As some of you may know, I went on a birding trip to Arizona during the first week of July. I traveled with Mr. Bluebird and my parents-in-law, and we stayed at the Ramsey Canyon Inn in Southeastern Arizona. Southeastern Arizona is said to be the hummingbird capitol of the US, and boasts an impressive 13 species! That's more than any other place in North America. As such, many of my photos are of birds and other wildlife, although we found plenty of other things to do there as well. (I will let you know that I'm an amateur photographer, and the fabulous camera my in-laws gifted me for the trip did most of the work for me)
We left on the morning of June 29th from the Philadelphia airport, and landed in Phoenix about 4 hours later. From there, it was a staggering 3 hour drive to the bed and breakfast where we were staying! Needless to say we were tired when we got there, even though we gained an extra 3 hours because of the time zone differences. As soon as we pulled up to the B&B though, I knew we picked the right place. There were 6 hummingbird feeders just in the front of the inn, all covered with species of hummingbirds I'd only seen in photos before. This section of photos here were all taken right at the inn! I will try to caption all of the birds I have positively identified, but there are some I am still looking up. Many species of female hummingbirds are difficult to tell apart, because quite a few of them have a green back and a white belly.
Magnificent Hummingbird
Broad-billed Hummingbird
Black-chinned Hummingbird
Violet Crowned Hummingbird
Unidentified Female Hummingbirds
Arizona Woodpecker (male)
Arizona Woodpecker (female)
Lesser Goldfinches
Bridled Titmouse
Black Headed Grosbeak
There were also a lot of wild turkeys, which I wasn't expecting to see. They were really funny!
This fellow saw his reflection in one of the cars and started displaying, probably thinking the reflection was a rival male:
He started pecking at the car, then these guys came out to see what all the fuss was about... and also started pecking the car.
That went on for a while, until they finally gave up on the car and jumped one by one over the fence to head back into the woods.
The next morning, we decided to check out the Ramsey Canyon Nature Preserve, which was only a few yards behind the inn. I must mention that we were staying at a relatively high elevation (5,000+ ft above sea level) compared to what we are used to (about 300 ft above sea level). The elevation was getting to me a bit, and I got out of breath and dizzy fairly quickly. I did manage to get some photos on our walk, though.
I have a feeling that you all will appreciate my slightly ridiculous hiking outfit, too.
The Ramsey Canyon Nature Preserve
A helpful hummingbird ID guide from the preserve
Here are some photos I took on our hike; there were lots of birds and other critters! Unfortunately I am not as good at identifying reptiles as birds, so I am using my best guesses in conjunction with googling images to ID them.
Sonoran Spotted Whiptail(?)
Clark's Spiny Lizard OR Desert Spiny Lizard (my first guess is the Clark's, because it is found at higher elevations, but both look very similar)
Yarrow's Spiny Lizard(?)
Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake
Whitetail Deer (I think, the whitetail deer in Arizona are a different color than the ones in Pennsylvania)
Juvenile Wrens (possibly Canyon Wrens)
Painted Redstart
Yellow Billed Cuckoo
Bark of an Alligator Juniper
Not sure if these are Yucca flower buds or something else
Oregon Grape Holly
I can't recall the name of this plant, but it's actually related to pine trees, and it looks like tiny bamboo!
Some photos of the landscape at the preserve
You can see Mr. Bluebird walking ahead in this one, he tolerated the heat and the altitude much better than I did!
After our hike that day, we trekked into the town of Bisbee. On the way, we passed this old copper mine:
And we also took in some more of the scenery.
I really found the landscapes in Arizona fascinating, because they are so different from what we are used to seeing.
When we got into town, we decided to do some shopping. I still had my outfit from earlier on, minus the hat. The first shop we stopped into, the owner was thrilled with my shirt, "an ELO shirt!? That's so cool!" Mr. Bluebird told her about the Electric Flight Orchestra shirts and earrings I made, so I showed her a picture and she loved them, too.
We told her that Jeff was touring, so now she's hoping to catch a show sometime in the future. Naturally, I had to buy something from her shop! Luckily she had plenty of items with hummingbirds on them, so finding something I wanted wasn't difficult.
The next day, we ventured into Tombstone. It still very much has the old Western look about it, with the wooden sidewalks and "gunfight shows daily," reenactments, of course.
Wild West Heroes?
Musical entertainment
Obviously had to snap a picture of this:
The horses were getting a rinse because it was very warm
Mr. Bluebird found himself a fancy Western hat and boots, and I had "Wild West Hero" running through my head all day. I even managed to get some birdwatching in, too. These two cliff swallows were nesting under the eaves of one of the shops.
On the way back to the inn, we saw an interesting natural phenomenon called virga. It occurs when visible streaks of precipitation fall from the clouds, but evaporate before they hit the ground. Apparently, it's a fairly common occurrence in the desert.
We witnessed it several times on the trip, including one time with a partial rainbow
The next day, we went to the military base of Fort Huachuca. It is known for being the home of the African American Buffalo Soldiers, until the US military was desegregated in 1948. We visited the military museum there:
The base also encompassed quite a lot of land for military testing, which extended into a number of parks and a very interesting pictograph site. It took a bit of rough driving for us to get to the site. We found this helpful post along the way:
I also spotted this Western Scrub Jay as we were checking out the pictograph sign
On our way to the pictograph site, we also passed this antelope ("where the deer and the antelope play," anyone?)
