Chiricahuas with the Co-op

 

Most of this summer has been fairly low-intensity for birding and general wildlife things, for reasons I won't belabor since I've complained about them enough already. The major exception to that was the second week of August, when I continued my now-annual tradition of heading to Tucson for the Southeast Arizona Birding Festival. I went for the first time back in 2021 (during an ill-advised blogging hiatus), and attended again last year before driving down to Mexico. 

This year I was once again joining to represent The Birding Co-op at the festival itself, but this time was different for a couple of reasons. First, I was getting there a few days early on a Co-op organized camping trip in the Chiricahua Mountains, which I was extremely excited for. Second and much more importantly, Nikki was going to be with me. This was her first time in Arizona, and her first time in general anywhere in the American West. We were both extremely excited for her to get a taste of the desert, and to see some proper mountains as well. There were also other reasons for us to be out there: Nikki's niece was in Phoenix for a dance competition the same week as the festival, so both of her sisters and her brother-in-law were also coming out. It all came together quite well.

Right off the bad things didn't entirely go according to plan. Our plan was to fly out on Monday August 5, but on Sunday night I got a notification that our flight from DC to Phoenix had been canceled. After over an hour on hold with various operators and more than a couple profanities hurled at the computer it turned out that the hurricane in the Southeast had grounded most American Airlines planes and wreaked havoc with general air travel. Ultimately the only way for us to get into Arizona less than a full day late was to cancel the outgoing flight and cough up the extra money for a last-minute booking with Southwest that got us there that evening. 

We had originally hoped to make it into Phoenix by midday and drive down to the Chiricahuas that afternoon, but with the flight changes it was 10:30 PM by the time we had arrived at the airport and secured our rental car. Obviously a four-hour drive to a campsite wasn't in the cards, so we instead stayed at a random hotel along I-10 about 2/3 of the way to. the Chiris. Even without driving the whole way we still didn't get to bed until 1:30 AM, which was 4:30 AM according to our internal clocks.

Tuesday morning we were still up at the crack of dawn, since we now only had one full day in the Chiris and wanted to make the most of it. We stopped at a supermarket to pick up some food and drinks, then drove the rest of the way to the Sunny Flats campground where everyone was staying. The drive in the daytime was stunning, especially as we drew nearer to the mountains. The Chiricahua Mountains are one of the many isolated mountains in the Southwest that form sky islands, areas of cooler and wetter climates rising above the desert. There are very few drives more interesting than those going up sky island mountain ranges: beginning with hot desert and then climbing through dry scrub, deciduous woodlands, pine-oak forest, and then finally high-elevation pine forests. The drive up the Chiris is particularly good, as the road above the little town of Portal goes straight up the Cave Creek Canyon, with the canyon walls rising dramatically on either side. 

Despite its name the Sunny Flats Campground was surprisingly cool and shady, located next to a dry creek bed in the middle of Cave Creek Canyon. The other Co-op folks were still out on their morning birding outing so we walked around the campsite a bit to stretch our legs and see some birds. To my surprise one of the first birds of the day was an Arizona Woodpecker feeding at eye level near the campsite bathroom- a bird I'd missed completely my first visit to the state and got as a lifer only last year. There were also lots of Acorn Woodpeckers around and a little group of Oak Titmice feeding in the trees. Spotted Towhees were calling incessantly the whole morning, although they were much harder to see. 

Arizona Woodpecker

Acorn Woodpecker

Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia)

Ball's Shieldback (Eremopedes balli), a type of weird katydid

The Sunny Flats campground

The rest of the Co-op group got back to the campsite around 8:30, and we said our hellos and had some breakfast. There were 10 of us including Nikki and me, plus another two who had left for another event before we got there. Mollee, Jimmy, Josh, and Cedar I'd birded with many times before while Roopak, Corey, Mike, and Erich I'd known only over the internet. The others had just finished up a morning down in the lowlands, and the plan for the day was to bird our way up to high elevation areas, escaping the heat as the day went on. We arranged ourselves into three cars, and began to convoy up the mountain.

The cool thing about the Chiris is that there are good-quality dirt roads criss-crossing them at all elevations, from the base almost up to the highest peaks. That means it's easy to get around to look for all the birds that occur at various elevations there, as well as just having a gorgeous, scenic drive. The road wound up the side of the Cave Creek Canyon from the oak-juniper forest of the campground to the more pine-heavy forest further up. Our first stop was at a little creek that crossed the road where we thought there might be some interesting wildlife. There weren't too many birds besides the usual ubiquitous Spotted Towhees, but the side of the creek was full of butterflies, beetles, and other insect life coming in to get water or minerals from the mud. That include a couple of Arizona Sisters, possibly my favorite butterfly in the US.

