Birding In Arizona's White Mountains

I've always felt like I'm in a different zone when I've birded in the White Mountains of east-central Arizona.  The area seems surreal, and too good to be true.  And yet, with me being in the Phoenix area, the east side of the White Mountains are only a 4.5 hour drive away.  These mountains are the southwestern-most extension of the Rocky Mountains.  My original birding ties came from this area, and it would be nice to call the area home someday.  I enjoy just as much as birding in Maricopa County.  This past July, I took another vacation with my family to this wonderful area for 11 days.  It was 11 days full of awesomeness.  I took it upon myself to bird much of the area as I decided to start a project on the White Mountains on my website.  The trip had some amazing surprises, some serious disappointment, but was overall a classic time of fun being spent in the White Mountains.  My goal and most-wanted bird of the trip was to find an adult Northern Saw-whet Owl.

Things started off fun right away in the beginning stages of my trip at Benny Creek in Greer.  I looked for an adult male American Redstart that was found a week earlier, but instead, I found a shocker in an adult male Blue-throated Hummingbird.  As rarities can be jerks with allowing birders to obtain documentation of their presence, this guy was a perfect example.  A Red-faced Warbler was a lot more cooperative.

As I went a few feet next door to Rosey Creek, I saw more birds, such as this female Black-headed Grosbeak.  Little did I know at the time, but I captured the male flying behind her.  

Benny Creek is also a very beautiful place.  It's very peaceful, and the birding is awesome.

As I worked my way around Greer in the beginning of my trip, my bird list started to climb fast.  One of my stops was a short hike down the West Fork Trail # 94 in Greer.  A female Williamson's Sapsucker caught my attention, and so did this American Three-toed Woodpecker.

Bark Flaker is the nick-name I have given the American Three-toed Woodpecker.  It flakes bark off of the trees, and if you look on the picture, it is very evident.  This woodpecker is highly sought after by birders visiting the White Mountain Region.  Another sought after species is the Gray Catbird.  While the South Fork of the Little Colorado River has been the traditional place to see them over the years, I have found most of my luck to be right in Greer along the Little Colorado River.

The Gray Catbird above was very obliging for a bird that is usually quite the skulker in it's behavior.  And yes, the Gray Catbird sounds like an angry cat.  Here is a recording I obtained of this individual.  

The West Baldy Trail # 94 is my favorite place to bird in the White Mountains in the Mount Baldy Wilderness.  This wilderness area is epic and might be my favorite place in the entire state.  There is a high chance of that.  

Last year on the West Baldy Trail I found several cool things, and that continued into this year.  I heard several rare-in-Arizona Pine Grosbeaks on the trail, and saw Dusky Grouse, American Dipper, American Three-toed Woodpecker, Gray Jay, as well as breeding White-crowned Sparrow on Baldy's highest slopes, and counter-singing Swainson's Thrushes.  Seeing an American Dipper along the Little Colorado River with cascading flows of the river behind it is a neat experience.

I've had plenty of luck with locating Dusky Grouse over the years in the White Mountains.  This luck often comes at my own expense, though.  Dusky Grouse are often tame, and they wont flush at times until your about the step on one.  This bird gives a loud helicopter-like tone to it's flight takeoff when frightened, and it is loud.  I usually don't detect them until I almost step on them.  One of these times a heart attack might be the result, because it scares the poop out of me.

White-crowned Sparrows breed just below the peak of Mt. Baldy at elevation close to 11,000'.  This area is one of the only places this species will breed at in Arizona.

Counter-singing Swainson's Thrushes may indicate breeding of this species in this area...probably so.  While the birds stuck to the highest perches, I did manage a recording of the source singing.

One of my the most exciting days on my trip came when I decided to explore the Blue River Area.  I made my way down into the valley and canyons of the Blue River.  However, flooding in the road kept me from accessing the Blue River itself, but I did get to explore Greenlee County's Blue Campbell and Turkey Creeks just north of the Blue River.  Both of those creeks were awesome, and I look forward to seeing beyond the fog next time in this cool area.

This area held different habitat than what I have birded elsewhere in the White Mountains, including lower elevations with cottonwood riparian.  

In four miles of covering this area in Greenlee County, I recorded 51 species.  It was an eventful birding outing, especially considering I didn't even get to access the Blue River.  The best birds I found were three juvenile Northern Pygmy-Owls.  Here is one of the three.  I had to climb up a rocky area in order to get these eye-level views.

