Titmouse Lunch

I arrived in Arizona at 8pm, by 11:30pm I had finally obtained a rental car (from a different rental agency than the one I'd originally purchased it from, due to a number of arcane rules not listed on the website from which I bought them, a website which still has my money, as the rental car agency cannot refund it because it was never released to them as I never rented a car). I then proceeded to drive two hours to a travel trailer I'd rented in someone's backyard in Tucson, AZ, where I couldn't get to sleep until 3:30, at which point I got exactly three hours of sleep after being woken up at 6:30am. But I'm genuinely not complaining. In fact I think the trip has gone beautifully so far. Why? Because I was woken up by the sound of a bird. I still do not know which bird it was that woke me up (the phone I keep for using Merlin was buried in a suitcase). But I know that the minute I heard that bird I was way, way too excited to get back to sleep.

This Northern Mockingbird was chatting up a storm. Merlin kept thinking it was other birds.

Madera Canyon

I'm typing this at 8:30pm at the end of the same day, having spent the majority of it birding in Madera Canyon, a place where I saw over ten new species of bird. That morning outside the Tucson travel trailer I saw a good 7 or so new species as well. I hit my 100th life bird: A Painted Redstart who was dancing and flirting with me, standing on a branch directly above my path, looking at me and fanning its tail, showing off to my camera. "You're beautiful," I told it.

At first he was looking away Then he saw me Then he started posing for me

I ate my lunch (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, same as my dinner, because I really, really can't afford this vacation) on a picnic table surrounded by Bridled Titmice and White-Breasted Nuthatches. A sort of southern Arizona mirror world to the red-breasted nuthatches and chestnut-backed chickadees that swarm our porch feeder back home. It felt like they were dining with me. Or, perhaps more accurately like I was foraging with them, given my approach to cuisine on this trip.

White-breasted Nuthatch doing the classic Nuthatch pose

I also met a number of other birders, most of whom seemed to fit my extremely loose rule of thumb that birders all are either retired or seem gay (whether or not they are). I had delightful conversations with both kinds. To the first (gay-seeming) birder I met I confessed "I'm hoping to see the Trogon." "Aren't we all, she replied." To those taking notes, that would be the Coppery-Tailed Trogon (formerly the Elegant Trogon--they split the species in 2025, as there is a Mexican population and a central amercian one and the Central American one I guess got the elegant name).

These thoughts are tumbling out of me all disorganized probably because I am typing this at 8:30pm at the end of this day inside my rental car, parked in Portal, AZ, an extremely remote town in southeastern Arizona that's supposed to have some of the best birding in the country. I'm wearing about five or six layers of clothing and hoping to be able to catch some more sleep to add to the three hours from last night. So far I think I've gotten two, maybe, since I parked here at 6pm. Desert nighttime cold is REAL. It doesn't fuck around. My plan was to come up here, try to sleep in the car and get up with the sunrise to see what the first hour of sunshine looks like in one of the best towns for birding in the country. In spite of the cold and the occasional desire to eat something that isn't peanut butter, I am VERY excited. I may also be manic, but it's hard to say when I'm spending my days doing my favorite thing in the world and trying to sleep in very cold places where I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway. When I close my eyes and everything is super quiet I hear bird sounds that aren't there. We're far enough from light pollution here that I can see the bright moon and a whole mess of bold stars surrounding. Earlier tonight the moon had created this enormous halo that took up the center of the sky like a giant bullseye.

I stared at this moon and two lights for so long

My hands are getting too cold to type so I'm going to turn on the car for a little bit and get the heat going. I'll report back tomorrow.