Sweetwater Wetlands Park

Another trip to the Sweetwater area didn’t net any new birds, but a very nice walk and some scenic views.

Above are a Cinnamon Teal and American Coot

Ladderback Woodpecker

Tubac Hawk Watch

We got up very early one morning to get to the little town of Tubac to see the Hawk migration. We heard about how you’d see dozens or hundreds of hawks, and lots of great birders who would share tips on how to distinguish one species from another.

We did see several hawks, such as Common Black Hawk and Zone-tailed Hawk, but overall numbers were not very impressive. There were a few distributors of beautiful [read: expensive] binoculars and scopes that let us try them out. The world is full of great ways to spend money! Tubac seems to have a nice old town center, which would be fun to explore sometime. We had a meeting at the church to get back for, so will have to do Tubac another time.

While we didn’t get too close to the hawks, we saw a few other birds, like the Vermillion Flycatcher, a Say’s Pheobe and a Lesser Goldfinch.

Work Next Door

Our neighbor, Gerry, wanted the cactus in his front “yard” trimmed, so I got to help. I guess he has to do this annually, and has a good system. First chore was to take the Christmas lights off with the aid of a long pole. Then we’d hook a loop on a rope on top of the piece we wanted to trim, and pull it one way while someone else used a saw to cut the cactus down to size. Gerry says when he moved here 15 years ago, the cactus wasn’t as tall as he was. I guess he’s shrunk a bit!

A few days before the cactus trimming, Gerry had his park model re-roofed. It seems like about 80% of the homes here were damaged in a huge hailstorm last October, and new roofing is going up all over. I set a camera on our roof to watch them work. They move pretty fast!