That's the benefit of having the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail in your backyard. Arizona is 3 hours behind Eastern Daylight Time, so we were all up at 3:30 AM trying to stay in bed. By 5:20 we were all up and so was the sun. Connie and I took a quick walk around the neighborhood of Tubac where we are staying with Lori and Tara. We saw Lark Sparrow, Black-chinned Sparrow, Phainopepla, Lucy's Warbler, and Anna's Hummingbird just like that. 3 of those are life birds for us.
After a quick breakfast, we headed to the Anza Trail which has an entrance just up the road from our house within Tubac market place. We got another 10 species between the parking lot and the trail head including Verdin, Broad-billed Hummingbirds - lots of them, Red-Shafted Flicker (ours has yellow shaft), Say's Phoebe, and Vermillion Flycatcher. Please look these birds up in your book to understand how stunning they are.
On the trail we got Bullock's Oriole, Wilson's, MacGillevray's, Yellow-rumped and Yellow Warblers, Plumbeous Vireo, male and female Summer Tanagers, Abert's Towhee, and Bridled Titmouse.
We saw 2 Gray Hawks fly over pretty low. They are pretty rare, but said to nest in the area. We saw 2 of them flying together. A Cooper's Hawk almost took my head off too.
The point of this post is Holy Crap! We haven't even left the resort and we had an overwhelming morning of birdwatching. We were back at the house at 11:00 with our heads spinning. More to come, I'm sure.
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