Grey Buckeye (Junonia grisea)

Arizona Sister (Adelpha eulalia)

Echo Azure (Celastrina echo)

Reakirt's Blue (Echinargus isola)

Red-spotted Admiral (Limenitis arthemis)

Spine-tipped Dancer (Argia extranea)

Western Red-bellied Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sedecimpunctata)

Jewel Beetles (Acmaeodera solitaria) mating in Chiricahua Mountain Mock Vervain (Glandularia chiricahensis)

Exoprosopa rostrifera, a type of bee fly

We continued upwards, past the scrubby chaparral of the exposed ridges and on to the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains, where we descended a bit to the Pinery Campground. The campground is best known for being the site of a pair of roosting [redacted], but although we searched for them for a while we never saw them. There were lots of other birds around though, including some nice warblers like Grace's Warbler and Painted Whitestart, a young Hermit Thrush, a few Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, many Western Wood-Pewees, and a family of Cooper's Hawks with the recently-fledged babies chasing their parents around and begging for food. The local herd of White-tailed Deer was stupidly tame, and we also saw the local endemic subspecies of Mexican Fox Squirrel, which is sometimes split as Chiricahua Mountain Fox Squirrel, although photography was tough.

Western Wood Pewee

Hermit Thrush

Baby Cooper's Hawk still figuring out the whole "bird of prey" thing

White-tailed Deer

Sadly my best photo of Chiricahua Fox Squirrel

Firecrackerbush (Bouvardia ternifolia)

Dull Firetip (Apyrrothrix araxes) and some little beetles feeding on a thistle

Eventually we gave up on looking for the [redacted] and got back in the car to head uphill again. We stopped for a mixed flock going by the road, which included some Hepatic Tanagers and more Painted Whitestarts, but it soon passed over. A small warbler-like bird passed through that we thought might have been an Olive Warbler, the elusive taxonomical oddity of Mexico and Southeastern Arizona, but we didn't get a good enough look. The main star of that spot however was an enormous Gopher Snake that Josh spotted making its way up the hillside! An extremely cool animal and a herp lifer for me.

Gopher Snake

Canyonland Satyr (Cyllopsis pertepida)

The last stop of the morning's expedition was the Rustler Park campground in the far upper reaches of the Chiris. That high up it was a cool, shady forest full of Arizona Pines and Douglas Firs, with Steller's Jays replacing Mexican Jays and Pine Siskins mixing in with the Lesser Goldfinches. We ate lunch in a little picnic area and then walked around looking for more birds. Nesting season was drawing to a close for most birds and there were fledgling birds everywhere–Western Bluebirds, House Wrens, Rock Wrens, and many, many Yellow-eyed Juncos. The best birds were the Buff-breasted Flycatchers hanging around in a field of wildflowers–a bird I'd only seen once before in Mexico City and one of the only nice-looking Empidonax flycatchers. Some people decided to hike the nearby peak, while others of us hung back to enjoy the wildflowers and explore the woods. I tried to get some decent bird-and-wildflower pictures, and walking in the woods we saw some more good pine forest birds like Pygmy Nuthatches and Mexican Chickadees, a bird that's only found in Mexico except for a tiny population in the Chiris.

Steller's Jay

Fledgling House Wren

Fledgling Western Bluebird

Slightly older juvenile Western Bluebird

Yellow-eyed Junco

Buff-breasted Flycatcher

Northern Flicker

Rock Squirrel

Plains Beebalm (Monarda pectinata)

Mountain Oxeye (Heliopsis parvifolia)

Beardlip Penstemon (Penstemon barbatus)

Richardson's Geranium (Geranium richardsoni)

The mountain forest at Rustler Park

By then it was mid-afternoon, so we made our way back down the mountain toward our campsite. We drove slowly particularly in the lower part as we were all hoping to come across some Montezuma Quails. The quails (or "zoomies" as many birders like to call them) are found only in Mexico and the southwestern US and are one of my main US nemeses, as I've spent weeks in Arizona without seeing them. We all drove slowly down the mountain hoping for a quail to run across the road, which is how most people apparently see them. As we were in the lower part of the road, Mollee radioed us from the car up ahead to let us know that they were seeing quails! I drove further up as fast as I could go without going at a speed that would spook any roadside fowl, and we pulled up behind the other car just as the group of quail was going into the woods. Some of us saw them well, but all I saw from the driver's side was a Montezuma Quail butt disappearing into the shrubbery. It was a lifer for me, but not a particularly satisfying one.