The area also held a Greater Pewee, high elevation Summer Tanagers, and common numbers of both Painted Redstart and Red-faced Warbler.  The Redstart was a White Mountain first for me, which was overdue.

I spent a lot of time in this area searching for Spotted Owls without luck.  The habitat was perfect though, I swear.  I did find this Cordilleran Flycatcher nest.  It had 3-4 eggs inside of it.

One morning was spent at Nelson Reservoir, where I was hoping to track down and see a Montezuma Quail.  I've only seen MONQ once in my life, way back in 2004.  I didn't see any Montezuma Quail at Nelson Reservoir, but the lake itself is very neat.

This is an excellent place to see Osprey.  I know Osprey are common in the White Mountains around reservoirs and rivers, but Nelson Reservoir is a "classic" place to see them.  I saw 3-4 birds on my visit here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I did have a major highlight when two Pinyon Jays decided to come along the trail.  This lake is known for this species and almost any visit here in early morning is likely to produce sightings of these odd but yet neat birds.

Have two wrongs ever been known to make a right?  I don't think so.  What happens when two morons come together and make a fire during dry seasons?  They use Jolly Rancher wrappers to test whether it was dead or not.  When the wrappers don't melt right away, they assume the fire is safe to leave to burn out on it's own.  Never mind the fact they can pour water on the fire.  But no, they decide to leave.  When they get back to their campsite, they realize they have started a bit of a fire.  One of their two dogs even burned in the fire's early stages.  So then they go into complete retard mode and leave the fire.  Yet, at this point, it is containable.  They would get in trouble if they got caught.  But what if they didn't get caught?  By the time the fire got reported in early summer, it was too late.  Dry circumstances in the forest combined with high winds is not good.  Some 500,000+ acres and over a month later, the fire was contained.  Sadly, this happened in the White Mountains.  I hate these two idiots.  The fire started south of Alpine and ventured too far north, south, west, east, and everywhere else.  Greer even got hit hard by the fire, and other places have been destroyed.  The Wallow Fire of 2011 is a true story, one that I'm sorry to say happened.  Luckily, the White Mountains are still a beautiful place, but sadly, a lot of it is gone.  One of my favorite places, Escudilla Mountain, was one of the Wallow Fire's victims.  

All because of two morons.  But the area is home to one of the largest stands of aspen ever.  Live aspen too.

Despite the devastation in the Escudilla Mountain area, there are still live patches of live conifer stands.  Plenty of birds still congregate in these sections that did not burn.  It's still a beautiful place.

Another cool place to visit is the South Fork of the Little Colorado River.  I went with my sister and brother-in-law.  At South Fork I enjoyed up close looks of Bushtit and Juniper Titmouse.

A trip to Lyman Lake State Park one morning yielded two new Apache County birds:  Black-throated Sparrow and Crissal Thrasher.  It also yielded a huge Black-tailed Jackrabbit.  Lyman Lake is one of my favorite places in the White Mountains.  I've seen a lot of good stuff there.

Sadness took place after reaching the summit area of Mount Baldy with my Dad, brother, and sister.  I tripped and fell and screwed up my camera lense.  I was left without a good photography source for most of my trip.  Luckily, I was still able to take good scene shots, which ended up being my main objective of the trip anyways.  I'll explain later.  I had a blast with my family while hiking up in the Mt. Baldy Wilderness, I'll choose to remember that over screwing up my camera lense. 

After I busted my lense, the only "decent" photograph I obtained was of a Band-tailed Pigeon on top of the scenic Greens Peak.  See how messed up this picture is?  It's blurry.  Under normal circumstances this Pigeon would have looked a lot better.  Oh well, there are worse things that I could complain about.

Views from Greens Peak are to die for...

As I posted before, the number one bird I wanted to see on my trip was an adult Northern Saw-whet Owl.  On July 20th, that wish came true and it was only on the fourth day of the trip!  I owled a Greer back road right after dark and a cooperative Saw-whet Owl gave me exactly what I asked for.  Luckily, I encountered this little owl before my slip-and-slide on Mt. Baldy.  Finding and photographing this bird was a breathtaking experience for me and it was a huge accomplishment.  And it seemingly came along as "easy".  After all, July 20th seems to be a good day for me.  On July 20th, 2008, I saw my first Northern Goshawk, which was also in Greer...

I'm still not over the Northern Saw-whet Owl, I want to see more of them.  I even went back three more times to try for them again (yeah, there were four of them) without luck.

