Exciting lifers in Madera Canyon Arizona birding Episode 2

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the channel and welcome to day two of my Arizona birding trip. It's about 6 15 in the morning now and I'm in an area called Proctor Road. There's a parking area here. This is at the base of Madeira Canyon. So our plan for today is just to work our way up the canyon all the way to the top stopping at all the birding areas and seeing as much as possible. So if you watch the first video from this trip you'll know that we came to Madeira Canyon yesterday. We wanted to come back today and really start early and really do a thorough job of seeing everything that we could from this canyon. So you're going to be seeing a lot more from Madeira Canyon in this video including some of the ones I just couldn't really fit into the first video. So stay tuned and we'll see what we can see at this incredible birding spot, Madeira Canyon, Arizona. It was a very cool morning as we set off on a nice paved trail. In fact we were a little underdressed for the temperature of about 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite the chilly air we could hear plenty of birds singing already. The first one we encountered was a western tanager, a colorful bird that looks like its head was dipped in red paint. It's not an Arizona specialty as it's common throughout western North America all the way up into northern Canada, but it's always fun to see for an east coast birder. Next up was a very vocal Kasson's kingbird. This isn't very good video as the bird was in some early morning shade, but you can see the white line under the eye contrasting with a dark gray throat. With flycatchers in general it's always easier to ID them when they're vocalizing. This is something that will become relevant later in this video. We spotted this plumbus vireo perched in a small tree and it seems that it was still waking up as it was not moving around at all. I was actually able to circle around to the other side of the tree to get an unobstructed view and it never moved. This handsome vireo is part of the solitary vireo complex that was split into three species back in 1997. The plumbus and Kasson's vireos are found in the west while the blue-headed vireo is found in the east. I was hoping that we would also see a Kasson's vireo on this trip, but we may have been too late as they migrate out of Arizona during the spring. As we made our way down Proctor Road itself we were treated to a nice sunrise and it finally started to warm up a bit. A curved-billed thrasher hopped up onto a perch briefly giving a nice look. That's yet another one for the channel life list which is the number in the lower right of the screen. We are certainly adding a lot of those on this trip. Clark's sparrows were common in this area. In fact we saw small flocks of them flying around. They're one of the most handsome sparrows and back home in Massachusetts they're pretty rare. Something I wanted to mention is that we really got lucky with the weather on this trip. It can already be quite hot in Arizona by late April, but while we were there the highs were only in the mid-80s and I don't recall ever being uncomfortably warm. As we were walking back to the parking area a Townsend's warbler appeared and I was able to grab a decent photo. We saw and heard several of them during our trip. With the sun getting a bit higher in the sky it was time for us to drive a few miles farther up into Madera Canyon to our next birding spot. However at this point in the video I actually want to go back to the previous evening which was the evening of day one of our trip. After birding Madera Canyon in the afternoon we had an early dinner in Green Valley and then made the 25-minute drive back up into Madera Canyon to do some night birding. Our goal was to try to hear and maybe even see some owls which is something that Madera Canyon is known for. We drove directly to the Santa Rita Lodge arriving a little before 6 p.m. and we found that the hummingbirds were even more numerous and active than they had been earlier in the afternoon. In addition the softer early evening light was better for photographing them. These are broad-billed hummingbirds. The males are pretty easy to ID due to their bright red bills. Their range barely crosses the Mexican border into Arizona but they were still the most common hummingbird species that we saw in locations south of Tucson. When a broad-billed hummingbird landed very close to me on this perch I was able to get one of my favorite photos of the trip. In this photo from the same series you can see the broad base of the bill that gives this species its name. Here is a broad-tailed hummingbird, another species that was common in Madera Canyon that has a wider U.S. range. The throat of this male is red but it's hard to see from this angle. Here's a photo of a male broad-tailed hummingbird from later in the trip showing the red throat. An Inca dove had been hanging around the Santa Rita Lodge for weeks but earlier in the afternoon we were only able to hear it calling. In the