Dermot Breen's Blog: prairie falcon

Saturday, 7 March 2015

Arizona 7th February 2015

So we were back again in Arizona. We checked out the Santa Cruz flats. This is a big area of agricultural land that has a good amount of turf lawns. This is one of the favourite wintering locations for Mountain Plover. Despite a good search we didn't see any on this occasion although we had big numbers of Buff-bellied Pipits along with Shore (Horned) Lark, Prairie Falcon, Yellow-headed Blackbirds and Bendire's Thrasher,

Yellow-headed Blackbirds

Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

Prairie Falcon

Shorelark

Further along the road we made a quick stop at the small lake at Amado Sewerage Plant which had a Pacific Diver on it for a while. As you can guess the species isn't exactly common inland. It wasn't to hard to pick up especially with a few local birders already being on it. It spent most of its time asleep. It also showed a lot of while all along the flanks.

Pacific Diver

We ended up at Tubac at the end of the day where the target was the long staying and very rare Sinaloa Wren. This Mexican species is extremely rare in the US and this one had been holding territory here for nearly a year and had even built a nest. We spent a few hours here looking for it. Eventually just two of our group happened to see it very briefly. Even though the rest of us missed it there were a few other good birds about the place such as Broad-billed Hummingbird, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Bewick's Wrens, White-winged Dove, Bridled Titmouse and Pyrrhuloxia. We would have another try for the Sinaloa in two days time though.

Broad-billed Hummingbird, showing its broad bill.

Broad-billed Hummingbird

Bridled Titmouse

Bewick's Wren

Green-tailed Towhee

Rufous-winged Sparrow

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Arizona 31st January 2015

We spent a few hours again around Lake Havasu in the morning. We tried along the Planet Ranch Road first where we had our first views of Crissal Thrashers. This had been a regular spot for Nutting's Flycatcher but they haven't been seen here for a while now unfortunately. We had another quick look around the Bill Williams Rivers area. We were lucky to see one young Black-chinned Hummingbirds at the feeders in amongst the numerous Costa's and Anna's Hummingbirds. This was to be our only Black-chin of the trip.

From here we continued West as we going to be heading across the State border into California later in the day. We had some good birds along the roadside of Mohave Road such as Prairie Falcon, a distant Ferruginous Hawk and Sandhill Cranes. We also had a brief stop in a small park at Ehrenberg where we had a pair of fly-over Ladder-backed Woordpecker, a tame Say's Phoebe and Black-tailed Gnatcatchers. Overnighted in Palm Springs, California.