Look, up in the sky! It's a bird!

Back in Florida Canyon AZ, early Saturday, St Patrick's Day, John spent an hour staring at some reeds, a bird zipped past and disappeared in them twice. A couple of groups came and went. John kept saying, an hour more, an hour more.  Finally, a man came who had gone to the left where you have to hop the creek to the right to get to the dam, so consequentially arrived pretty late in the morning. John and he were commiserating about the difficult Rufous-Capped Warbler, when the man glanced UP and said 'There it is'. A pair were cavorting around in the tops of the trees, while John and others had been staring down into the reeds. John spent a lot of hours and days on that bird. On the phone, he must have spent 10 minutes describing his frustrating morning to me before he finally got to his success. He's a tease.

He left home Thursday afternoon in a blizzard of taxes and reservations and stayed the night in Blythe. Early Friday, he was by the Colorado River. Again teasing me, he said on the phone, he got poor pictures of the Ash-Throated Flycatcher. Then, he added, he also got great pictures of the Nutting's. I had been bugging him not to rely on the one we saw on the Rio Grande, since it has yet to be verified. So our scouting trip to the Colorado in January, when we failed to see the NUFL, finally paid off. He also revisited thrasher corner, near Buckeye, where we saw zero thrashers in January. As per advertisement, there were three identifiable species plus at least two more he isn't sure of. Then Friday night he heard the pygmy owl and whiskered screech owl in Florida Canyon.

He had called me this afternoon, Saint Patrick's Day, on his way into Patagonia SP to try for the Black-Capped Gnatcatcher once again. He does have a little Orange Irish in him. Does that count? Maybe he had the luck of the Irish today.

There is a lot of heavy slogging over the next three months. He'll need that luck.

Drive, drive, drive

So Thursday AM back past Salinino to Falcon Dam State Park. The camp hosts maintain an extensive feeding area. They are plagued by accipiters too. Good views of Olive Sparrows, both Curve-Billed and Long Billed Thrashers, etc and a Roadrunner came up close for handouts. Off to Zapata. Other birders finally located the seedeater along the concrete outlet of the pond in back. We fortified ourselves with lunch PB&J and went back alone. I got a glimpse then we waited and the little tyke hopped up on a vine, grabbed a grass seed head and munched a bit. Too brief for John to get a picture, but at least he saw it.

The guy who discovered the Nutting's Flycatcher in Big Bend was with the other group  and encouraged us to go for it. So now we really DROVE. Ate some HOT stuff at a Stripes about 6 PM and got to Gage Hotel in Marathon about 9. What a cool place that is! Would have liked to stay longer.

Ate at Johnnie B's for breakfast then took off for Big Bend. When you are trying to use a GPS, a highway map, road signs, a NP map and John's recall of directions from the day before you end up going the right way but thinking it is the wrong way and turning around to find out after a few miles it is the right way and turning around to get to the Nutting's Flycatcher spot 15 minutes after it was last seen. BUT it seems the bird makes a big circuit around the scrub and returns after about 2 hours. Luckily, a nice young woman named Heidi showed up and reassured us that she would find the bird. I finally got out lunch fixings and she called out. The flycatcher did just what everyone else said it did, flew openly from perch to perch around the parking lot for about a half hour and then continued its circuit, I guess. We had lunch and left. 

John thought about driving to El Paso, 9 PM again, but we settled for Alpine and stopped at 5. I am glad, we need the rest. Tomorrow the Davis Mountains.