The San Luis Wash on the Buenos Aires NWR Christmas Bird Count

After the countdown dinner for the Atascosa Highlands CBC at Widsom’s Café in Tumacacori, I set out for another night of roadside camping, finding a spot barely 9 ½ miles west of where I had camped last night. This would be my 10^th and final Christmas Bird Count this season, on January 3. There are two more days to the CBC season after this, and indeed there is one CBC on each of the remaining two days, but both are hours away in central and eastern Arizona, and the weather forecast is looking very unfavorable, especially at those high elevations. Tonight, here in the southeastern corner of the state, it is calm once again – even calmer than last night – and only in cold pockets of stagnant air is it dipping below freezing. Thank goodness for my new Exped thermal sleeping mat. I am quite cozy and stir only often enough to enjoy the continual hooting Great Horned Owls, tooting Western Screech-Owls, and packs of singing Coyotes.

There are but 2.13 miles separating the nearest boundaries of this CBC circle and the Atascosa Highlands CBC circle to the SE, but it’s amazing how different the two are. This one has no spectacular canyons, mountain cliffs, shady draws, or southward-draining watersheds. All we have to deal with here are low rolling foothills and broad valleys. As a result, there are no Whiskered Screech-Owls in this circle, and I hear only the same two species during my two hours of owling that I’ve been hearing all night. But both are calling everywhere, and I end up the morning with 11 Great Horned Owls on my list; at one point I carefully counted six separate individuals audible from one spot.

Dawn was a flurry of sparrow and towhee chipping and squeaking, but I was able to tease out several species by their call notes, as well as Bewick’s Wrens, Verdins, and Crissal Thrasher. I heard what I was pretty sure were call notes of Cassin’s Sparrow, and some playing of the song indeed resulted in some very aggressive responses. Throughout the day I would try the same just by guessing at the habitat and almost always received a response. This individual ended up being the first of an amazing 17 Cassin’s Sparrows that I would tally today.

I then birded some by car along the Tres Bellotas road south of Arivaca, and on one of my first stops had a pair of Hepatic Tanagers. There are just barely enough oaks in this area to make this almost an expected rarity for here, but these turn out to be the first ever in 30 years of this CBC’s existence. I got a good shot of the male.

I’m helping to cover the only part of the circle that has any oaks, and the patches are sparse, but just enough for some of the oak specialists such as Bushtit and Bridled Titmouse.

Another oak specialist that is missable on this CBC is the Hutton’s Vireo. I have no doubt that this unusual species is a mimic Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Here is a Ruby-crowned Kinglet that responded unusually aggressively to my pishing and owl imitations. In fact these three photos were successive shots as I held the camera’s shutter button down, which takes about 3 photos per second. They never sit still, and it’s amazing I was able to get it in the frame and in the right focal plane. To compare it with the vireo, notice the thin bill, thin legs, golden toes and black legs (rather than all bluish gray), the stronger lower pale wing bar (not two evenly bright wing bars), and the additional dark bar on the primaries. But the overall color, size, shape, and especially that eyering broken at the top are uncannily similar.

This Black Phoebe responded to one of my mobbing sessions.

With 271 individuals tallied, Chipping Sparrow was the most abundant species on my route today.

I had only a few Black-chinned Sparrows, a bird usually missed on this CBC.

A Rock Wren was a slightly odd sight on the tip of a tree.

After birding by car for a few hours, I reached the limit of my rental car’s clearance and hiked down upper San Luis Wash for about 3 ½ miles, returning by the road. It was mostly desert grassland with a good diversity of shrubs and trees close to the riparian area.

Activity of honeybees brought me to inspect this apparently lifeless shrub.

It was in fact in full bloom – Forestiera shrevei, Desert Olive. It’s in the family Oleaceae, the same as olive, ash (Fraxinus), and lilac.