evening session it put in an appearance. It's a very plain dust-colored bird when perched but when flying it shows bright rufous on the wings. One of the most sought-after hummingbirds of southeast Arizona is the Rivoli's hummingbird, formerly known as the Magnificent Hummingbird. It's rather uncommon but Madera Canyon is a great place to find it. Rivoli's hummingbird is significantly larger than any of the other hummingbird species that we saw this trip. For most angles it appears to be quite dark overall but then when the light catches it right you can see a bright green throat and a purple head. You can see why it was called the Magnificent Hummingbird. Yet another hummingbird species that showed up later in the evening was Calliope hummingbird, a tiny hummingbird with a short tail and a very thin bill. This one was a lifer for both myself and my brother-in-law John. This one is a female and you never quite feel like you're getting the full experience when you see a female hummingbird. Fortunately there was also a male Calliope flitting about. The male was feeding at flowers rather than at the feeders and was difficult to photograph in the fading light. However I did get a few shots that show the main field marks. The male Calliope has a magenta throat gorget that's made up of individual streaks of colored feathers. In this photo you can see the very short tail and Calliope hummingbird is actually the smallest bird found in North America. We were making friendly conversation with some of the other birders while watching the hummingbirds and one of them was kind enough to walk us up the road about 50 yards to show us this particular telephone pole. Specifically the hole that you can see in the middle of the pole which happens to be the home of an elf owl. This owl comes out of its hole every night as it gets dark providing birders a chance to get a quick look at it. We found a good viewing spot that was far enough away that we wouldn't disturb the owl and settled in to wait. After about 20 minutes when it was really starting to get dark the owl's tiny head appeared in the hole. An exciting moment as elf owl was one of my most hoped for birds on this trip. This is the smallest owl in the world so it was definitely our night for seeing notably small birds. To compare its size with a bird that most people are familiar with, an elf owl only weighs about half as much as a European starling. The owl spent about five minutes looking around and then somewhat anticlimactically ducked back into its hole. It got darker and darker until I could only see the hole by looking at the electronic viewfinder in my camera. The owl finally reappeared this time it was ready to head out for the night. Here's a photo of the owl with the brightness increased so you can see it better. Coming back now to the next morning after visiting the Proctor Road area we drove up into Madera Canyon to the White House picnic area. We had seen a few different flycatchers there yesterday and today we were heading back with a specific potential lifer in mind. This is a Hammond's flycatcher, a member of the Empidonax genus of flycatchers that are notoriously hard to tell apart. Fortunately it was singing so we knew what it was before we even got eyes on it. A pair of Buick's wrens were flitting busily around and inside this tangle of dead sticks, a situation that was not conducive to getting good video footage. After switching to photos I was able to get some decent shots. Buick's wren is the western counterpart of the Carolina wren found in the east. Getting back to flycatchers, this is an ash-throated flycatcher, a common bird found throughout the western United States that's a member of the Mayarchus genus. Mayarchus flycatchers are also known for being tricky to identify. This bird looks quite similar but it's actually a different Mayarchus flycatcher, a brown-crested flycatcher. It has a slightly darker head and larger build than an ash-throated flycatcher, but once again sound is the reliable way to separate these flycatchers. Brown-crested flycatcher has a much more limited U.S. range than ash-throated flycatcher, as I'll show in a minute. This is a Coos white-tailed deer, a subspecies that's native to Arizona and is smaller than a typical white-tailed deer. Now you wouldn't think that there would be more than two flycatcher species from the same genus in the same small picnic area, but as I will explain in person, that was not true in this case. Okay, so we're at the White House picnic area trails. These are some nice trails that lead downwards from the picnic area. We had some good luck here yesterday. We came back today with a particular flycatcher in mind and we just got it. So this is a dusky-capped flycatcher, which is a lifer for both of us, so we're pretty excited about that. The Merlin Bird app has been extremely helpful because there's three different flycatchers of the same type here. The ash-throated flycatcher, the dusky-capped flycatcher, and the brown-crested flycatcher. They all look really similar, but they have very distinctive calls and so the