in eastern Tucson up to Mount Lemmon. It is a truly beautiful drive and its amazing to watch the vegetation change as you climb higher and higher up the mountain going from a Saguaro desert to a Ponderosa Pine forest with feet of snow! The bird life also changes along with the trees and plants. Some of the most interesting

sightings was watching a Pygmy Nuthatch excavate a cavity in a limb. There were many other new birds for the trip sighted at various locations on my way up and down the mountain.

Arizona Part 1

I will do a brief recap of my recent trip to Arizona. For this posting I will cover the first few days of the trip. This part of the trip I spent in the area of east Tucson and visited Saguaro NP several times and had some good luck with typical desert birds including Gambel's Quail, Black tailed Gnatcatcher, Rufous winged Sparrow, Lucy Warbler and many others. The weather was perfect with temps in the 80's and low humidity.

Moose encounter

I had a nice close encounter with a moose Sunday morning at Covey WMA as I tried my best to shake off my jet lag and get back to east coast time. Although I managed to see some good birds there the highlight was indeed this quite inquisitive moose. The closest and longest encounter I have ever had with a moose.

Back from Arizona

Just back from a good trip out to Arizona. Although it was not a strictly birding trip I had some very good luck nonetheless. Hit areas around Tucson, Mount Lemmon and Madera Canyon over the course of a week. I managed a total of 136 species with 20 of those life birds for me. The big highlights included Rufous-capped Warbler and Flame Colored Tanager. I will be posting some of my photos over the next few weeks.

Lots of Mergansers

I made a trip through Quabbin Park starting before dawn and had a good number of Common Mergansers. The total for the morning made it to 377 with the largest group of 318 together. I also had a nice looking pair of Red Breasted Mergansers and a handful of Hooded Mergansers. Among the other waterfowl were 67 Ring Necked Ducks and a handful of Wood Ducks, Black Ducks, Bufflehead, Green Winged Teal, Mallards and Canada Geese.

At home I had a half dozen Tree Swallows and a few migrant Cooper's Hawks.

Rail Trail and Quabbin Park

Got out a bit today and had some nice birds around. I spent over an hour on the rail trail in Amherst and had a few first of the season birds for me. I had a calling Field Sparrow and Eastern Phoebe as well as a couple Tree Swallows. Other birds of interest included a calling Great Horned Owl at dawn, a displaying American Woodcock and a nice flyby group of Green Winged Teal.

I then took an hour long trip through Quabbin Park. The big highlight here were the large number of Common Mergansers. I had at least 263 individuals and this is conservative. I can only imagine the total number on the whole reservoir this morning. Other waterfowl included Hooded Merganser, Ring Necked Duck, Wood Duck and a pair of Bufflehead.

A big loss

Although I usually only post about my bird sightings here I felt a need to post something a bit different today. I have not had alot of free time lately as I dealt with the declining health of my best buddy and frequent birding companion, my dog Kody. We had to put him down yesterday which was a very tough thing to do. We saw alot of birds together in our journeys around the area. He will be missed greatly.