Everywhere I walked there were Rufous-winged Sparrows. At one point I had about 10 in one bush, but mostly there were pairs separated by only 10-20 yards. When I covered this same area with Fabrice Schmitt two year ago, we had a respectable 28 Rufous-winged Sparrows. Even 10 would be good. This year I finished covering my area with an astounding 142 individuals.

I had a few Pyrrhuloxias and Northern Cardinals in the riparian thickets.

There was one stretch of the wash were taller hackberry-mesquite-acacia woodland extended some 50 yards either side of the main channel in a more subtropical fashion.

And indeed here I discovered a pair of Black-capped Gnatcatchers, the first ever for this CBC.

The Netleaf Hackberries in this woodland were a food source for a lot of birds, including this Crissal Thrasher. They had obviously been quite fecund in the previous breeding season or two, as I tallied 26 this day.

On my way back to the car, I walked through more upland mesquite desert scrub, but I continued to hear and flush pairs and groups of Rufous-winged Sparrows here. But the more open habitat was preferred by Black-throated Sparrows. Any other year in the past 150 years this species would have outnumbered Rufous-wingeds, but today I found only 44.

Bewick’s Wrens had a spectacular breeding year, and I found 50, well over the averge number this count gets from all group. Cactus Wrens were not so abundant; I found only 11.

My last new bird of the day was this gorgeous black morph Red-tailed Hawk, species #56.

Cedar and Bartolo Canyons for the Atascosa Highlands CBC

On January 2, I participated in my favorite CBC, the Atascosa Highlands Christmas Bird Count.

On New Year’s Day, I drove my little rental car down to Ruby Road west of Nogales and found a place to pitch my tent on a side road, just a mile or so east of the ghost town of Ruby.  On my way in, a Bobcat crossed the road just outside of the town of Arivaca. The weather forecast was right on – calm, clear, and not too cold. As I pitched my tent, I swear I twice heard the single hoot of a primary song of Long-eared Owl, but it called only when I was making lots of noise with my tent. When I stood still, I heard only a very distant Great Horned Owl.

I awoke at 3:00 a.m. to begin owling and just as I finished packing my tent and listened, a Barn Owl screeched overhead. I use a bit of playback and it flew right over my head, calling some more. This is a good bird in the circle, and indeed it was the only one on the CBC. I surprised a White-tailed Deer (Coues’s) in the middle of the road, and a Striped Skunk (with an all white back) ambled along unperturbed.

Before long I had a Whiskered Screech-Owl whistling back at me right on Ruby Road. I made more stops as I headed east, but birds were very quiet, just a couple more very distant Great Horneds. I eventually got one more Whiskered Screech-Owl to whistle back, and these two were the only ones on the CBC. I parked my car back where I had camped, made my coffee, and walked out to Ruby Road where I had planned on meeting up with Bill Lisowsky around 6:00 a.m. to find him already waiting just before 5:30. We owled together westward on Ruby Road, making a couple stops with no responses at all though a herd of Collared Peccaries was fun to see. Finally at one stop we heard some odd squeaks and squawks from the trees on the hillside, and then the distinctive “kwok kwok” of a Long-eared Owl! I tried playing various calls, and while there seemed to be some response, maybe even a wing clap, they never came closer and moved higher up on the hillside. Finally, we made a stop at a wide, brushy wash with scattered very large ash, walnut, and a mulberry trees and almost immediately had a pair of Western Screech-Owls.  We also flushed two Antelope Jackrabbits. Not a bad start to the day.

Bill dropped me off at Arivaca Lake where I found a White-throated Sparrow and two pairs of Abert’s Towhees before Paul Sheppard, my neighbor and landlord arrived from Tucson with his big red canoe. In a few minutes we were peacefully paddling on a smooth lake and counting ducks, coots, and grebes and pishing at the narrow strip of riparian vegetation to find passerines. We ended up finding the only Cinnamon Teal and Common Merganser, as we paddled in and out of four long fingers; it’s the many drainages, hilly terrain, and thorn-covered mimosa scrub that makes it very difficult to cover this lake by foot. A boat is the perfect means to count the birds here.

