Patagonia

Yesterday I went bird-watching in Patagonia!  I'd been seeing these trips announced in the Audubon e-mails and longing to go for several months. Finally I did it. (Yes, that's Patagonia, Arizona, not somewhere in South America.)

The I-10 to Tucson is such a giant bore, nevermind the miles and miles of having to drive 55 due to construction all through the Tucson part of the freeway. But once past Tucson, taking 83 south, it is so pretty. I can't imagine why I never went down this way before. It's kind of a transition zone between the Sonoran and Chiracahuan deserts, so there are species familiar to me but no saguaros and a number of unfamiliar shrubs. There's also quite a bit of grassland (lovely with mountains, the Santa Ritas, in the background). The most startling thing is how green it was. It's been unusually wet this year, so I guess it's not always quite so pretty.

Patagonia has a lake, made from damming up Sonoita Creek in the 60's. A state park surrounds the lake, which is popular with the usual sorts of water recreationists, but there is also a large natural area, Sonoita Creek State Natural Area, with trails. That's where we walked. The trip was almost cancelled because everyone but me backed out. The leader, however, was willing to take me out and thought he could find a couple of locals to join us. We were a group of four, all happy that I'd begged for the trip to go forward.

I only had to pant up one small hill, and the view of creek and small waterfall made it well worth the exertion. We saw lots of things that were new to me, including gray hawks, four kinds of hummingbirds, a ground dove, and four kinds of flycatchers including a northern beardless tyrranulet that was way too plain for such a pretentious name. I accused the leader of making that one up.

Then two new gal-friends and I ate lunch at the Velvet Elvis, which turned out to be a positively gourmet little restaurant whose name is totally obscured by trees, making it easy to miss. They seem to specialize in gourmet salads and gourmet pizzas. I opted for a salad since the night before I had gorged myself to insensibility at another crypto-gourmet place across the street, disguised as a coffee shop/bakery/ice cream parlor. At night they bring out the dinner menu and pages of wine list. I had planned an evening walk but ended up horizontal, powerless, and thoroughly sated with food, wine, and dessert.

I thought I was going to a bitty town in the middle of nowhere. Little did I know that there is culture in them there hills of southern Arizona!

After lunch I followed a curious road sign consisting of a diagram of binoculars and an arrow. I ended up at a Nature Conservancy riparian preserve, and despite the prospect of few birds and heat at that hour of the day, I had to check out their 2-mile loop trail along Sonoita Creek. I met a deer and a tree-climbing lizard that I finally decided, back at the visitor's center with its handy little library, was a mountain-something lizard (genus Sceloperus) climbing a tree and just lying there on a branch looking weird & ugly, black flecked with white, and I was so happy to be able to identify it, and then I didn't write it down and now I can't remember what it was and googling doesn't help and I am so frustrated I could die! (I'll be back!)