Over the trip, I drove around many different places to write a second guide on my website, called Birding in Arizona's White Mountains.  The White Mountain region is huge, so this is a 5 year project I'll have to add on to as I go.  But during the trip, I traveled around and took many photos of the area.  I submitted 55 checklists to eBird during the ten days of my trip.  I birded a lot.  So much I didn't have time for numerous blog posts and write-ups.  But the guide is up on my website, and it is available at the link here below:

Birding In Arizona's White Mountains

 I could mumble on and on and on about how much I love the White Mountains and how much I love birding in the White Mountains.  To really get a feel for where I have birded in this area, please check out my website at the link I gave.  As I close, I want to say I've also published a slideshow video on my YouTube account showing many scenes of this spectacular area.  A few birds are in the video too.  Take a look, I hope you enjoy.  The band behind the pictures is Hillsong United.  As for now, enjoy birding ;)

A Fall Birding Trip to Apache County, Arizona

Hi Everyone,

This past weekend, Gordon Karre and I explored the White Mountain region of Apache County.  We had three days worth of birding that lasted from September 13 through September 15th, 2014.  Our goal for the trip was to search for migrants in bodies of water as well as riparian areas.  We made many stops, and found a lot of birds during the trip.  Another goal was to increase our Apache County lists by exploring this expansive area.  It was a special trip for me, because I've always wanted to bird in the White Mountains in a time frame outside of July/early August, which I've done a lot of in 13 summers since 2000.  During this trip, birds were plentiful, and we had Wilson's and MacGillivray's Warblers literally everywhere.  While we wanted to explore further north into Apache County, 2.5 days wasn't enough time to cover everything, but we were able to cover a lot of ground in the White Mountains region itself.

The White Mountain Region in Apache County is epic.  This is my good friend Gordon Karre looking for birds at the Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area.  We took this trip in order to search for and find new birds for our Apache County list.  As my birding roots got started in Apache County, this was my first time ever of being able to bird it in another season outside of summer.  It was a huge deal for me!

On Saturday, September 13th, our first stop of the day was at the Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area.  This location has always proven to be dynamite for seeing a variety of different birds whenever I have given it a visit.  With fall migration in force, we were eager to see what Sipe had to offer.  And as expected, birds were everywhere and we tallied 63 species in just over three hours.  We hiked the easy difficulty three mile Rudd Creek Loop Trail, which goes out to McKay Reservoir.  The small lake was disappointingly dry, and had it had water, we probably would've had shorebirds and waterfowl to look at also.   Other than that, the birding was a blast.  The best find we had at Sipe were two GRASSHOPPER SPARROWS that were found well apart from one another.  We were surprised to find them here, as it wasn't a species that we were expecting to observe.  Abundant flocks of PINYON JAYS were also enjoyable to see and they seemed to be literally everywhere throughout Sipe.  Out of the 63 species, other highlights included NORTHERN HARRIER, 5 COOPER'S HAWKS, SORA, female WILLIAMSON'S SAPSUCKER, 4 RED-NAPED SAPSUCKERS, a CLARK'S NUTCRACKER, 2 BANK SWALLOWS, a RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH by the visitor center in the many deciduous trees, NASHVILLE, MACGILLIVRAY'S, TOWNSEND'S, and WILSON'S WARBLERS; a big number of at least 25 GREEN-TAILED TOWHEES, BREWER'S and LARK SPARROWS, both MEADOWLARKS, and 2 YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS.  Sipe was very fun to visit, and it has a lot of awesome potential.

Grasshopper Sparrow!  We weren't expecting this one at all.  But I'm sure they are probably annual migrants through the White Mountains, especially with all of the grassy areas the region has to offer.

Pinyon Jays were everywhere at Sipe!

The Sipe Pinyon Jays seemed to come one after the other!

Male Brewer's Blackbird

Male Mountain Bluebird

Brewer's Sparrow, one of our many Apache County lifers.  An "Apacher"

Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area

We followed Sipe up with a visit to Becker Lake just north of Springerville.  A 50 minute visit produced a variety of species that included AMERICAN WIGEON, CINNAMON TEAL, NORTHERN SHOVELER, EARED GREBE, WHITE-FACED IBIS, NORTHERN HARRIER, LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE, MARSH WREN, and a flock of YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS.

Spotted Sandpiper snacking along the shore of Becker.

