My Birding World

I’m delighted to post this story by guest writer Cassondra Wiley. Join me in reading about her recent birding adventures in Arizona during the winter! -Elizabeth

I’d been to the southeastern region of Arizona before. Winter is not known as its most optimal time for bird activity, but even in late December, the birding had been exceptional. Sitting before the feeders of the Santa Rita Lodge in the Madera Canyon area, I’d seen fiery red Summer Tanagers and Rivoli’s Hummingbirds with shimmering emerald throats. At Patagonia Lake State Park, there had been abundant Bridled Titmice, with their boldly drawn facial lines. In Picacho State Park, there had been the shadowy dark shapes of Black Vultures gracefully spiraling in the sky. My life list grew and I was left with the impression that no matter the season, southeastern Arizona is THE place for birding.

Three years have passed since that initial excursion. After years of overwork without days off, I finally had a bit of time for myself, once again in late December. I thumbed through an old field guide for the birds of Arizona, its cover adorned with images of the Elegant Trogon, a reincarnation of rainbows in bird-form. I watched videos of birders hiking through canyons in the Sierra Vista area, stumbling upon the inquisitive, childishly round faces of Spotted Owls. I did not set my hopes so high as to imagine finding birds as rare and spectacular as these, but I did expect to check a few new birds off my life list.

On the drive into Arizona, we stopped at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve. On my previous visit to the state, the Curve-billed Thrashers had been secretive, but on this day, they bravely faced the daylight, sang their boisterous tunes, and blessed me with prolonged looks at their sunshine yellow eyes. The tiny Verdin, with their glowing, golden faces, flitted about in their restless manner. Gambel’s Quail chased each other in every corner of the preserve, topknots jauntily bouncing as they ran. We easily found the cotton candy pink Roseate Spoonbill who had defied his expected range of existence and decided to settle in the Phoenix suburb. The color, the exotically shaped bill, the uniqueness from any bird I’d ever seen before, had to be expressed by a little victory dance as I nabbed my first lifer of the trip. This was merely a stop along the way; it wasn’t even part of the “real” birding trip about to unfold. My expectations ballooned.

But they were quickly deflated.

We hiked through the canyons I had seen in videos where happy birders went home with shots of Spotted Owls and trogons. Battered by relentless, frigid winds, I kept trying, hoping that I, too, would be rewarded with a special bird. But none came. In fact, there were barely any birds at all. There were a couple of Mexican Jays. A Red-naped Sapsucker clung to a tree and crept in circles along the bark. And that was it. Not a single other bird was seen or heard. We went through supposed hotspots in Willcox, finding no birds other than a Canyon Towhee. We walked down a trail that had boasted regular sightings of a Grey Catbird, only to be drenched by an abrupt unleashing of water from the sky. A couple of locals explained, apologetically, that this had been a relatively dry year in the area, leading to a lack of growth of the foods their birds favor. Without their favorite foods, it seemed, the birds did not feel like lingering.

This is not to say that the trip was entirely unrewarding. We saw thousands upon thousands of Sandhill Cranes flood the sky at sunrise. At bird feeders, we saw at least a dozen Pyrrhuloxia, my favorite bird in all of Arizona, with their blood-red, rebellious crests and odd, stubby bills. I spotted a Painted Redstart, with its splash of scarlet cutting through its yin-and-yang boldly contrasting black and white pattern. But I had expected… more. I thought I would expand my life list. I thought I would track down the Crested Caracara that I had so desperately wanted last time, but couldn’t find. I thought I’d surely see the Scaled Quail that are supposed to litter the grasslands in the area. And none of this was happening.

On our last day in Arizona, stubbornly standing beneath a minimally protective shelter at the Paton Center for Hummingbirds, with rain being propelled sideways by increasingly potent, icy winds, something small silently (or perhaps silenced by the onslaught of wind and rain) zipped past me. It perched briefly on a feeder, its red, needle-like bill probing for nectar. Its white throat and belly were striking against its dull green back and purple crown. There, at our very last spot for the trip, the birds of Arizona sent me–shivering and completely soaked–a peace-offering in apology for their underwhelming showing: a lifer and a beautiful one, at that. The Violet-crowned Hummingbird became my 368^th bird and the hard-won victory for days of cold, wet failure at the game of birding.

Upon arriving home, I took a glance at the “rare bird alert” reports for the places we’d just inspected. Green Kingfisher. Montezuma Quail. Grey Catbird. Elegant Trogon. All seen exactly where we had been… All seen the day we left… If my binoculars had been handy at that moment, I probably would’ve thrown them out the window, ceremoniously declaring an end to my birding days.

More often than not, we as birders come home without the birds we’d hoped to find. (At least I do.) We hunt for a rarity that decides not to emerge until the instant we give up and go home. We visit places that we suspect will be filled with plenty of birds to inspect and admire only to find that they seem to be quietly hiding and in no mood for visitors. It’s a hobby often rife with disappointment, it would seem. And yet still we go, waking before sunrise, trudging through mud or snow, driving for hours and hours, always fueled by the thin hope that we’ll bear witness to a sighting from the rare bird alerts, that we’ll add one more sighting to our lifetime tally, or that we’ll simply see something of personal significance to ourselves alone. Perhaps as much as the birds themselves, what we as birders truly enjoy is the adventure of trying to find them. We remember not only the birds we find, but the birds we fail to find. The victorious tales of finding an avian specialty are sometimes just as good as the stories of spectacular failure. Whether successful in our pursuits or not, we remember the stories of what we’ve done for the birds.

Written by Cassondra Wiley. Photographs by Rod Jimenez.