She was feeding her babies a raw meat delicacy that she or Mr. Eagle had brought to them. I could barely see her or the fledglings, because they were so far away, well protected from human intrusion behind a fence in a field.

But once I had pulled out all the stops my camera found the family. Using my 100-400mm lens with my 1.4x teleconverter on my camera with its APS-C sensor, I got 896mm magnification. It was barely enough to reach Mrs. Eagle and her fledglings, who must have been half a mile away.

Mrs. Eagle and her Fledglings on their Big Nest

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Mr. Eagle was much closer and a lot less active. He posed for me on his favorite tree.

The Male Bald Eagle Calls

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For an hour I watched the Eagle family until Mr. Eagle flew off in search of more food. When he suddenly left his perch, I assumed that he spotted something tasty. But he didn’t seem to have anything special in mind, since he just flew in ever wider circles far above me. I guess he figured that it was lunch time, and he needed to get to work feeding hungry mouths.

In the 1980s Rocky Mountain Arsenal had the dubious reputation of being “the most polluted piece of ground in America,” wrote Mark Obmascik when he was a reporter for the Denver Post. I didn’t know anything about Mark then. Hardly anyone did.

Now he is rich and famous after writing The Big Year, one of the best books about birding I have ever read.

“The first time I met a real birder, I couldn’t tell a tit from a tattler,” is the way Mark opened The Big Year. “I was a cub newspaper reporter, stuck on the graveyard shift and scrambling for some way, any way, to get off. If I wasn’t chasing some awful car accident, I was hustling to find the relatives of a homeless man slashed in a railyard knife fight. Nobody was happy.”

Mark still lives in Denver and is a lot happier now that he writes books. I am in touch with him through Facebook, and I know he is especially happy about the transformation of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal into one of the country’s largest wildlife refuges.

I am also happy to visit this refuge often and in fact have visited it many more times than any of our country’s other 556 national wildlife refuges. I returned there on Sunday for a birding tour.

For two reasons this was one of my best tours of the refuge. We saw a great variety of wildlife, and we had better transportation. Besides birds, we also saw deer, coyotes, prairie dogs, rabbits, a muskrat, and the first raccoon I’ve seen in Colorado.

Unlike all the other refuges that I have explored, Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR offers free tours. We can visit most of this huge refuge — larger than Manhattan Island — only by way of these tours or impracticably long hikes. The new 16-passenger tour bus is a big improvement over the old van in terms of comfort and the small windows that we can open for photography.

The tour that I took had 14 passengers including two volunteer guides plus the driver. I had met three of these people on previous tours.

We saw three species of raptors, the species of birds that I most wanted to see. The first was this Red-tailed Hawk, which is by far the most common hawk in Colorado. This one circled slowly over us as we stopped to view other birds by one of the refuge’s lakes.

The Back-lit Tail of this Hawk is Rather Red

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The second raptor we saw was a little owl that routinely takes over a prairie dog burrow.

A Burrowing Owl Watches Us

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The third raptor species just flew in. Swainson’s Hawks are back after wintering in the tropics as far south as Argentina.

A Pair of Swainson's Hawks in Deep Conversation

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Other birds have also just reached us on their seasonal migration. This Lesser Yellowlegs was hard for us to identify. Several of the birders on the bus thought that it was a Spotted Sandpiper until I happened to comment that my photos showed that this bird has a black beak.

A Lesser Yellowlegs Does Have Yellow Legs

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Only three or four of us saw another migratory bird that none of us had any trouble identifying. We were out of the bus to walk the path between two lakes when one of us spotted this bright bird in the trees ahead of us.

This Yellow-headed Blackbird Stands Out from the Green Leaves

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Every species of living things has a two-word scientific name, a binomial. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus invented this system in 1753, and the world has used it ever since. Without it, the naming of plants and animals would be chaotic. But the names use Latin grammatical forms and are difficult for laymen to remember.

For example, a Lesser Yellowlegs is officially a Tringa flavipes. Both first and last names must be in italics, and only the first name has a capital letter. The official source for the binomials of our birds is the Check-list of North American Birds, which the American Ornithologists’ Union publishes.

