Birding in Arizona

 Ken loves to go birding in the Tucson, Arizona area in the springtime.  He has gone several times.  We didn't have an assignment in the temple on the weekend of May 6-9th, so he booked flights.  I took him out to the airport early Wednesday morning and picked him up at about midnight on Saturday night.

He had a wonderful time hiking and birding.  He went with a target list of 30 species of birds he hoped to see.  He saw half of them.  Four were new life-listers for him.  Those are distinguished with an asteric*:

Brown-crested Flycatcher

Cassius Kingbird

*Botteri's Sparrow

Scott's Oriole

Bronzed Cowbird

Townsend's Warbler

Hermit Warbler

Mexican Jay

Wester Flycatcher

Lesser Nighthawk

*Mexican Whip-poor-will

*Whiskered Screech Owl

Rivoli's Hummer

Copper-Tailed Trogan

Red-faced Warbler

*Elf Owl

He got pictures of two of them:

Female Costa's Hummingbird

Coppiery-tailed Trogon (this is a highly sought-after bird.  Ken talked to many fellow birders searching for this beautiful bird.)

He keeps a life list and, with these four new ones, his life list now totals 1,192 bird species.

He also had a bear encounter.  He took bear spray with him, but of course it was in the trunk of the car when he saw the bear.  He had hiked up the trail a bit and when he came back down the bear was on the trail coming his way.  Ken stopped, clapped his hands and yelled.  The bear was duly impressed as it ran away from him.  Ken was close enough to it that it could see grass on its haunches where he had been laying in the grass.  EEK!  

I enjoyed the four days, getting a lot done: spring cleaning our bedroom and bathroom and closet (and taking donations to DI), choosing Keynote Christmas music, filing music (not my favorite), reading, thrifting and LFLing for books, working on family history, and blogging of course.   And I even watched a movie!  But I saw no birds . . .or bears!