The Search for ET

The Elegant Trogon, that is.

Tuesday, March 1st arrived. Speedy was all packed. The water tank was filled. We turned in our keys, said our last goodbyes and were on the slow road home. We passed through Arivaca and waved farewell to the quail and turned Speedy southeast to Nogales.

Nogales is a border town and we were only stopping for provisions and fuel before continuing to our destination for the day, Patagonia Lake State Park. The park is a well-known birding hotspot and the home of a resident Elegant Trogon. The trogon is a handsome bird with a green head, yellow beak, red breast and a long copper-colored tail. It is only found in a few places in the US, and almost all of those spots are in Arizona. Most of the trogons found here come on the spring migration, but a few are year-around residents. The one at Patagonia Lake has been there for seventeen years.

We arrived in mid-afternoon, found a pretty nice site with a lake view, plugged in and turned on Speedy's "new" air conditioner for the first time since October. It was unseasonably warm, near 90°, so a bit of AC was welcome.

There is a birding trail that begins at the end of the campground and goes along the lake and Sonoita Creek. After lunch, we explored the park and walked up the first part of the trail not expecting much in the afternoon. Birders we met coming the other way said that the trogon had been seen that day but not by them. At least there was a possibility for tomorrow. We saw mostly sparrows and ducks.

On Wednesday we joined the morning birdwalk. There were quite a few people, so the volunteer guides split the group up into three groups. Ours was about 10 people. We walked the length of the lake again and quite far up the creek trail. Lots of waterfowl on the lake, which we hadn't seen in quite a while with the lack of water at Buenos Aires. There were mostly coots and Northern Shovelers, but also Cinnamon, Green-winged and Blue-winged Teal, Ruddy Ducks, Scaup, Bufflehead, Eared and Pied-billed Grebes and a big group of Common Merganser. All of this is in the middle of the desert.

We also saw lots of songbirds, mostly sparrows, but also kinglets and flycatchers and all the local vireos, Plumbeous, Cassin's and Hutton's. We did not see the Elegant Trogon.

The next morning, we went back again to look in the spots where the trogon had been found, we searched for a couple of hours, but had no luck. He'd probably moved back into the backwoods.

We were off by mid-morning on Thursday to visit a couple of hotspots in Patagonia. The first was the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, the first property acquired by the Nature Conservancy in Arizona. It preserves a grassland site along the Sonoita Creek, as well as the riparian corridor along the creek with some huge old cottonwoods. It even has a cienega, quite a bit smaller than Arivaca Cienega, but this one was wet. Being close to midday when we got there, we didn't see a lot of birds, but it was a pleasant mile-long loop.

After having lunch at the preserve, we stooped just down the street for a visit to the Paton Center for Hummingbirds. This is a house which was owned by the Paton family until recently. The Patons arrived in Patagonia in the 90's and set out hummingbird feeders and other bird feeders in their yard and started attracting many birds, something like 15 species of hummingbirds have been seen there. As their house was right on the road to the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, they also started attracting birders. The Patons welcomed them into their yard, setting up a watching pavilion and asking only a donation for sugar. Marion Paton passed away in 2009 and the family sold the house and land to Tucson Audubon, who continue to maintain the feeders and the house (which does need work) and even purchased the adjoining empty property as buffer for the birds.

We stayed about an hour and saw only the Broad-billed Hummingbird, but lots of sparrows and finches as well as Curved-billed Thrashers and Green-tailed Towhees and even several Gambel's Quail.

It was time for a break, so we stopped in the town of Patagonia at a very nice cafe. They make a good iced latte in Patagonia and an excellent pecan bar, which we saved for our after-dinner dessert. Patagonia is a pretty small town, with a couple of shops, a small grocery, a post office and a town hall in a converted railroad station. It also seems to have an unpublished boondocking site for RVs on a common at the edge of the downtown, right across from the local public restrooms. We didn't stop to check it out, but I'll bet they were mostly birders.