Since these names are to learn, most people use common names in their native language. Fortunately, we have standardized official English names for birds. The American Birding Association’s Checklist includes the names of 970 “native North American breeding species, regular visitors, casuals and accidentals from other regions that are believed to have strayed here without direct human aid, and well-established introduced species that are now part of our avifauna.”

Most people who write about birds capitalize these common names, because they are official names. Almost all birds have first and last names in English just as they do in Latin. But one of the birds that I photographed on Sunday has only one name in English. This is the bird known simply as the Killdeer, because some people imagine that its call sounds like “kill deer” (I don’t think so, but hear for yourself at “All About Birds).”

Unlike many of the birds that I saw on Sunday who are visiting for the warm seasons, the Killdeer lives here year round. I see it often, but can’t resist taking pictures of it. I am especially intrigued by its orange
eyes.

A Killdeer is a Shorebird

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But the next bird we saw was another migrant. The Western Kingbird, officially Tyrannus verticalis, may not be a king, but it is certainly a tyrant. That’s because it is a member of the tyrant flycatcher family. They aggressively defend their breeding territory.

The first Western Kingbird I saw on Sunday found a metal post for its throne.

A Western Kingbird on its Throne

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Then, another Western Kingbird arrived.

A Rival Western Kingbird Arrives

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The New King Looks a Lot Like the Old King

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As you can see, I love to photograph birds in flight when I can. This is such a passion with many bird photographers that we even have a standard abbreviation, “BIF.”

I got some of my favorite BIF shots on Sunday of some of our most familiar birds, Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows. These are also migrating birds, but they have learned to live close to humans. At Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge they have just returned to claim some birdhouses we built for them there.

A Barn Swallow May be Common, But it is Also Colorful

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"Sorry! This Nest is Occupied."

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She's Leaving Home

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Near the end of the tour we found Tree Swallows — on a rail rather than on a tree.

A Tree Swallow Waves its Wings

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Although I had previously photographed all of these species of birds before, seeing them again delighted me. I also saw one common animal that I hadn’t previously photographed since moving to Colorado. This raccoon was shy and got away from us as soon as it could, but not before I got this shot.

A Raccoon Climbs a Tree

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Thirty years ago who would have guessed that an arsenal could contain so much natural beauty.

This was a great surprise, because the nest was so exposed, right at the edge of the lake. Three years ago Canada Geese had established a nest in exactly the same location, but tragedy struck, and none of those goslings hatched.

I called my friend and neighbor Nancy to tell her the goods news, and the next morning we walked around the lake to look at the goslings close up. We saw them and more.

The Goose Family

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As we walked over the bridge, I made a point to check out the rocks where turtles often sunbathe. In fact, three of them were enjoying the warm spring weather. Here’s one of them.

A Western Painted Turtle with a Flower on its Face

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Returning to the lawn in front of our apartments, Nancy and I saw the mama goose back on the nest with the goslings probably resting under her. Close by was a group of Mallards together with another bird that has a big mouth.

A Female Red-breasted Merganser

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As I wrote this photo essay at my office desk I looked out at the lawn and Tantra Lake. The goslings were back out of the nest.

Later in the day the Goose Family was near my living room window, and I took advantage of it. Last year I removed the window screen, so I that I could make pictures from my easy chair. I was also able to throw out some cracked corn for the parents and some thistle seed for the children.

The World is Full of Wonder

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Dave Jasper is a naturalist guide, one who is respected enough to have a chapter in a book that I just finished reading, Good Birders Don’t Wear White: 50 Tips from North America’s Top Birders. Each year more than 3,000 people visit the feeders he set up at his house. A couple of years ago he sold the property, which is still known in birding circles as “Jasper’s Feeders.”

The new owner, Bob Rodrigues, continues to make them available to all comers. I met Bob and asked if he was the owner of the property. He said he was and introduced himself. When he told me his name, inquisitive reporter that I am, I asked if he were of Spanish or Portuguese descent.

