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Tucson Audubon Society
“For
the Birds” Birdathon
Team Report
April 21–22, 2006,
by June Scroggin
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We started our Birdathon effort off on a knuckle-headed move. We were so excited about participating in the Birdathon that we completely forgot one of the rules: “… the team must stay within the TAS service area, Pima Cochise and Santa Cruz Counties.” Our enthusiasm found us driving all the way to the Salton Sea before we thought about double-checking the rules—we’d just birded there the week before but it wasn’t in the Birdathon time parameters and now we found we weren’t even in the count area. Ah well, wouldn’t it have been ever so lovely to see “Yellow-footed Gull” on the checklist? We got it but can’t count it. Aaargh!
We reviewed the rules and started again on a different weekend. We had limited time because Donna had to return to North Carolina—employers are so picky! The Birdathon event actually proved a good excuse to give our husbands for our obsessive desire to wander amok in the wild looking for birds—an especially nice thing for Donna as she’d never birded Arizona.
The new birding plan involved no night birding (we’re old, tired and neither of us sees well enough to drive at night, much less see any birds that don’t land on our noses). So we cruised the Sierra Vista area, urban Tucson and its environs, and the Santa Catalinas. Our guides were “Finding Birds in Southeastern Arizona)” and our own inherent sense of adventure.
We began with my backyard oasis: Green-tailed Towhee, Cactus Wren, White-winged Dove, Lesser Goldfinch, Gila Woodpecker, Western Kingbird, Ash-throated Flycatcher, House Sparrow, House Finch, Mourning Dove, Northern Cardinal, Rock Dove, Turkey Vulture and Western Tanager. We were so excited about these that we seriously debated just sitting on the back porch with good ol’ southern sweet ice tea and binoculars and to heck with all the driving. But we resisted this lethargy and moved on to Agua Caliente and every other park in town before proceeding to points north of Tucson, west and south before invading the wilds of the Santa Catalinas.
All told, we finished with 97 species; we had to drop 10 additional species off our list because they were out of the count area and there were some birds that defied our identification. Our last official find was a Black-headed Grosbeak that appeared in the tree in my backyard at the end of our count. Our total doesn’t break any records but our own. Our first Birdathon is over—we had two flat tires, learned some new things about birds and laughed a lot. Now that we know what it’s like, we have resolved to sacrifice some sleep (like the Bearded Tyrannulets) next year. However, best stay off the roads because we’re not sure our optometrists have Superwoman night-vision eyeglasses in stock.
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This page was updated on 05/16/07