Sabino Canyon

January 23, 2023

It’s cold again this morning - right at the freezing point, and showers or a wintery mix are predicted to pass through soon. That doesn’t happen, but with an expected high of 48 neither of us is interested in a bike ride. Rachael plans for a walk of course, but after some thought I decide it’s the right day to take the Raven out to Sabino Canyon and survey the bird scene there.

Actually, Sabino Canyon is my fallback plan. I’ve seen this cold day coming for awhile, and viewed it as the perfect time to finally take Ron Suchanek’s suggestion and visit the Boneyard. He first suggested this I think four years ago and then again just last week. It’s obviously worth a look - with over 4,000 mothballed aircraft, it’s the largest aircraft boneyard in the world. It covers a large expanse in southeast Tucson, large enough so that it’s easily visible from miles away.

But that’s not happening, I realize after reading up on visitation hours and requirements a few days ago. For security reasons, the boneyard is no longer open for public tours (though the neighboring museum is, if you plan far enough ahead for its once-per-month tour). I missed my chance.

So, a walk in Sabino Canyon it is. I might have just hung around the house and kept warm if 1) the house stayed comfortably warm, which it doesn’t; and 2) if we weren’t required to vacate the premises between 1 and 3 for what’s promised to be the last real estate showing.

It’s a half hour drive out to the canyon, long enough that I’ll only be taking this drive once unless Rachael and I decide to come out together for a hike in the next few days. I’m hopeful I’ll see a new bird or two to make it worthwhile, so it’s good news when I find a blue-gray gnatcatcher right out of the box. I’ve been watching for these tiny, elusive birds ever since the count began, because they’re not that uncommon here - just hard to spot and get a good look at. There are two or three of them today, buried in a mesquite tree on the Nature Trail right behind the visitor’s center. I can’t see much more than a blur of movement among the branches, nothing the camera could focus on though I make several attempts. I’ve got the time though so I sit still for several minutes and wait.

Finally, one ventures out briefly on an exposed branch. The lighting’s good too, and I’m just aiming the camera for a good shot when a couple of walkers passes by and the three birds all fly away immediately. Frustrating and a near miss, but there’s no doubt about what the bird is at least.

This looks like it could be a new dusting from last night.

I saw this pair of thrashers glide in and settle on a glowing cholla about fifty yards away. Shooting into the sun I wasn’t expecting much from this shot but it’s not too bad.

Sabino Canyon is really a popular place, a paradise for walkers. It’s probably the wettest place around, with Sabino Creek having one of the few year-round water flows in the region. It has even more impressive and varied desert vegetation than the nearby national park. And it has a paved road that runs four miles up into the the heart of the canyon that I’m sure would be a delightful ride if we were here in a warmer month, but we’ve never ridden it because it’s only open to bicycles before 9 AM and after 5 PM, and only on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

It’s an outstanding place to walk its many trails though, stopping to admire the views and one impressive desert plant after another. Or to look for birds, if that’s your thing.

I love Saguaro National Park, but the desert scenes in lush Sabino Canyon are probably even better.

Interesting that one of its arms is serving as a crutch for the other.

We’ve been out for longer hikes several times before, but this wouldn’t be a day for one - there’s too much water running through the system now. I don’t get too far into today’s walk when I come to Sabino Creek washing over the road. It was like this several winters ago when we took a great hike out to Seven Falls, and we got through this spot by taking our shoes off and wading through. It’s too cold for that this morning though and I’m not that ambitious today anyway.

Two women of about my age are stopped here also, sitting on the stone wall on one side. They watch as I consider walking across the opposite wall, with its set of four or five isolated stone pillars at the low point in the road, gapped to allow the water to flow through. The posts are closely enough spaced that it looks plausible to step from one to another; but it’s a narrow wall with an uneven surface, so I decide to back up and walk along it aways before getting to the gaps to get a feel for the wall and test out my balance before committing myself.

It only takes a few steps for me to realize it’s just not a smart plan and step down. I could get part way across, lose my balance, and land in the creek. I look up, and the two women have relieved expressions on their faces and congratulate me for doing the wise thing. We’ve all been lucky to get this far, one says. Why ruin it with a fall that could change everything this late in the day? Wise counsel from a fellow survivor.