“Portuguese,” he replied. “My ancestors came from the Azores.”

I told him that half of mine did too. We bonded. “Countryman,” he called me.

But even before we got to his wonderful backyard, Sharon and I saw one of the birds that we had most wanted to see in Southeast Arizona. After turning north off the main road from Cave Creek, we came to a rough dirt road. On a post next to the road was a Gambel’s Quail.

We Easily Recognized this Gambel's Quail by its Top Hat

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This was the lookout bird. Several of them scampered across the road when we stopped.

Why Does a Gambel's Quail Cross the Road? Because it's There

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When we got to the bird feeders, we saw even more Gambel’s Quail.

A Gambel's Quail in a Birdbath

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The feeders attract a great variety of birds, some that we had seen before and some that I can’t even identify. But we saw another bird on our most wanted list after catching glimpses of it earlier on our trip. Each of us has a hard time pronouncing its name, Pyrrhuloxia. It’s also a bit difficult to spell, so I am checking this spelling carefully.

I can understand that some people cheat and just call it the Desert Cardinal. This songbird is a member of the same family as the Northern Cardinal.

For Comparison, Here is a More Common Northern Cardinal at Jasper's Feeders

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A Female Desert Cardinal, er Pyrrhuloxia, at the Feeders

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A Male Pyrrhuloxia at a Bird Feeder

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Seeing these beautiful birds made a great conclusion to our trip to Southeast Arizona. We flew back to our homes in Colorado the next day.

But even better is the lower part of the South Creek Trail 1.5 miles up to a trail junction known as Maple Camp. The hike that Sharon and I took early in the morning of our second day at Cave Creek Ranch was the highlight of our exploration of Cave Creek Canyon. The morning was surprisingly cloudless and warmer after the storm that had blown through the day before.

While we waited out the rain the previous day Reed Peters, the owner of Cave Creek Ranch, had briefed us the about the best places to go. “This is the most beautiful trail,” he told us.

In fact, it is one of the most beautiful trails I have ever hiked. It’s right up there with the Fall Creek Trail near Santa Cruz and the Emerald Lake Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. But with fewer people. I fell in love with Cave Creek Canyon and plan to return next spring.

Sharon and I hiked alone on the South Fork Trail and rarely saw anyone in the several hours we explored it. We saw lots more birds than people.

The trail follows the clear creek all the way, except when the creek runs underground. We didn’t follow it there.

The South Fork of Cave Creek

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About one-quarter mile along the trail we entered a wilderness area. Whenever I have an experience like this, I think of the wise words of Henry David Thoreau in Walking, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

Sharon Enters the Chiricahua Wilderness

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A Painted Redstart Rests on a Log

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While I always love to photograph vivid birds like this Painted Redstart, an Arizona Woodpecker gave me the biggest kick of any birds I saw on this hike. Sharon and I had discussed it, and I had hoped to see one. I got a special kick out of spotting it before Sharon did, something that rarely happens. She almost always sees birds that are invisible to me, often even after she points them out to me.

An Arizona Woodpecker at its Nest in a Sycamore Tree

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After our hike, we stopped at a sign that said “Cathedral Vista” and walked a couple of hundred yards up out of the canyon to see a broader view.

Sharon Considers Whether to Climb Cathedral Rock

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Recently, I’ve been writing about the health benefits of getting out in nature, including “Natural Exercise to Help Manage Diabetes” and “The Nature Principle.” The South Creek Trail hike gave me my nature fix.

We arrived at 11 p.m. after a long drive from Madera Canyon with several stops en route. Our rooms were ready for us and all seemed well.

But the next morning our rental car had a flat tire. Fortunately, my membership of AAA, formerly known as the American Automobile Association, provides free roadside assistance through an 800 number. The usually respond quickly, but I knew this would take a while. In fact, the driver had to come from Willcox, about 95 miles away.

While we waited, instead of pouting or twiddling our thumbs, we explored the ranch and birded.

