Around Flagstaff at the end of March

I spent the last weekend in March birding spots around Flagstaff trying to get my Arizona list for 2017 up to 150 and hoping to get to my personal best figure of 216 species by the end of March.

I made a couple of stops on Saturday March 25th after my swim. I had already added my county Turkey Vulture for the year while heading to the club from Route 66. At the Walnut Canyon Ponds a pair of Osprey had returned to their nest and four Neotropic Cormorants were sitting on some branches over the water. I then made my fourth stop of the year at my Acorn Woodpecker stake out on San Moritz. Having wandered around with no luck on my previous attempts this time I got the bird without leaving my car.

Neotropic Cormorant

Osprey

 On Sunday 26th I made an early start and got to Cave Springs before 8am. It was cold and it became clear that I should have gone a little later. But I added Painted Redstart and Black Phoebe to my county list - two easy birds that like to show themselves. Later in the day I went out to Walnut Canyon and added Red-naped Sapsucker and Bushtit.

This took me to 69 species in Coconino County, 147 in Arizona and 210 for the year, and bad weather during the week meant that I ended the month with those totals.