calls really separate them. So pretty excited about that and then I'll show you the footage of the dusky-capped flycatcher. The dusky-capped flycatcher has a bit more yellow on the belly than the other two Mayarchus flycatchers, but I would not have been completely comfortable IDing it without hearing it. Fortunately, this one sang while I was filming it. That high-pitched trilling song is very different from the songs of ash-throated and brown-crested flycatchers. Here are the range maps for these three flycatchers. This area of southeast Arizona is the only place in the United States where they can all be found. Dusky-capped flycatchers prefer higher elevations than the other two, so this location partway up Madera Canyon is the perfect place to find all three of them together. One more bird from the White House picnic area was this rufous crown sparrow. Unfortunately, it was a skulker and I couldn't get any better photos than this. We next stopped briefly at the Madera picnic area just up the road and found a painted red start. They are really sharp with their black, white, and red plumage, but once again I wasn't able to get any really good photos. This one isn't too bad. We then parked near the Santa Rita Lodge again and settled in to watch the amazing display of birds. The wild turkeys were present, as always, right under the feeders. An Arizona woodpecker showed up on a suet feeder, another lifer for both of us. This is the only brown woodpecker found in the United States, and as the name implies, it's another specialty species of the area. Arizona woodpecker is closely related to hairy and downy woodpeckers. We also got a visit from a beautiful hooded oriole. This is more of a lower elevation bird, so it illustrates how Madera Canyon is at an intermediate elevation where a wide variety of species can coexist. Hooded oriole is also another addition to the Growing Channel life list. This delicate looking little bird is a bridled titmouse. They're significantly smaller than the tufted titmouse that's common in the east, and they're quite cute with that snazzy black and white pattern on the face. Here's another attractive bird, an acorn woodpecker. These are very common in California, but we didn't see too many on this Arizona trip. I will also just briefly show two birds from Madera Canyon that I already showed in the previous video, Mexican jay and hepatic tanager. We left Santa Rita Lodge and continued up the paved road to the point where it ends at a spot generally known as the Mount Wrightson picnic area. This is the trailhead for a few hiking trails that lead up to even higher altitudes, and our plan was to hike up one of those. As we set out on the hike, we started seeing and hearing house wrens. I found this a bit odd as I associate them with low altitude suburban areas. Okay, so we're on the finishing part of a pretty long hike that we did here. We went all the way up to the top of Madera Canyon and walked on the Cary Nation Trail. This is a well-known trail. It's one of the steepest trails I've ever hiked. Extremely steep and extremely rocky. The advantage of that, though, is it does get you up in altitude so that you can see different birds that specialize in the higher altitude. We started this hike around nine in the morning, and we were hoping to find the trogans, the coppery-tailed trogans that used to be called elegant trogans, and we didn't. I think we were probably too late for that. Someone told us that they really stop calling around eight o'clock in the morning and you have to get out early. However, we have seen a lot of other really good stuff on this hike. Red-faced warbler, Grace's warbler. So let's go show the video for some of those birds. Red-faced warbler is one of those birds that really jumps out at you when you're looking through a field guide, so we were excited to get a close look at this one. They're actually quite common at higher elevations, and we saw a few of them on this trip and heard many more. Here are a few photos I took of a red-faced warbler in better light back in 2024 in Flagstaff, Arizona. We also saw and heard a few Grace's warblers on this hike. They're very similar to the yellow-throated warbler found in the east. One other note from this hike is that we heard a northern pygmy owl tooting away. At one point, we felt that we were fairly close to it, but it wasn't practical to try to go off trail to look for it, so it was a herd-only lifer for both of us. Okay, after a long day at Madeira Canyon, we are back here in Green Valley. It's just about sunset. We actually had a nice park here called Desert Meadows Park, and we've been seeing a lot of hummingbirds and other species here. But I showed a lot of birds in this video, and it's time to wrap up the second video, but I will be back with video number three. So the plan for us now tomorrow is to head down to Patagonia and then around to Sierra Vista, birding along the way, and then we'll be in the Sierra Vista area for a few days after that. So there will be more videos to come. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.