Feeders in the Foreground, Cave Creek Canyon in the Background

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Some Symbols of the Southwest

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This Female Costa's Hummingbird Has a Long Tongue

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Here's a Better Shot of a Rufous Hummingbird than I Got Earlier on the Trip

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A Male Scott's Oriole

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Once the AAA driver, Albert, arrived, he quickly and pleasantly changed the tire. But our tire problems weren’t over. The car we rented had what they euphemistically call a “convenience spare.” It was anything but that.

It was just a temporary spare, physically shorter and narrower than the car’s other tires. A tag warned us not to drive on it at more than 50 mph or for more than 50 miles.

Fortunately, Reed helped us out by calling a friend who knew a man in Rodeo, New Mexico, named Eddie who repairs tires. On the way there we noticed that the AAA driver had stopped to fix a flat in his own vehicle. Of course, we offered to call AAA for him, but he figured he could take care of it himself.

Soon after we returned to the ranch with our car problems behind us, a storm blew in. The weather turned cold and wet. I figured that we deserved some down time anyway, having been continuously on the go for the previous four days.

After a well-deserved nap, in the late afternoon we began our exploration of Cave Creek Canyon. By then the rain had turned to sleet. As we drove up the Mountain Road past the Southwest Research Station, snow began to fall. At that point we decided that this wild and isolated place had shown us enough for one day.

From the campground at the end of the road we hiked down. We took the delightful Comfort Spring Trail into the Coronado National Forest’s Miller Peak Wilderness and reached the spring. Across the canyon we spotted a raptor as it landed in a wonderland of rock.

Looking for a Raptor, I Noticed Some Rocks

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When the raptor flew, it glided right above us. I told Sharon to lie down so that it would come closer, but for some reason she refused. Nonetheless, the raptor came close enough for us to identify it as a Red-tailed Hawk. This is our most common hawk, and this shot clearly shows that it deserves the name.

A Red-tailed Hawk Glides Over Us

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Then, the only problem was to hike back up to the campground and make the tortuous drive back down the mountain. Somehow, Sharon succeeded. Near the bottom, we stopped at a pull-out to enjoy this view.

Sulphur Springs Valley and the Chiricahua Mountains

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Lucky for us, this was not just another day, another dusk.

Often TNC raises funds to buy endangered land and protects it until a government agency is willing and able to manage it. But sometimes it establishes nature preserves that it continues to manage. Its Patagonia Sonoita Nature Preserve, which it purchased jointly with the Tucson Audubon Society, was The Nature Conservancy’s first of its six preserves in Arizona. This preserve protects some of the richest streamside habitat in the Southwest, including a magnificent example of the now rare Fremont cottonwood-Goodding willow riparian forest. Some of these cottonwoods are more than 100 feet tall and more than 130 years old.

Sharon and I were so determined to visit the Patagonia Sonoita Nature Preserve that we went there twice. The first time we arrived just as someone closed the gate. The next day we made sure to get there in the morning.

We hiked the idyllic Loop Trail, expecting to see birds. We didn’t expect to see mammals. Worldwide, birds are much more plentiful, about 10,000 species of birds and anywhere from 200 billion to 400 billion individual birds exist today. About 5,500 species of mammals exist today. Nobody seems to be willing to guess how many individual mammals now inhabit our planet, but we do know that 7 billion of them are humans.

One mammal that I hoped to see even though I had no expectations was a javelina, technically known as a collared peccary. When I returned to the West in 1977 after years of living in the DC area and in Africa, I got a glimpse of one as I passed through southern Arizona. This time I not only got clear views of javelinas but also had much better camera equipment.

This Javelina May Look Cute, but I Made Sure Not to Get Too Close

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A Different Javelina Eats

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Actually, javelinas will eat just about anything, including flowers, fruits, nuts, berries, bulbs, and most succulent plants. But this strange mammal has equally strange tastes in food, with a decided preference for prickly pear cactus.