There’s plenty of water flowing through Sabino Creek today. Signs at the park entrance warned to be wary of possible flash floods.

So I turn back and pick a different path on my way back to the car, one nearer the creek. I’ve just got the gnatcatcher in the creel so far, but then I land another one when three black-throated sparrows hop across the trail in front of me. This was a bird I’ve been confident I’d run across eventually if I just got to a suitable environment but I was starting to get anxious about because we’re running down the days here.

And then there’s a small flock of about a half dozen birds perched in a mesquite. I don’t recognize them at first and they’re backlit so it takes awhile to realize that they’re bluebirds. And then, I look up and there’s a roadrunner just staring at me, not twenty feet away.

Desert plant of the day: Triangle leaf bursage, identified by a panel on the Nature Trail behind the visitor’s center.

Now that I know what this bursage looks like, suddenly I’m seeing it everywhere.

An immature or female western bluebird, one of a flock of about six.

This barrel cactus, a fairly large specimen about two to three feet tall, is growing right out of the rocks.

Well, if you’re just going to stand there twenty feet away begging for your photo to be taken, who am I to say no?

Another look up to the mountains rimming the canyon. The weather is changing fast.

I’m more than happy with today’s take, finding two species that I knew were around but just haven’t had the luck to encounter yet. I’m really doing much better on this enterprise than I’d thought I might, and have seen almost every species on my list of likely sightings. Then this other bird shows up, one I can’t quite place. It seems almost like a female bluebird, but the shape’s not quite right and the coloring is off as well. Fortunately it gives me a good look and I end up with a focused, defining photograph that I can do research against when I get home.

The research takes me awhile, because the Townsend’s solitaire isn’t on any of the local bird checklists I’ve been using as a reference so I haven’t been watching for one. Once I bring its photo up though, it’s obviously the same bird; and further research confirms that they winter here, it’s an appropriate habitat, and I find other photographs of them taken in southern Arizona in the winter.

So - 54, and counting! I’m starting to think that with just a bit more luck I could hit sixty before leaving Arizona and heading north.

This is such a fantastic, grotesque plant. Crested saguaros are all astonishing, but this one is in a class of its own.

And there’s this amazing saguaro nearby, one of its long arms slumped down to the ground and resting against a bench.

It’s only 1:30 when I make it back to town - too early to return home, so I head to Maggie’s Cafe again and hang out there until the open house is due to end, rueing the fact that I hadn’t had the foresight to bring an adapter with me so I could unload the photos to the iPad and study that mysterious bird while I wait around.

We both return home just after three. Rachael gives a mixed review of the eight mile walk she took south of downtown, a new area for her to explore. The not-so-hot came at the south end of her loop along 22nd Street, where she ran into enough homeless campers to make her uncomfortable. Much better was Armory Park, an appealing historical inner city neighborhood just south of downtown that I discovered for myself last winter. If we ever decided to buy a home here, this is the first place I’d look.

Back in town but feeling chilled, she checks herself in at the Scented Leaf Tea House on Congress Street and warms herself up. And then, with still more time to kill she wanders around and finds herself in the Lost Barrio in front of the Airbnb we stayed at two winters ago, our favorite (it’s no longer a rental unfortunately, or we’d have tried for it this year too). When she walks past the old place a small dog from the neighbor’s house runs out to check her out, the same one she often encountered when we stayed there. Likely it remembers her too.

Later we’ll drive over to The Loft to see a film, our first since sometime last winter. I expected the theater to be nearly empty on a Monday afternoon, so I’m surprised when there are twenty or so others in the audience. It’s just our kind of theater - small, independent, showing an eclectic and appealing film mix. I’m sure if we lived here we’d stop in often. Today we’re here to see Living, the new film starring Bill Nighy - a remake of the Kurosawa classic Ikuru, rewritten and set in England by Kazuo Ishiguro. We found it excellent, moving and thought provoking, well worth seeing if for no other reason than because, well, Bill Nighy.

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2023 Bird List

52. Blue-gray gnatcatcher

53. Black-throated sparrow

54. Townsend’s solitaire

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