Thankfully, just around the corner we saw another Montezuma Quail- and this one was a male walking next to the road right in the open! We spent the next 10 minutes watching the little nerf ball-sized quail as it trundled along the hillside, showing off his impressive headgear in the process. It was by far my most-wanted bird from Arizona, and another favorite birding moment of the year.

Montezuma Quail!

Unfortunately, the quails came at a cost- as I finished taking pictures I noticed that the little 'tire pressure' light on my rental car had come on, and the tire was at only 25 psi. The tire still wasn't noticeably flat and we were still in the middle of nowhere anyway, so I didn't have much of a choice but to continue driving on it back to the campsite. Corey had an air compressor in his truck so we decided that it made more sense to try and fill the tire and hope it was just a slow leak, rather than try and make it to the nearest gas station 30 miles away. 

In the meantime, we got dinner in Portal and then headed to one of the bird feeding setups outside of town to look for some desert birds. There are probably all of about 60 people living in Portal, but at least half of them are birders who took up residence there because it's nice and close to the Chiris, if not to less important things like gas stations, groceries, or medical care. This setup was run by Bob Rodrigues, and it was right in the middle of the desert scrub with lots of signs warning about rattlesnakes. Sadly there were no rattlesnakes but there were lots of nice birds coming into the feeders, including House Finches, Canyon Towhees, Black-throated Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, a Broad-billed Hummingbird, and many silly Gambel's Quails, the second quail we'd seen that day. My favorite were the several Pyrrhuloxias, a strange desert-dwelling relative of cardinals that I'd only seen briefly through a moving car, and certainly never photographed. I hadn't realized how brightly-colored the male birds were in real life, or how distinct they looked from cardinals. 

Female Pyrrhuloxia- Erich pointed out that they look like "zombie cardinals", which is exactly correct

Male Pyrrhuloxia

The Co-op crew at the feeders (picture by Nikki)

Nikki and I rode with Mollee and Jimmy back to the campsite, and we stopped several times on the way- once for a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, and once for a Tucson Bronze Tarantula crossing the road. Back at the campsite, Corey tried to inflate the tire in our rental car but it had gone down to 5 psi while we were gone, and it had an audible leak somewhere in it. Unfortunately there was no choice but for us to change the flat tire- my second flat tire on a birding trip after the incident in Mindanao. It was also just yet another in a long series of car troubles that I've been having so far this year- bad car-ma one might call it. 

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Tucson Bronze Tarantula (Aphonopelma vorhiesi), I think

After Corey, Jimmy, and Mollee helped change out the spare tire (thanks guys) and Corey and I set up a moth sheet with our combined equipment, we headed out to do some herping. Southeastern Arizona is possibly one of the best spots in the US for general nature observation, and besides birding that includes cruising the desert roads at night to look for reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and any other nocturnal wildlife. We had a successful night of herping, with at least 8 different Mojave Rattlesnakes as well as a cool whip scorpion and a surprise sighting of a Javelina, a mammal lifer for me and one I'd looked for many times in Arizona without success. Corey and Jimmy also insisted on getting out of the car for every single snake in the road in order to get it out of the way of moving cars, resulting in lots of poking venomous snakes with sticks and jumping out of the way of their fangs as they lunged back instead of slithering away. It was of course a great example of altruism toward nature, but it also could have been set to Yakety Sax.

Mojave Rattlesnake

Some sort of cool whipscorpion (Eremobates sp.)

We got back to the campsite at almost 10PM, but the night wasn't over. I'd done moth sheets in Arizona before with just my LepiLED, but this was my first time doing it with the addition of Corey's LED light and a proper sheet setup. I was hoping it would bring in even more insect life, and boy howdy did it ever. By my count we ended up with over 100 species of moth coming into 10 square feet of sheet, and that's not counting the ones we haven't IDed yet. There were at least 2 other campsites that had insect light setups nearby, and it was easy to see why- this was the best moth sheet I'd seen since Borneo. What follows is a very, very small portion of all the moths we saw- although the full selection can be seen in the iNaturalist project that Corey set up. 

