life list: 507

First off–you may have noticed I haven’t written or anything in two years. Sowwy!! It’s been so long that my last post was my AZ Big Day in 2023, lol. Anyways, here are the major updates from this two year period:

1. My life list is now at 496. Recent trips to Ireland, Japan, Austin, and Amsterdam have bolstered this number. Some avian highlights include the Red-Crowned Crane, European Goldfinch, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, and Barnacle Goose!
2. I bought a digital camera. I finally caved and got the same setup as Patrick, which is a Canon R7 with a rf100 100-400mm lens. It’s already made my birding a lot more fun so I’m glad I bit the bullet and blew an ungodly amount of money on it. As my mom inscrutably said, “The camera has already paid for itself!”. Girl math! The main downside is I can’t use the hashtag #deathbeforedigital anymore and I have become less insufferable, but don’t worry: my sufferability index has remained the same due to the addition of Irish trad music to my personality.

Anyways let’s get down to business. I visited Arizona last weekend for my annual Mother’s Day/Birding Bonanza. It seems like the birding community has perma-grouped one of the annual big days with Mother’s Day, which could be fun for moms who like birding, I guess. Like in 2023, I dragged my family along to see as many birds as we could in a 24 hour period throughout our immediate area. Unlike my single-county Alameda County Big Day, we were in both Pima and Santa Cruz Counties for this AZ one. Our goal was to see 100 bird species and to visit Madera, Florida, and Box Canyons as well as Sweetwater Wetlands and Reid Park.

The day begins: Madera, Florida, and Box Canyons

We left at 5:30 from Tucson after a few minutes of Patrick rapidly identifying early morning bird song in my parents’ yard—11 species, to be exact! After this fun lil’ moment, we continued on.

Last year we saw the Five-striped Sparrow in Box Canyon. Although he’s still in the area, it was incredibly windy when we were there which wasn’t ideal and we weren’t able to see him.

We drove around for a while with Marghi sleeping in the car (another echo of 2023), making our way to Florida Canyon for a small hike where we saw some birds (11 to be exact).

Last on our morning stop was Madera Canyon. Unfortunately, we weren’t lucky enough for a Trogon Spotting, but we didn’t try too hard since none had been seen recently. We instead spent most of our time at the feeders at Santa Rita Lodge, where we saw 14 species of birds.

Reliably at these feeders in spring and summer, you can get very up close and personal with the Rivoli’s Hummingbird. Tucson is about as far north as these big boys fly.

A fun fact I’m just regurgitating from Google is that these hummingbirds are named after the second Duke of Rivoli and Anna’s Hummingbirds are named after the Duke’s wife. Must be nice!

AZ Classic: Sweetwater Wetlands

Sweetwater is kind of the main place to be in Tucson; I’m sure I’ve mentioned it many times although I’m yet to write about it for a full article! Next time! For reasons I get into a bit later, this was a pretty low-joy outing, although we still saw 21 species and 9 were N2TD (new to the day).

Saguaro?? I hardly knew her!

We were here before and slightly after sunset, and it was soooo pretty! We saw the rising of the moon and many birds, including a Gila Woodpecker feeding her babies in a saguaro cactus and a Greater Roadrunner yawning, which I kind of feel has never been captured on camera before!?

All evening we were fantasizing about seeing an Elf Owl, which none of us had before. And, lo! We did!

Elf Owls are the smallest owls/raptors in the world. For some reason, their tagline across the internet is that they “are the size of a juice box!”, which adds to their adorable branding—see more here.

As you know, we do NOT doxx owls here so I won’t tell you exactly which cactus this juice box lives in but it was on an easily accessed trail at Saguaro East National Park, which seems to be the #1 hotspot in the world to see Elf Owls.

The best way to spot an Elf Owl is to listen for their distinctive call, which sounds like a squeaky toy! Great branding!!!

Not to self-flagellate too much here but in case the new pope is seeing this: Dear father, forgive me for I have sinned. It’s been at least 18 years since my last confession (to a priest, I generally overshare to everyone at all times). I played the Elf Owl’s call on Merlin to try to find an Elf Owl. I feel so profoundly horrible about this and I will never do it again. I am raked with shame. Was the owl hopeful to hear the call of a potential new friend? Was she scared or confused or angry or sad? I am sorry, Elf Owl/god! I learned my lesson and will never do it again.

Now to hit you with the facts:

• When eating scorpions, they remove the stinger. Baby Einstein!!
• Their Spanish name is Mochuelo de Los Saguaros, the cutest name fit for the cutest owl!

After the sun went down, we called it at 70 birds! Check out my trip report here.

I like to pretend I learn things every Big Day that I will incorporate in future Big Days. The truth is that I am lazy (see: not posting for 2 years) so I probably won’t, but here’s some info in case anyone else is good at learning:

• Due to humanity’s ongoing march into climate change hell, it was way hotter than I remember it being in 2023 which threw a wrench into things, IMO. Basically 11 am – 5 pm was unbirdable due to the heat. From our Sweetwater attempt it also seems like the birds feel this way. Besides the sweet caress of death or living somewhere with a more temperate climate, I think the only solution to this is birding even earlier and even later. I made a half-assed push to start an hour before sunrise but understandably no one, including myself, wanted to leave at 4:30 AM.  
• Owls Must Be Included. Mostly because I love them so much, I think it’s a good idea to stay out late or do a separate night run to see a local owl. Also, in terms of balance and variety, having a Big Day list without a type of owl on there makes you look like a loser who can’t stay up past sunset. 

All in all, we saw 70 species including 4 N2MBs. The highlight of the day was the Elf Owl. I’ll see you next time for the blog post I will DEFINITELY WRITE VERY SOON SO HELP ME GOD!