The End Of May Thru June 1 -- Looking For Flammulated Owl, A Trogon Count -- And A Fire

Most of these happened within the past week, and didn't get mentioned in my blog posts...My friend Dodie had yet to see a Flammuated Owl. Rick Taylor, in his guide "Birds of Southeastern Arizona" that's essential to birding here, says they're "fairly common" -- but they're pretty dang hard to find. A few weeks ago my friends (yes, I have a lot of friends here) Lori and Mark saw one -- or at least at momentary glimpse of one -- and a day later we staked it out, but got skunked. And it's a "Life Bird" for me, too. However, there were reports of another, so we went to the area shortly after dark, armed with our headlamps and flashlights. Lori and Mark are excellent "owlers", so there was a good chance we'd find it. And we did; after about a half hour, Lori saw its eye shine through the tangled branches of a pine tree. I'd brought my 500mm "Big Boy" lens with me on the off chance I might get off a shot, though it was totally dark and the shutter speed would be low, but Mark shined a light on it ("Where is it? "Right there, next to the main trunk! " "Shoot, I can't see it!" "Stand right behind me and look at where I'm pointing!" *snap snap snap* ) -- and I got it. This is like the old Saturday Night Live skit with Father Guido Sarducci explaining "The Pope In The Pizza" contest, except this is "The Flamm In The Tree"; can you spot it?

Yes, that's it -- off in the left-hand corner. Its eyes are dark and have a reddish tint, somewhat unique among Owls. The shot isn't on par with my best -- and it looks like "he" has an Eddie Munster widow's peak -- but I got the evidence that we did see it, and Dodie and I got our Lifer...

In an earlier post I did a piece on Bob Waldmire, a graphic artist  whose specialty was Route 66. He lived here part-time, and when he passed away from cancer his house was put up for sale, along with a classic Shasta trailer he had in his back yard. A high school teacher in Douglas, Mark Silverstein,  bought the trailer, renovated it, and now it's a small museum containing momentos of Bob. It's permanently parked at the Portal Lodge and Cafe here. I got to know Mark and his wife Maggie, so I chronicled their restoring the trailer, and the grand opening was during the Memorial Day weekend. Here's Mark and the finished product --

On Sunday the 29th I participated in the annual Elegant Trogon count, where a team is assigned areas in the Cave Creek Canyon area to hear, and hopefully see, Trogons to get an idea of how many there are here. I volunteered to cover two areas -- Ash Spring and Herb Martyr. I was familiar with both areas as I'd hiked to them in the past. Part of the census procedure was to go to a central spot in your area and and stay there from 6am to 9am, listening for a Trogon calling. The first place I went to, Ash Spring, didn't have any Trogons, or at least that I could hear, but I did find a nice Cordilleran Flycatcher with nesting material along Cima Creek -- 

 After 9am I hiked to Herb Martyr and headed up the creek bed above the small waterfall created by Herb Martyr Dam. Then -- sheesh!  -- I heard a Trogon calling. It was what's called a "koink" call, where a male is calling for a female to mate with. But where was it? If you remember, here's what an Elegant Trogon looks like; this was taken during an encounter I had with one in South Fork a few weeks back -- 

A beautiful bird from the tropics whose northern limit of its range are a few "sky islands" in SE Arizona, including the Chiricahuas. As the water level in Cave Creek was low, I walked up the creek bed -- until I came to a fence that went across the creek and up on the hillsides on either side; I couldn't explore further. But there was a male Elegant Trogon around there, and another to add to the census list.

Now for some more recent items...The birds in my back yard are getting more interesting as migration progresses. For instance, I saw this Brown-crested Flycatcher on my property. I'd never seen one there before, and got off some quick shots before it disappeared in the brush. It's a bird of Arizona's desert southwest and the coast of Texas -- 

The most colorful bird in my back yard has to be Mr. Blue Grosbeak; he's been here for about a week.

And I finally saw the missus -- 

It's been dry here -- no real precipitation since January. The forecast for the next 2 weeks is for temperatures in the mid- to upper-90s, and a heat warning was just issued for Cochise County. But as noted before, we have been getting monsoon-y clouds, yet very little actually makes it to the ground. And accompanying the clouds has been lightning...While sitting on  my front porch I managed to get this shot, at ISO 6400, of a lightning strike --

While going to Animas, New Mexico yesterday the 1st to pick up a good deal on bird seed (50 pounds for $22, so I got 2 bags) I looked to the west and saw the area of one of the fires that was caused by the lightning. It's the dark area just above the valley, to the left of Portal Peak, the tallest one -- 

The clouds built up again, as you can see, but we were spared the lightning display this time. The burn covered 300 acres, and this area still has the memories of the horrific Horseshoe 2 Fire in June 2011, which eventually burned over 250,000 acres. So the fire crews -- mostly volunteers from Portal Rescue, residents who help fight fires and provide emergency medical services -- monitored the area for any flareups. We also had a "hot shot" team from CA's Sequoia/Kings Canyon area that were sent here to help with events like this; they could be spared as the Sierra received a good El Nino soaking. It was forecast to hit us, too, but alas, it never panned out...