Loggerhead Shrike

Becker Lake

The next stop was at Wenima Wildlife Area, which is also close to Springerville and is a few miles northeast of Becker Lake.  There have been some very interesting birds here in the past (Groove-billed Ani, Thick-billed Kingbird to name a few), and we were hoping to find an interesting migrant of our own.  We didn't find any migrant surprises, but it was nice to see COOPER'S, SHARP-SHINNED, and a young SWAINSON'S HAWK.  Our best songbird migrant was a WILLOW FLYCATCHER.

Wenima Wildlife Area

Swainson's Hawk

From Wenima, we proceeded further north to Lyman Lake State Park, where we birded at for nearly four hours.  A lot of neat highlights and much needed exploring came from Lyman Lake.  The best highlight at Lyman Lake came when we found a juvenile SABINE'S GULL floating out on the lake.  We had it scoped and in view for a few minutes before a high-speed boat came down the lake and in the direction of the gull.  Luckily, this caused the gull to kick up and take flight, and we were treated to seeing it's distinctive wing pattern, which birders commonly refer to as a "flying field mark".  This was our best find of the trip and it was Gordon's life bird.  Another good highlight at Lyman Lake was finding a juvenile SANDERLING on the southeast corner of the lake., another nice surprise we weren't expecting.  The Sanderling eventually covered a lot of Lyman Lake just like we did, and popped up in other sections that we birded.  There were several other neat shorebirds around that included three SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS, AMERICAN AVOCET, 7 BAIRD'S SANDPIPERS, a flock of 9 WESTERN SANDPIPERS, and very high numbers of SPOTTED SANDPIPERS.  The highlights got better as 6-7 BLACK TERNS flew over the waters together and a single CASPIAN TERN made a visit as it flew from the west side of the lake to the east side of the lake.  The lake also held high numbers of NORTHERN SHOVELERS and NORTHERN PINTAILS, as well as 3 AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS and a single SNOWY EGRET.

To be honest, we at first started to think that Lyman Lake State Park was going to be a bust.  It seemed dead when we got there.  But at the east side of the lake, we found a very nice sized clump of birds.

The Sanderling was quite the shocker!  This is a juvenile bird, and Gordon and I both saw it at the same time.  It proved to be cooperative and we were both able to get pictures of this bird.  Sanderling is a rare but annual transient in Arizona.  I've seen them in Maricopa County probably 4-5 times, and this is obviously an Apache County first for me.  And more importantly, this was Gordon's state bird.

Sabine's Gull.  The second I saw this bird on the water I knew it was something good.  It was also Gordon's life bird.  This is a juvenile Sabine's Gull, the "brown one".

The Sabine's Gull is one of the most distinctive gulls in North America in all plumages, especially when it takes flight.  This pattern is seen in all ages and sexes on the Sabine's Gull.  Birders often refer to this gull as a "flying field mark".

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover-the mini shorebird

2 of the 6 Black Terns

Lyman Lake

After Lyman Lake, we headed south towards Alpine, where we got hit hard by rain in places during the last hour of daylight.  We decided to scan Luna Lake after Nelson Reservoir was pouring rain and wasn't showing signs of letting up.  As usual, Luna Lake had high numbers of expected waterfowl and grebes, and we spied highlights of PEREGRINE FALCON and two calling SORAS.  Luna Lake turned out to be our last stop for the first day, which resulted in 108 species between the stops.

Luna Lake

On Sunday, September 14th, we had another early start and headed from our staying place in Greer out to the Sunrise area before heading east to South Fork.  We took this route for an hour to observe the many Elk in the area, which are in the rut.  At one point, we stopped at one place in Sunrise where we had great views of the open grassland and a few herds of Elk out in them.  There were several bulls among them with huge racks.  We had great scope views and bugling from the bulls were coming in five different directions.  It was an amazing experience to watch and listen to, one I haven't enjoyed in a long time, and one of the most amazing sounds of the wilderness.  If one doesn't enjoy listening to Elk bugle and watch them at this time of year, then they really don't like nature!  As we were in the process of Elk searching, we did have a NORTHERN GOSHAWK briefly perched up in a tall tree by the Sunrise Lodge.  We didn't think it was going to be a Goshawk at first, so we opened up the car doors quickly to get out our binoculars, which spooked the bird.  Cool to see, but a perched view would've been awesome.

Elk herd.  Look at the Elk on the right, a huge bull.  The sounds of Elk bugles were coming from everywhere.

