Greetings all,
Given some of the controversy over the OBA/OBOL relationship, it looks like
Shawneen and I picked a good 10-day window to make a trip to SE Arizona and not
check our email. The focal point of the trip was going to see the spectacular
spring flight of Common Black-Hawks that funnels along the Santa Cruz River. We
spent many hours at Ron Morriss County Park in Tubac, AZ, the official count
site for this flight. On peak days, upwards of 200 birders were gathering in
the park. By the time we last checked in at the watch site on Sunday afternoon,
the on-site counters had tallied over 500 Common Black-Hawks since they started
their seasonal count on 8 March. This broke their seasonal record of 497 with
several days remaining (they go until the end of March). Over several days, our
group, which included Jim Danzenbaker (from Battle Ground, WA), Ann Nightingale
(from Victoria, B.C.) and Dorna Mojab (from McMinnville via Tehran, Iran), saw
nearly 100 black-hawks, along with lots of other raptors and vultures moving
along the river. There was at least one and likely two dark morph Short-tailed
Hawks that seemed to be hanging around Tubac and we were lucky enough to see
one individual on three different days. Dorna and Ann were making their first
birding visits to Arizona, so they were ticking off lifers left and right.
If you enjoy hawk-watching and witnessing migration happen, this mid-March
spectacle is one to put on your calendar. The peak of the flight generally
happens from about 10-20 March, with daily high counts of 50+ black-hawks. The
best part of the day occurs from about 9:00AM to 11:00 when birds are lifting
off and often passing over just above the treetops. On one morning we started
at another site just north of Ron Morriss Park and we had 19 black-hawks in 45
minutes, starting at about 9:15AM. Later in the day the birds tend to be flying
really high and are often borderline pepper flakes in the sky. The skill of the
counters picking out and identifying birds that are almost out of sight is
truly impressive. We often hit the hawk watch in the morning and then went
birding elsewhere the rest of the day, sometimes stopping back at the hawkwatch
in late afternoon to see birds coming into the riverside gallery forests to
roost for the night.
It was really fun to run into a number of present and former Oregonians at the
watch site and nearby birding hotspots. I was quite surprised to see Tom Love
go walking by me one afternoon and to then have him tell me that he was there
with Tom Staudt (who lived in Oregon for a few years back in the 1980's) and
Gerard Lillie (who splits time between Portland and Green Valley, AZ). I did
not realize that Tom Love and his wife (both retired) now live full time near
Tucson. We also ran into Kathy Beck (who formerly lived in Bend) several times
and we met Mary Dunham who winters in Arizona and makes her permanent home in
Troutdale (at least for now). We had hoped to get together with Tim Blount, who
lives in Hereford, AZ, but the details never came together. We encountered a
number of other birders from Oregon, Washington and Idaho (can't remember all
their names). The contingent from the Pacific Northwest was a nice surprise.
Dave Irons
Beaverton, OR