After our afternoon refreshment, we were back on the road in the search for ET. Next stop Ramsey Canyon, another Nature Conservancy property. It is on the east side of the Huachuca Mountains. There are several canyons along this side of the mountains that have good birding, but Ramsey Canyon has a paved road into it. We stopped part way up the canyon road at a tiny RV park, Ramsey Canyon Campground. It had only 15 sites and no restrooms or  showers. It is only for self-contained RVs and mostly seasonal or permanent residents, but they did have one site available and it was nice and quiet. Most importantly, it had electricity and the AC was on again.

The next morning we got an early start and went up to the preserve. It opens at 8am and we were there around 6:30. We'd intended to park in the lot, which is quite small and have coffee and breakfast. There is no additional parking anywhere along the canyon road, so once the parking lot fills, anyone arriving later is out of luck. What we didn't expect was that the lot was gated. We went back down the road about six miles and stopped in a National Forest trailhead parking lot and had our breakfast.

We went back up to the preserve when it opened and spent the next four hours hiking up to the top of the canyon and back. The trail actually goes out of the preserve into the Coronado National Forest, which surrounds the preserve. One of the intersecting trails we passed was the trail back to the tailhead we'd parked at in the morning.

We didn't actually see many species of birds in the canyon. We still didn't see an Elegant Trogon, although it has been seen in the canyon recently. It is the right habitat, but we didn't seen it. We did see both Painted Redstarts and Northern Pygmy Owls, both life birds. No trogons, but two life birds make a good day.

Our next stop, and probably last stop, in the search for ET would be Cave Creek Canyon on the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains, but we'd hoped to stop by the San Bernardino NWR outside of Douglas, AZ, on the way. We made our way to the refuge headquarters, which is not on the refuge but in the middle of an arid grassland, several miles from the road outside of Douglas. There was no one there. Due to the long-term federal government sequester, still going on, many Fish and Wildlife offices are closed every other Friday. This was one of those Fridays. In addition, the sigh on the door indicated that the refuge road was also closed that day ... so much for San Bernardino NWR.

We also made a stop at Douglas for a bit of provisioning. Douglas is another border town and only had a Walmart for a supermarket. Judging by the number of cars with Sonora, Mexico, plates on them, it is a popular place to come for shopping. The Sonorans have their own take on driving; Speedy was cut off several times by Mexican vehicles turning left right in front of us. Walmart is about our least favorite supermarket and this one was no exception. We only bought a few essentials and got out of town before being run down.

Cave Creek Canyon is in the Douglas district of the Coronado National Forest and is in Arizona, but the only road to it goes through New Mexico. We spent the evening in Rodeo, NM, at the Mt. Valley Lodge and RV Park. It was even smaller than the park in Ramsey Canyon, with only four RV sites, but it did have a single shower and restroom, situated in the middle of the laundry building. They were the strangest shower and restrooms we've encountered, hardly bigger than we have in Speedy, but they did have hot water.

What Rodeo also had was a tavern with a restaurant. It was only a couple of doors down from the RV park so we went off for dinner. The dining room was empty when we arrived (the bar was full), but it pretty much filled while we were there. Rodeo looks like it is in the middle of nowhere, but there seems to be a community of Canadian snowbirds that have winter homes or RV sites out on the grasslands around the town. The dinner was pretty good as well. Ellen had the Green Chile Cheeseburger and I had the BBQ Brisket sandwich and a salad. We split a homemade brownie and ice cream dessert before we returned to Speedy to turn in after a long day.

Once the noise from the barking dogs in another RV, the jump-starting operation next to us and the Canadian bikers arriving to stay in the lodge rooms abated, it was a quiet and dark night. The area is a "dark-sky" site and there are about 60 small private observatories spread around the outskirts of town. There is even an ongoing development, an astronomy skypark. You can have your own 10-acre site to build both your observatory and your air plane hangar for about $30,000.