One large bull wandered in from the other direction, but no fights broke loose while we were watching.

We then headed east to the South Fork of the Little Colorado River, which is one of the best birding locations in the White Mountains.  We covered the river area by the bridge as well as the day use area up further by the trailhead and day use area.  There were very high numbers of migrants of several species such as WILSON'S and MACGILLIVRAY'S WARBLERS and female WESTERN TANAGERS.  1-2 GRAY CATBIRD(S) vocalized along the river.  We had a good woodpecker fix as we had visuals of both WILLIAMSON'S and RED-NAPED SAPSUCKERS as well as a female DOWNY WOODPECKER that Gordon spied while we were driving over the river bridge.  There were also a few WHITE-THROATED SWIFTS flying over the area, HAMMOND'S and WILLOW FLYCATCHERS, and flocks of PINYON JAYS.  A CLARK'S NUTCRACKER was heard calling above the day use area.  39 species total at South Fork, a place that would be fun to bird on a regular basis!

White-tailed Deer

South Fork of the Little Colorado River

Willow Flycatcher

Our next stop was at the Grasslands Wildlife Area.  This area is another fun one to explore and bird.  For those who don't know, Long-billed Curlew and Mountain Plover have been found breeding here.  Although they are rare here at the same time, it is good to keep an eye out for them.  Grasslands Wildlife Area is of course dominated by grasslands, but a 2.6 mile loop trail through the area takes one through the area through pinyon-juniper as well as a few ponds and three different stands of cottonwoods.  Throughout the year, the cottonwoods and ponds are probably very good for migrants.  While we didn't find anything too noteworthy at the cottonwood stands and ponds themselves other than what we had observed already, finding a BURROWING OWL in it's natural habitat along one of the dirt roads in the area was very rewarding.  Grasslands Wildlife Area has a section where Burrowing Owl homes have been made, and this sighting was well away from that.  29 species were recorded here, and this is another great place to observe PINYON JAYS, as we had another big flock in this area also.

Apache County Burrowing Owl!

It's awesome to see the Burrowing Owl in it's natural habitat!

We then traced our route back over to the Sunrise Area and then south from Sunrise to explore Sunrise, Crescent, Big, and Lee Valley Lakes.  Sunrise Lake had an abundance of water birds from the central to east part of the reservoir.  We didn't have anything noteworthy here other than a leucistic CANADA GOOSE.  This lake has a lot of potential and birds come and go from previous reports I've read.  We then headed down to Crescent Lake.  Crescent Lake had a few highlights that consisted of our first AMERICAN PIPITS of the fall, PRAIRIE FALCON hunting along the shoreline, NORTHERN HARRIER, a WHITE-FACED IBIS, and a YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD.

Crescent Lake

Big Lake didn't have a lot of birds from what we were able to see on the lake other than a few COMMON MERGANSERS, but we did come up with a SWAINSON'S HAWK and a flock of 21 WHITE-FACED IBIS feeding in a marshy area.

Mountain Bluebird and Wolf facts

Mountain Bluebird at Big Lake

Big Lake

Our final stop in this area was at Lee Valley Lake.  The lake held a female BUFFLEHEAD and a short walk along the southeastern perimeter of the lake produced two GRAY JAYS.  A variety of forest birds were seen and heard in the adjacent forest.

We then spent the rest of the day in the Greer area birding for about four hours.  The Greer Lakes are always fun to bird, and a quick 45-minute jaunt gave us a good variety of birds that included NORTHERN SHOVELER, EARED GREBE, CLARK'S NUTCRACKER, and BANK SWALLOW.

Steller's Jay

Our next Greer stop was at Benny Creek, which is a very interesting birding location and it can be birded on both sides of Highway 373.  The riparian area along Benny Creek was full of common migrants, and an OLIVE WARBLER was heard in the area.  Things then got very interesting as I was looking through a dense tangle of coniferous trees and caught sight of a highly-vertical and "stick-like" perched LONG-EARED OWL.  We enjoyed the Owl for a few minutes before it flew off.  These owls are usually detected visually when they fly off, it was nice to actually spy it first for a change.

This could be passed off as a stick.  But no, look closer, it's a Long-eared Owl!

The Long-eared Owl was in it's camouflage posture when we first found it, and it was well aware of us the entire time.  One little accidental movement I made spooked the bird further into the woods.

This is now the Long-eared Owl's alert posture.  Both of the postures make this bird look like an entirely different bird.  The Long-eared Owl is awesome, and this was one of the trip's major highlights.

