Over the Labor Day weekend my wife and I headed to SE Arizona with a potential lifer in store. We drove down as far as Casa Grande after work on Friday September 4th, but any idea of a quick start to the day ended with heavy rain on Saturday morning. So we changed plans and headed to Lake Cochise in Willcox where we had 14 species of wader in an hour's stay. The highlight being my first Black-bellied Plover in Arizona. We then went to St. David's where we first enjoyed a Vermillion Flycatcher and then were lucky to find a Mississippi Kite. We also had a Gray Hawk while at the monastery and had a Swainson's Hawk en route through. We reached our planned spot for the day - the Ramsey Canyon Preserve at 4pm too late to chase the rarity so after familiarizing ourselves we headed to Mary Jo's for a late in the day hummingbird show: 7 species in all including several Lucifer's!
On Sunday September 6th we went directly to Ramsey Canyon and hiked the 2.25 miles from the visitor center to a spot that had been identified for us the day before. On arrival at the spot we found a few people - including Christina - already enjoying the two Tufted Flycatchers. A Mexican species that had tried to breed here earlier in the summer but which had stayed around over 3 months. I lifer for me, but not one that had been chased at the first chance I had. We then drove to Patagonia for a short stay at Paton's to get Violet-crowned Hummingbird, and then to Amado to add Black-bellied Whistling Duck to my year list. We ended the day in Madera Canyon in hopes of getting Plain-capped Starthroat (which had been making one short stop per day at Santa Rita for a while) or Arizona Woodpecker (which had eluded me back in January). I dipped on both. We headed back to Flagstaff on Sunday.
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