The largest drainage is Cedar Canyon, and with such high water, the entire mouth of it was filled with a huge wet grassland, perfect for sparrows. I pished in a large group of Song and Savannahs, and with playback got a very aggressive response from a single Swamp Sparrow. I managed a really lousy photo, but I also got a recording of the distinctive call notes.

This is one of two Belted Kingfishers we saw.

We finished the lake after about 3 ½ hours, and Paul headed home while I hiked back to my car via Cedar and Bartolo Canyons. I had told Jake that this was the area I wanted to do, but we were each thinking of a different canyon. Jake was thinking Chimney Canyon, which is the second largest drainage into the lake, but about half as big. He even wrote it to me in an email, but I read “Chimney” and thought “Cedar,” as that is what I already knew I was doing. In the meantime, Jake actually assigned another team to cover Cedar and Bartolo Canyons. Oops. But in the end, it looked like we had rather different bird lists, covering the canyons in very different ways, and so Jake was able to merge our lists into one area list. This is near the start of my hike.

Within the first 10 minutes I pished in this female Hepatic Tanager.

I was flushing birds it seemed with every step. And if for some reason I didn’t see or hear birds, I would merely pish and whistle some screech-owl (both species) or pygmy-owl (two species), and almost immediately would have a response from Hermit Thrush, Bewick’s Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and either juncos or Chipping Sparrows. Birds were everywhere. Twice I got a Black-chinned Sparrow to come in, a scarce bird in the circle.

This was one of the more interesting geological formations on the hike, actually visible from the lake. My hike took me right by it.

The geology is perfect for Canyon Wren, Rock Wren, Canyon Towhee, and Rufous-crowned Sparrow. In fact, this circle gets far more of these species than any other CBC in the world.

The previous week had been cold, and in shady corners there was still some ice on the pools. In this one, the water had receded under the ice, and water droplets on the bottom side of the very flat sheet of ice were accumulating in a random pattern.

Rufous-crowned Sparrows especially like the rocky and brushy slope habitat on the right. If every participant were to hike a canyon like this, pish and toot all the time, and be familiar with the nearly imperceptible seep note, we’d probably rack up twice as many as the usual 300 or so. I had 38 myself, which is more than most other CBCs get in total.

It warmed up enough for a few butterflies. I saw Dainty Sulphur and Sleepy Orange, in addition to this Vanessa virginiensis, American Lady.

And this Pyrgus albescens, White Checkered-Skipper.

Higher up the canyon I had patches of more dense oak woodland.

These Emory Oaks are the favorite habitat of wintering Red-naped Sapsuckers, and this year there were huge numbers. With its white chin, this appears to be an older female.

This one has only a tinge of red on the nape and is less colorful overall, and is probably a first-winter female.

I saw a three that had too much red for a typical Red-naped and I assume they are Red-naped x Red-breasted Sapsuckers.

But this one had so much red, I thought I’d look more closely at the photos later. And then after comparing them with my photos from California, I realized that this is a better fit for a daggetti Red-breasted Sapsucker, quite a rarity in Arizona, and the first I have ever found here.

Another bird in unusually high numbers was Townsend’s Warbler. I alone had 14 which is more than this entire CBC gets in most years; the record was 16. These are from the Rocky Mountain-Cascade breeding population, which largely winters in Mexico and northern Central America, here at the very northern edge of its winter range. It’s quite separate in winter and breeding range from the ones I had seen last week in California.

Some more scenery as I progressed up the canyon. Among the mammals I saw were Mule Deer, Rock Squirrel, and a Gray Fox. This last one was a hint that I would be better off going up the slopes to get to my car.

The topography for climb out was very easy here.

Back up on the ridge near my car, I gasped when I looked at the sun setting on the Atascosa Mountains.

A 300° panoramic iPhone shot is at the top.