We then worked our way to the end of Greer and birded along the West Fork of the Little Colorado River while it was raining lightly.  Gordon noticed white Dipper wash on many of the rocks and we walked up the river a short distance and found a juvenile AMERICAN DIPPER.  Shortly after we found the Dipper, it broke out into continuous song, a song that is a very awesome one in my opinion.  Our last stop for the day came from the east side of River Reservoir which is a day use area accessed from County Road 1126.  Checking the lake from this angle gave us a PEREGRINE FALCON.  We finished our second full day on Sunday with 95 different species.

On Monday, September 15th, we had just over a half day to bird before heading back to Phoenix.  Our first stop of the day was another visit to Becker Lake.  After seeing Charlie Babbit's report of Dickcissels at the lake, we wanted to give them a shot as well as bird the lake early when activity was high.  We didn't see the Dickcissels, but we did have an abundance of birds as we birded around the parking area and walked along weedy areas for a half-mile along the lake's eastern perimeter.  Out of 38 species, highlights included 2 adult BALD EAGLES, SORA, PEREGRINE FALCON, LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE, MARSH, HOUSE, and BEWICK'S WRENS; female INDIGO BUNTING, and many YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS by the parking area.

Bald Eagles at Becker Lake

We than gave Wenima Wildlife Area another visit, and highlights there included a LEWIS'S WOODPECKER.  Our next stop was a second visit to Lyman Lake State Park.  As we had many highlights from our first visit, the second visit didn't produce very much.  We did have 4 LONG-BILLED CURLEWS at the east end of the lake, which was our best bird for this second visit.  Our first visit AMERICAN AVOCET count was 1, but this time it was 21.  The three AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS and SNOWY EGRET continued, as well as the presumably same juvenile SANDERLING and three SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS.  This visit showed how things could change by the day at water bodies like this.

American Avocets and American White Pelicans

American Avocets and Western Sandpipers

The final stop of our Apache County trip came from Concho Lake, which is another awesome body of water in this region that has a lot of potential.  Eric, Lauren, and David's recent epic Apache County trip and visit to this lake is what prompted Gordon and I to visit the location.  Other than the lake itself, there are stands of riparian trees and surrounding juniper habitat which could harbor a lot of different bird species.  We didn't see the shorebird variety that they saw, but we did have LEAST, WESTERN, and BAIRD'S SANDPIPERS all standing side-by-side for awesome comparisons.  A flock of nearly 200 COMMON RAVENS was also interesting to see.  Ducks on the water included BLUE-WINGED TEAL and a pair of REDHEAD.  Our best bird in the riparian stand was a flock of 14 CEDAR WAXWINGS.  Concho Lake was a good ending to our Apache County trip.  We detected 81 species altogether for this third day of birding in Apache.

Baird's, Western, and Least Sandpipers (left to right) feeding.

What a nice comparison between the three.

The tallest of the three can see one inch higher than the others.

Size difference is noticeable between these three "peeps".

Baird's Sandpiper

Concho Lake

Concluding, the trip was a major success for both of us as we simply wanted to bird this county at a different time of year other than summer and add species to our Apache County lists.  I got to bird at two locations I have never been before, and most of the area was new for Gordon.  As I've mentioned before, Apache is my favorite Arizona county and I hope to explore a lot more of it throughout the year in the future.  Too bad it isn't closer.  With the three days combined, Gordon and I found 143 species in the county, all from the White Mountain region.  If you haven't explored Apache yet, give it a trip, it's a real treat!!  Thanks Gordon for the awesome trip!

Baird's Sandiper and Western Sandpiper.  They were 2 out of 26 Apache County additions that I gained on this trip with 2.5 days of birding.  My Apache County list went from 172 species to 198 species.  The next trip will hopefully push me well above the 200 mark.  The 26 additions I added to my Apache County list were:  Wilson's Warbler, Townsend's Warbler, Bank Swallow, Brewer's Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Northern Harrier, White-faced Ibis, Northern Shoveler, Marsh Wren, Snowy Egret, American Avocet, Sanderling, Baird's Sandpiper, Sabine's Gull, Black Tern, Semipalmated Plover, Caspian Tern, Western Sandpiper, Hammond's Flycatcher, White-throated Swift, Burrowing Owl, American Pipit, Indigo Bunting, Bewick's Wren, Long-billed Curlew, and Cedar Waxwing.