The drive to the pictograph site was a bit treacherous. The dirt road wound up a mountain side, and at one point our rental car got stuck in a particularly large divot. Luckily, we were able to keep going and eventually arrived at the site, which was a small hike from the dirt road. I snapped some pictures of pretty plants along the way, I don't know the names of all of them:
Eaton's Firecracker (hummingbirds love these)
Thistles
No idea what these were
Mr. Bluebird in his fancy hat from Tombstone, on our way to the pictograph site
The pictographs were really quite fascinating! Some of them had been drawn by Native Peoples as early as 1300 AD. The more recent Apache pictographs were circa 1700 AD
We dodged some poison ivy on the way back from the site, and I was constantly on the lookout for rattlesnakes (quite prominent in the area). Luckily we didn't see any rattlesnakes, but I did catch this little guy hiding under the wooden bridge leading back to the car.
The following day, we took a 2 hour drive to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson. "Museum" is sort of a misnomer, as it was really more of a zoo featuring animals native to the Sonora desert. It was really neat! It was completely open, except for the aviaries, and basically just enclosed the natural desert habitat. It also featured two walk-in aviaries (the highlight for me), one containing all kinds of birds, and the other containing only hummingbirds.
Here are some pictures of the open part of the exhibit
Some Pythonesque humor
I even saw some juvenile Cactus Wrens in the open part of the exhibit
I took these photos in the hummingbird aviary. The hummingbirds were so used to people that they posed quite nicely for the camera, and I was able to get just a few feet away!
Female Broad-billed Hummingbird
Male Broad-billed Hummingbird
Costa's Hummingbird (you may recognize this one, it's the type of hummingbird I painted for my seasonal bird series)
Blue Throated Hummingbird (guessing juvenile male, because not all of his colorful feathers had come in yet)
Rufous Hummingbird
Next we stopped into the other walk-in aviary, with a variety of different birds
Gambel's Quail
Quail Chicks (they were so tiny and adorable!)
Inca Dove
White-winged Dove (Yes, like in the Stevie Nicks song) These guys were going through a molt, so their blue skin was more visible
Black-crowned Night-heron
Black-bellied Whistling Duck
Pyrrhuloxia (AKA Desert Cardinal)
Masked Bobwhite
There were more exhibits, but the heat was so unbearable that we were ready to go back to the inn by the time we had gone through the aviaries. Because the inn we were staying at was in the mountains, it was actually about 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix or Tucson (which got up to 114 degrees F while we were there!), and with the dry air it felt much cooler. I did get a quick snap of the Bighorn Sheep before we left, though.
We were all a bit tired the following day, so we took the opportunity to stay around the inn and birdwatch in the garden. This is a picture from the back garden at the inn. The birds absolutely loved the fountain.
I got a video of a magnificent hummingbird bathing in the fountain, and he posed for me nicely on a nearby branch so that I could get some good pictures.
I also got a few other good shots of birds in the garden
Broad-billed Hummingbird
Juvenile Black Phoebe
Blue Grosbeak
Acorn Woodpecker
Lesser Goldfinches playing in the fountain
Our last full day in Arizona, we headed back toward Phoenix. On the way, we noticed that there was an ostrich ranch along the highway. They had food that you could buy to feed the ostriches, and they even had rainbow lorikeets to feed as well! (Don't worry Disco, they weren't nearly as cool as you
) Mr. Bluebird took some of these photos so that I could be in them.
One of the ostriches tried to take my mother-in-law's hat
A flock of Discos!
I don't know if you can tell, but I am really flushed here. It was so hot, I seriously thought I would pass out!
The very last place we stopped was the Heard Museum in Phoenix. The Heard Museum exhibits pieces created by Southwest, Native American artists. They had a very interesting exhibit on textiles when we were visiting. It was really intriguing to learn about their dying techniques, and how their designs and materials changed over the last couple hundred years. When Native Peoples in Arizona started receiving dyed wool from European colonists, it actually came from "Germantown," or what is known today as Philadelphia. So, some of the pieces displayed in the museum were probably made with wool from our area, pretty cool! Unfortunately I had forgotten my camera at the hotel in Phoenix, so I wasn't able to take any pictures at the museum.
(we had booked one night at a hotel in Phoenix to be closer to the airport the next morning) The gift shop at the Heard Museum sold hundreds of beautiful pieces of artwork and jewelry, all made by Native artists. I picked up a lovely sterling silver feather pendant there, by a Navajo artist name Lena Platero. If you Google her name, you can see her beautiful work for yourself!
The actual flight back to Philadelphia the next day went smoothly, but a storm was just starting when we landed, and that made it unsafe for the airport crew to be on the runway. As a result, we were left sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours until the storm passed! I was at least thankful that we hand landed though, because a number of flights that were supposed to land after ours were diverted to another airport! All in all the trip was great. I'm sorry for making such a long post! It was difficult to weed out the photographs, I actually took about 870! I hope you enjoy them half as much as I enjoyed the trip.