White-lined Sphinx (Hyles lineata)

Scaralina cristata, a type of planthopper

Zale insula

Glorious Jewel Scarab (Chrysina gloriosa), accurately named

Castolus ferox, an assassin bug enjoying an easy meal

Edwards's Glassy-wing Moth (Pseudohemihyalea edwardsii)

Gloveria gargamelle, an enormous lappet moth apparently named after the Smurfs character

Polished Bird-dropping Moth (Tarache expolita)

 Diptychophora harlequinalis

Paler Graphic (Drasteria harlequinescens)

Tarache geminocula

Grote's Bertholdia (Bertholdia trigona), possibly the moth highlight of the trip- partly because it's gorgeous, but also because it apparently makes clicking sounds with its genitalia that disrupt the echolocation of bats. Evolution!

Beloved Emarginea Moth (Emarginea percara)

Small-eyed Sphinx (Paonia myops)

Western Picture-winged Antlion (Glenurus luniger)

Green Oslaria Moth (Oslaria viridifera)

Apatelodes pudifacta

Showy Holomelena (Virbia ostenta)

Hadena glaciata- only 13 observations on iNaturalist

Spotted Datana Moth (Datana perspicua)

Acrolophus persimplex- only 6 observations on iNaturalist!

A reasonably successful moth sheet if I do say so myself

The next morning we woke up at 5AM, and had some morning caffeine while watching the sun rise over the campsite. In terms of natural beauty it's very, very hard to beat sunrise in the desert, especially when you toss in some nice mountains and the green foliage of the summer monsoons. If Arizona got a bit of California's coastline instead of being landlocked, I don't think there'd be a better state for either scenery or nature. 

Sunrise at the Sunny Flats campground

Our destination that morning was the Cave Creek Canyon trail, which went along the dry riverbed a bit above our campsite. That was one of the more reliable spots for Elegant Trogon, as well as a few birds others still needed like White-eared Hummingbird. Almost as soon as we started walking we heard the grunting calls of an Elegant Trogon, and soon afterwards we located a pair of them sitting right over the trail! It's still a bit weird to me that we have trogons in the US, but I'm not exactly complaining about it. Walking further onward we had great looks at a couple of Arizona Woodpeckers, while there were Acorn Woodpeckers all around as always. A friendly Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher came in for a bit, and there were lots of Mexican Jays throughout the trail, along with Painted Whitestarts, Spotted Towhees, Canyon Wrens, and Broad-tailed and Black-chinned Hummingbirds. We thought we might have heard a Northern Pygmy Owl calling in the distance, but never got any closer to it or saw it. The White-eared Hummingbird was also a no-show, although it had been seen the previous day.

Elegant Trogon

Arizona Woodpecker

Acorn Woodpecker

Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher

Mexican Jay

Sonoran Bumble Bee (Bombus sonorus)

Orange Sulphur (Colias eurytheme)

Scarlet Hedgenettle (Stachys coccinea)

Our final stop in the Chiris before heading back to Tucson was Dave Jasper's feeders outside of Portal, another one of the well-known feeder setups in the area. This was another good spot for desert-y birds, and things were hopping that morning, with Hooded Orioles and Bullock's Orioles coming in for some jelly, Verdins hanging out looking for seeds, Acorn Woodpeckers and a pair of Ladder-backed Woodpeckers coming in for peanut butter, Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, Rufous Hummingbirds, Broad-billed Hummingbirds, Black-chinned Hummingbirds, and a Blue-throated Mountaingem visiting the hummingbird feeder, and lots of other birds coming in and out including Cactus Wrens, Curve-billed Thrashers, Inca Doves, and Pyrrhuloxia. The most fun to watch was a family group of Gambel's Quails that made its way through, hopping through the low branches and scratching on the ground while making funny little tooting noises. It was yet another reminder that, regardless of their appearance, habitat or rarity all galliformes are essentially just chickens at the end of the day.

Male Hooded Oriole

Female Hooded Oriole- slightly less spectacular

Male Bullock's Oriole

Acorn Woodpecker

Male Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Blue-throated Mountaingem

Curve-billed Thrasher

Cactus Wren

Male Pyrrhuloxia

Adult Gambel's Quail showing off his doodle

Juvenile Gambel's Quail

Inca Dove

Cliff Chipmunk

That was all we had time for, as the Birding Festival was starting up that afternoon in Tucson and the Birding Co-op had rented an AirBnb we were all staying at. We parted ways in Portal, with people heading up to Tucson in various vehicles and Nikki and I going to get our rental car fixed (sigh). It had been an amazing little camping trip in the Chiris even if we'd missed a couple days of it, and it was also exactly why Mollee and Josh founded the Birding Co-op and the rest of us joined on: a chance for people to meet up and spend time together in cool birding spots without breaking the bank. Definitely the sort of thing that makes me excited for more Experiences in the future.