Of course, we saw a lot more birds than mammals at the Patagonia Sonoita Creek Preserve. But one bird in particular attracted my attention, partly because I had probably never seen one of its species before and certainly had never photographed one, even though some of them live all the way from Southern Canada to Northern Mexico.

A Cooper's Hawk

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The Cooper’s Hawk that we saw at the preserve flew off within a minute after we saw it, but not before it posed for this portrait.

One of our best trip resources, the “Southeastern Birding Trail” map, highlighted one place near the route from Patagonia to Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, where we were staying. Las Cienegas National Conservation Area is “one of the best grasslands left in southeastern Arizona,” it told us. This area has five of the rarest habitats in the Southwest: cienegas, or marshlands, cottonwood-willow riparian forests, mesquite bosques, and sacaton, or dropseed, and semi-desert grasslands.

The other indispensable birding resource for the area, Finding Birds in Southeast Arizona, told us about the Heritage Discovery Trail, which winds through a cottonwood-lined section of Upper Empire Gulch there. That’s where we had a pleasant hike near the end of the day.

But the gulch was well-shaded by huge cottonwoods and not until we drove away did I get any good photographs. The light was almost gone when I half-seriously asked Sharon to find me a bird to match the beauty of last light.

Just then she did. “There, on that pole!” she exclaimed.

Sure enough she had spotted an American Kestrel just minutes before the sun dropped below the horizon. This is our smallest falcon and the most beautiful of all raptors. It was eating a lizard.

A Male American Kestrel Enjoys a Raw Lizard for Dinner

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The Kestrel Calls

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What was the kestrel saying? “It’s my lizard; stay away!” Or “I saved some lizard for you, my dear!” Only the kestrel knows.

In the early 1990s they opened their yard to the world after several rare hummingbirds built nests there. At least 15 of the 23 species of hummingbirds anywhere in North America live in or migrate to Southeast Arizona, most of them to the Paton backyard. Wally died in 2001 and Marion in 2009, but the Paton family still keeps the feeders stocked as well as providing a comfortable place for birders from all over the world to sit or stand.

“The place owned by Marion Paton and her late husband, Wally, is unprepossessing, but for many birders it’s the best place in Arizona,” Luke Dempsey wrote in his delightful 2008 book, A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All. “She keeps many feeders hanging from the eaves of the low-slung house, and birders are invited to stop in and see what’s there at any time of the day. She and her husband had not only established all these feeders across the years, but also provided some chairs to sit on, a bunch of birding guides, and eventually even a canopy to save birders from the hot Arizona sun. I read somewhere that because of the storms that come through here, she’s on her seventh tent, which seems almost biblical.”

Sharon and I saw more species of hummingbirds at Paton’s feeders than we could possibly identify even after searching all of our field guides. Here are a couple of photos that I took of them there.

I especially like this male Rufous Hummingbird, even though it is the only species of hummingbird that we see around Boulder. This little bird, which is only about 3 inches long, migrates here every summer. “If migration distance is divided by body length,” says Richard Cachor Taylor in his Birds of Southeastern Arizona, “the 2,000-mile migration of Rufous Hummingbirds is among the longest in the animal kingdom.”

A Male Rufous Hummingbird Feeds

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Another common hummingbird that I saw at Paton’s feeders is also one of my favorites. What an incredible color combination!

A Male Broad-billed Hummingbird at a Feeder

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The feeders in the backyard of the Paton residence attract not only hummingbirds but also all kinds of other birds.

A nuthatch searches for insects hidden under the bark of this tree in its usual manner, head-first.

A White-breasted Nuthatch Looks for Food

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A Male Gila Woodpecker Wants to Eat Too

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Three Male Lazuli Buntings on a Feeder

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The Paton residence is just a few blocks down the street from the residence of some friends of mine who used to live in Boulder. Binx Selby and his wife Linda Fong welcomed us to their home. They founded BalancePoint, a program to reduce inflammation. They also co-authored with my friend Dick Williams the new book, Eating Your Heart Out?, which I reviewed in February. With all the birds in their neighborhood I could almost understand why Binx and Linda abandoned Boulder for Patagonia.