This past weekend was the 112th National Audubon Christmas Bird Count when tens of thousands of citizen scientists all over the country brave winter conditions to do a census of their local bird population. In my Chiricahua Mountain community of Portal, Arizona, it was the 38th annual count — and no courage was required with sunny skies, no wind, and temperatures in the 60s.
I’m — at best — a rookie birder, but I got to tag along on Reed Peter’s 2-mile territory that extended from his Cave Creek Ranch to Sunny Flats Campground at an elevation of about 5,000′. We saw a total of 41 species, including house finches, lesser goldfinches, white-breasted nuthatches, Gambel’s quail, many Mexican jays, along with canyon towhees, two red-naped sapsuckers, and lots of white-crowned sparrows. Most unusual was the arrival of a Scott’s Oriole on the ranch feeder!
My favorite bird is still the clownish acorn woodpecker — tragically, we arrived too late to rescue one from a passing Cooper’s hawk.
Sunday was the 37th annual Peloncillo count across the state line near Animas, New Mexico, and again I tagged along, this time with Reed Peters, Peg Abbott, of Naturalist Journeys, and a birder named Steve from Santa Fe. Wow — what a magnificent area! Our territory was a chunk of the Dunnegan Ranch, which is part of the 322,000-acre Nature Conservancy Gray Ranch, owned by the Animas Foundation and usually closed to the public. We traversed desert flats and sprawling grasslands, crossed clear flowing streams, scampered through narrow canyons, and crunched across oak/juniper woodlands. We recorded 46 species — and about 40 were ones we didn’t see in the higher elevations during yesterday’s count. Most of all, I learned that sparrows are HARD to identify! We saw hundreds of them, including Bairds, grasshopper, savannah, Brewers, white-crowned, black-throated, chipping, lark, and vespers.
Watching the prairie falcon skim over the grass tops, the roadrunner bask in the early morning sun on top of a juniper, and seeing a cloud of 100 mountain bluebirds descend into a nearby tree were sights I won’t soon forget.
Many thanks to the ever-patient Reed and Peg! I’m definitely hooked and hope to be more knowledgable this time next year when the next Christmas count rolls around…
Peg Abbott soaks up the view of grasslands stretching across the Gray Ranch toward the snow-capped Animas Mountains.
Just North of Paradise 
Sounds like a very successful count and of course you got to run around a new area.
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It always feels like an overwhelming achievement when you’ve entered your lists online. I enter records on the UK’s BirdTrack project and have posted about it sometimes on my blog. Here’s a reason for doing so according to a guy called Mark Avery – http://www.talking-naturally.co.uk/tag/birdtrack/ Click on the audio link for the excerpt.
Good post.
Best Wishes
Tony Powell
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Thanks, Tony! That’s an interesting podcast and certainly relevant for anyone who’s interested in the overlap between social media and conservation.
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I love birds, too, and there are quite a few here in San Diego County. Right in our backyard, there’s one hummingbird in particular who has given us hours of entertainment… I even wrote an Air Poem about him….
”The Continuing Adventures of Tweety”
It’s easy to see Tweety
sitting in the plum tree
now that the leaves have fallen.
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P.S. To see more Air Poetry, visit http://www.airpoetry.com Try it, you’ll like it!
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You’re right, Patty — I do like them, and especially The Violin.
Thanks for stopping by!
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I counted birds at our feeder area and identified 6 Brewer’s sparrows along with our regular Black-throated sparrows, our usual dozens of Gambel’s quail and Scaled quail and more. I had help identifying a Say’s Phoebe, new to me. Very cute.
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Wow, you have Scaled Quail? Cool … Ours are all Gambel’s here, with an occasional Montezuma. I saw my first Say’s Phoebe at the San Bernardino WR with the hiking group. You’re right — definitely cute!
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