Our quiet night was over about 4:30 AM when the local rooster started crowing. We got a fairly early start and Cave Creek Canyon was only about 10 miles away. We arrived at the Sunny Flat Campground in the National Forest around 9 AM. It is one of two open campgrounds in the canyon and the most developed, with 15 paved sites and vault toilets. As we made our way around the mostly full campground loop, we stopped by a couple who seemed to be getting ready to leave. We asked if they were. They were and offered their site. We took it.

While we were waiting at the pay station for them to finish up, I walked over to get the site number. They were just finishing hooking up the Jeep they were towing and I asked where they were heading next. They were on there way home which was south of Tucson. I mentioned that we'd just come from there, having volunteered at Buenos Aires. They asked if we knew Kyle, the law enforcement chief, as they were his next door neighbors. We did ... small world.

The site, number 11, is a great site, probably the best in the campground. It is sunny and paved, has roofed shelter for the picnic table, a fire ring, grill and tent pad. It also has a spectacular view of the canyon cliffs on both sides, one side rising right behind the site.

The nature trail which follows the creek down to the visitor center is right next to our site and that became our morning 3.5 mile walk. There was pretty good birding along the trail to the visitor center and also along the road back to the campground. Lots of Mexican Jays, Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Dark-eyed Juncos along with a smattering of woodpeckers and even a Brown Creeper.

After lunch, we decided to check out the local town of Portal. It has a cafe and lodge with tiny grocery. We didn't stop for coffee this time. We did stop at the Cave Creek Ranch on the way back to the campground. This is a lodge with several cabins catering mostly to birders. It has a large number of feeders all around the entrance with lots of seats to stop and watch. We did. It is another site known for its hummingbirds. The man running it was very friendly and talked about the birds and even loaned us a copy of a hummingbird guide. We saw Broad-tailed and Blue-throated Hummingbirds while we were there. It is still a bit early and most of the species arrive later in the spring. The feeders were busy with a wide array of birds coming by. In addition to the Blue-throated Hummingbird, we saw a second life bird, a Hooded Oriole, an early migrant.

It was another quiet and dark night at Sunny Flat and we got an early start on our main hike of the visit here, the South Fork trail, our final search for ET. We walked up the South Fork Road about a .8 miles to the new end of the road. The road used to go further, about another half mile, up to the South Fork Picnic Area, but the road was washed out by a massive flood in 2014. There was a fire in the canyon in 2011 and much of the area in the upper canyon was heavily burned. In 2014, the remains of a hurricane came through and, with the forest burned away, washed our most of the South Fork Canyon, all of the South Fork Road and large areas of the main road into the canyon. The lowest developed campground, Idlewild, was washed away and is still closed. According the the owner of Cave Creek ranch, 60,000 tons of stone was hauled away from Portal. He lost several buildings on the ranch as well.

After South Fork Road ends, there is a rudimentary road/trail that continues up to the abandoned picnic area. It is closed to vehicles by a large berm at the end of the rebuilt road and seems to be a bulldozer track. The creek now runs down parts of the road. Beyond the picnic area, the South Fork Trail actually begins and almost immediately goes into the Chiricahua Wilderness.

Our walk along the road was pretty quiet. Actually, most of the walk was pretty quiet. This is supposed to be one of the best birding trails in Arizona, but we only saw 18 species. We heard lots of birds, but just couldn't find them in the trees. It wasn't all that bad, we did see Yellow-eyed Junco, Acorn, Arizona and Hairy Woodpeckers (our first Hairy Woodpeckers in the west), Canyon Wren and Painted Redstart. I saw another Northern Pygmy Owl as I was following a flicker, but it flew before Ellen could get a look. It was our longest walk of the trip, so far, at 8.2 miles and nearly 6 hours. But no Elegant Trogon ... and no Mexican Chickadee, either.

Tomorrow, we will go up the canyon road to the Southwestern Research Station of the American Museum of Natural History, for one last look for the Mexican Chickadee, another bird only found here in the US. Then it is off to New Mexico and parts east.

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